If a student has multiple behavior problems that escalate over time and across different settings, school-based problem-solving teams can become quickly overwhelmed, especially when educators identify "setting events" for problem behaviors that have occurred outside of school and are beyond the control of school personnel. Instead of resorting to…

This study investigated the relationship between primary school teachers' self-reported and actual use of classroom management strategies, and examined how the use of proactive and reactive strategies is related to teacher stress and student behaviour. The total sample consisted of 97 teachers from primary schools within Melbourne. Teachers…

Background: Effectively supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities who display challenging behaviours continues to be a priority for service providers. Person-focused training (PFT) is a model of service delivery which provides staff with skills in functional assessment and intervention development. Existing longitudinal data from a…

This article illustrates how to (a) use schoolwide data to monitor student responsiveness to primary and secondary prevention efforts to identify students for tertiary preventions and (b) design, implement, and evaluate a function-based intervention in collaboration with two general education teachers, who served as the primary interventionists.…

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is now suggested to be the treatment of choice for bulimia nervosa. However, it is also known than no more than approximately 50% of patients recover after receiving CBT. When the first-line manual-based treatment fails, the therapist should use other empirically supported treatments, and if they do not work or…

Evidence-based practices (EBPs) are the basis on which teachers and other service providers are required to design educational programs for learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). As part of their work with the National Professional Development Center (NPDC) on ASD, researchers developed a process for reviewing the research literature and…

The purpose of this study was to discern the current skill level of novice teachers in identifying the function of problem behaviors and illustrate the continued need for developing data collection skills with this population. Eighty-eight teachers with experience ranging from 1-5 years completed a series of open and forced-choice questions that…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of training special education teachers in the process of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) and subsequent development of recommendations to promote behavior change. An original evaluation instrument was developed that included measures of special education teachers' knowledge of…

Examines whether curriculum-based assessment (CBA) procedures could be incorporated into a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) to identify antecedent events that occasion off-task classroom behaviors of students in a general education classroom. Suggests that the use of CBA during a functional analysis appears to be a practical and effective…

This paper identifies six factors that affect fidelity of treatment in relationship to functional behavioral assessment (FBA) in the classroom setting including: (1) understanding the function of and the contextual variables that support target behavior, (2) adult knowledge of effective interventions, and (3) adult acceptance of the intervention.…

This article provides a review of current literature on the comparative validity of different functional assessment and analysis strategies. It describes functional assessment as an outcome-driven process and explains observational assessment strategies and using assessment information to plan interventions. A proposed process for teachers and…

The duration or magnitude of reinforcement has varied and often appears to have been selected arbitrarily in functional analysis research. Few studies have evaluated the effects of reinforcement magnitude on problem behavior, even though basic findings indicate that this parameter may affect response rates during functional analyses. In the…

Schools are now required by law to create behavior support plans based on functional behavioral assessment (FBA) for students with behavior problems. Although FBA has been shown to be effective, there are questions as to its feasibility in the schools. In this pilot study we examined the effectiveness of a truncated FBA procedure. The FBA used a…

The analog functional analysis involves the manipulation of pre-determined antecedent and consequent events and typically is conducted by trained experimenters. Inclusion of idiosyncratic variables in the analog functional analysis may affect responding. Inclusion of caregivers is one potential antecedent that may affect problem behavior. The…

This paper discusses the role of automatic negative reinforcement in the maintenance of clinical problems. Following a brief introduction to the functional conceptualization of clinical problems and discussion of four classes of reinforcement maintaining clinical problems, the paper suggests that automatic negative reinforcement is an understudied…