There are four major goals for this module. Upon completion of this module, you should be able to do the following:
This module will address the following critical questions:
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Kanisha, a second grader, was frequently suspended from school last year due to serious tantrums that included screaming, crying, throwing objects across the room, and pounding her fists on the floor. In order to prevent the same problems next year, one of Kanisha's teachers has brought together a team of individuals who know Kanisha well in order to complete a functional assessment and design a plan of support. Kanisha's team wants to design a positive behavioral support plan that will be implemented during the next school year. The team includes her parents, occupational therapist, speech therapist, her teachers, the vice principal, and her swimming instructor from the local athletic club.
Kanisha is well liked at school and her team is determined to provide Kanisha with the extra support she needs to succeed. The team members came prepared to the next meeting after conducting a functional assessment of Kanisha's problem behaviors. One of Kanisha's teachers, who had been working with another student, demonstrated how they had used a strategy for designing positive behavioral support plans that can be directly linked to functional assessment information.
In the past, Kanisha's parents and school staff had trouble communicating with one another across environments and ensuring that the interventions they selected were implemented consistently. This year, Kanisha's team wants to ensure that the positive behavioral support plan is effective and that everyone has the information they need to implement the plan successfully. The team is interested in developing a written plan that will help organize and focus their efforts.
In this lesson, we will discuss important issues that are related to designing a positive behavioral support plan, describe how this plan will be built from functional assessment information, and review the major features included in a plan of support.
Top of Page | Bottom of PageScott is a 13 year-old student in a large urban middle school. Scott has a learning disability and has been engaging in challenging behaviors during several of his classes. Mr. Sorenson, Scott's team leader, has brought a team together to implement a positive behavioral support plan for Scott. The team, including Scott, his parents, teachers, and several school staff have been meeting to discuss how they will be implementing the functional behavioral assessment and positive behavioral support plan.
Mr. Sorenson wants to create a strategic plan that will maximize the team's creativity and networking skills during the team meetings. The team will be spending time together deciding what types of data they will need to collect, identifying who will be responsible for gathering the information, and creating a timeline for each step of the positive behavioral support plan. Mr. Sorenson knows that the key to a successful positive behavioral support plan is to be highly organized and to communicate effectively during the team meetings.
One way to ensure that Scott's team will be successful involves the development of an implementation plan. In this lesson, we will describe the reasons why implementation plans are so important and the major features of the implementation process. The implementation plan also includes the design and development of ongoing data collection strategies that will continue after the functional assessment is complete. Consequently, the last part of this lesson will discuss important issues related to implementing data collection strategies.
Top of Page | Bottom of PageElla is a sixteen-year-old student with severe disabilities. By the middle of the school year, the intensity of Ella's self-injurious behavior had increased significantly. As a result, Ella's team conducted a functional behavioral assessment to identify the events that predicted and maintained Ella's self-injury. Since that time, the team has made considerable progress identifying effective interventions and using an implementation plan to guide their progress. During today's meeting, several team members have been discussing important issues related to the interventions that will be implemented. The team wants to make sure that the interventions are a worthwhile effort and that they are not wasting time since everyone involved is very busy.
Ella's team knows that it is important to systematically gather information that can be used to evaluate the positive behavioral support plan. The team asked Ella's principal to attend the next planning meeting because of her experience utilizing data for decision-making purposes. Together, the team developed a strategy for evaluating Ella's positive behavioral support plan. The team also discussed the ways in which evaluation strategies can be used to fine tune interventions and adapt Ella's positive behavioral support plan over time.
In this lesson, we will describe how evaluation strategies are used to address a student's changing needs. Specifically, we will discuss what is included in an evaluation plan, how to make modifications to the plan based upon the data collected, and what to do when a positive behavioral support plan is ineffective.
Each of the three lessons will include readings to supplement the lesson topic, an outline and notes on the topic, and a glossary. In each lesson will be links to an Activities section, a Directed Questions section and an Assessment section.
In a 3-page paper describe why it is important to include evaluation strategies in a PBS plan and discuss three possible strategies for evaluating contextual fit and troubleshooting an ineffective PBS plan.