This study looks at the utilization of assessments on developing behavior intervention plans (BIPs) and their use in designing actual implementation for the children (elementary through high school) labeled EBD in a mid-sized district in eastern Washington. Files were reviewed to determine the types of assessments used, FBA components addressed,…

Educational experience in the community provides students with moderate and severe intellectual disabilities the opportunity to learn and rehearse skills they need to participate fully in community environments. The degree to which students with intellectual disabilities participate in their communities is often dependent on their ability to…

In an increasingly inclusive and complex setting, professionals in the school workforce working with children presenting social, emotional and behavioural difficulties are managing difficulties that frequently reflect co-morbidity and multiple-disorder. This article reports practitioner-led research taking place in a mainstream school in the USA…

It is generally acknowledged that school discipline is failing. Through a comparison of two very different disciplinary situations, I inquire into possible causes of failure and conditions of success. The argument is made that if discipline is to succeed, students must believe in and identify with the goals it is designed to support. Questions are…

This study examined the extent to which treatment integrity of 4 special education teachers was affected by goal setting, performance feedback regarding student or teacher performance, and a meeting cancellation contingency. Teachers were trained to implement function-based treatment packages to address student problem behavior. In one condition,…

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) was developed and researched in clinical settings as an effective strategy to identify interventions that both manage inappropriate behavior and teach appropriate replacement behavior, but is it equally effective in school settings, which typically involve much less structure and much greater social…

Direct methods of functional assessment--through which information is gathered by observing environment--behavior relations--vary with the degree to which environmental events are manipulated. Unstructured (ABC) assessments involve observing the occurrence of problem behavior without altering environmental events in any way. At the other extreme,…

Since the reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 1997) through the current reauthorization (IDEA 2004), disciplinary procedures and functional behavioral assessment (FBA) have been widely used in school districts to assist in the prevention and amelioration of problem behaviors. Although researchers have…

The authors examined the relation between variables maintaining problem behavior and reading performance for elementary-age students. Participants were 51 students in Grades 4, 5, and 6 who had received two or more office discipline referrals in 2003-2004. Students were grouped by teacher-indicated function of problem behavior. The prevalence of…

This manual takes school practitioners step by step through conducting functional behavioral assessments and using them to plan effective interventions. The authors present a cogent rationale for the use of functional behavioral assessment (FBA), clearly explaining its advantages over traditional approaches to dealing with problem behavior. Basic…

Describes a four-phase procedure that can be used to functionally assess distracting and disruptive behaviors occurring in the school setting. A variety of procedures under each of the first three phases are discussed, and procedures for linking information gained in the first three phases of the model to treatment implementation and treatment…

Legal mandate and limited resources provide an impetus to increase the utility of functional assessment. The goal of this study was to develop a brief assessment that could be conducted in the natural setting to identify naturally occurring, high-frequency subsequent events that may serve as maintaining consequences for disruptive behavior using…

Examines discriminant and convergent validity of the Teacher Functional Behavior Assessment Checklist (TFBAC) using 89 first- through third-grade students. Results are discussed in terms of increasing the convergent validity of the TFBAC, teacher training in concepts about functional behavioral assessment and the possibility of concurrent…

The Conflict Cycle employed in Life Space Crisis Intervention offers a model for conducting functional assessment with students facing disciplinary action for behavior that may be related to emotional disturbance and other disabilities. This article analyzes the Conflict Cycle, using principles from cognitive behavioral science. (Contains 13…

This article describes the development, implementation, and preliminary evaluation of a school-based Intensive Mental Health Program (IMHP) for 50 children (42 boys, 8 girls) with severe, early-onset, serious emotional disturbances (SED). Eighty-four percent of the children showed clinically significant improvement in overall functioning as…