Ensuring Social and Academic Inclusion of Students with Special

Learning Needs in Mainstream Classrooms

Dr. Terry CummingSchool of Education

University of New South Wales

The Challenge

Today's students are displaying more challenging behaviours than ever before; teachers report that it is a serious threat to effective teaching/learning

Educators often lack specialised skills to address severe problem behaviour

This has left them reliant on reactive and crisis management interventions to solve chronic behaviour problems

Traditional discipline methods simply do not change the behaviour among the most challenging students

Contributing Factors (Mayer, 1995)

Poverty and language barriers Home

Inconsistent discipline Punitive management Lack of monitoring

Lack of pro-social community engagement Antisocial network of peers

Contributing Factors

School punitive disciplinary approach lack of clarity about rules, expectations, and

consequences lack of staff support failure to consider and accommodate individual

differences academic failure

A Solution

The answer is not to create new solutions, but to enhance the school's organisational capacity to: Accurately adopt and efficiently sustain their use

of research-validated practices Provide a seamless continuum of behavioral

and academic support for all students Increase focus, teacher training, community

training, and funding for early intervention

PBS is NOT...

specific practice or curriculum…it’s a general approach to preventing problem behavior

limited to any particular group of students…it’s for all students

new…its based on long history of behavioral practices & effective instructional design & strategies

www.pbis.org

Responsiveness-to-Intervention & SWPBS

School-wide Systems

Develop a behaviour team Establish need, priorities, commitment Mission statement Working structures Regular meeting schedule System for communicating information to the

team as well as other school staff Opportunities for PBS professional development Develop ways to share information with others

and the community

School-wide Systems

Identify problems Analyze needs to create short and long term

goals Focus on academic and social behavior

practices Focus on systems needed to support practices

for students Set of 5 or fewer rules stated positively

List problem behaviours and replacement behaviours

Develop procedures for teaching expected behaviours

School-wide System

Develop procedures for encouraging expected behaviours

Revisit procedures for discouraging problem behaviours

Develop strategies to make data-based decisions

Repeat above procedures in respect to non-classroom settings

Academic Systems Behavioral Systems

1-5% 1-5%

5-10% 5-10%

80-90% 80-90%

Intensive, Individually Designed Interventions• Address individual needs of student• Assessment-based• High Intensity

Intensive, Individually Designed Interventions• Strategies to address needs of individual students with intensive needs• Function-based assessments• Intense, durable strategies

Targeted, Group Interventions• Small, needs-based groups for at risk students who do not respondto universal strategies• High efficiency• Rapid response

Targeted, Group Interventions• Small, needs-based groups for at- risk students who do not respond to universal strategies• High efficiency/ Rapid response• Function-based logic

Core Curriculum and Differentiated Instruction• All students• Preventive, proactive•School-wide or classroomsystems for ALL students

Core Curriculum and Universal Interventions• All settings, all students• Preventive, proactive• School-wide or classroom systems for ALL students and staff

Tiered Instructional and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) Framework

In the Classroom

Use of school-wide expectations and rules Behaviour Management

Teaching routines Positive student-adult interactions

Instructional Management Curriculum and instructional design (student-

centered learning) Differentiated instruction

Environmental Management Positive environment for ALL students

Behaviour Management

Rules Create classroom specific from school-wide Teach social skills directly at specific times Monitor and reinforce all day Reteach for new students as they enter

Establish predictable routines Teach and practice routines

Formal classroom management system Reinforcement systems Consistency is key

Behaviour Management

Effective Strategies Engage in active decision making Circulate throughout room, scan constantly Attend only to positive behaviour when possible Give students task choice Humor, not sarcasm Positive reinforcement for students who comply

with rules and routines Modeling Be a teacher, not a friend Deal with inappropriate behaviour immediately

and consistently

Instructional Strategies- Attention

Gain and maintain attention Use a simple and portable cue to prompt

students to listen Avoid starting instruction until all students are

listening Provide specific verbal praise to peers to

redirect attention Reinforce students who are attending

immediately Use proximity control

Instructional Strategies- Questions

High rates of opportunities for students to respond

Information before questions Reinforcement for correct responses

Instructional Strategies-Feedback

Precise: specific about what was done correctly/incorrectly

When giving corrective feedback, provide instruction

High rates of positives to negatives

Instructional Strategies: Errors

Error correction (skill deficit?) Signal an error has occurred (refer to rules,

"We respect others in this room and that means not using put downs")

Ask for an alternative appropriate response ("How can you show respect and still get your point across?")

Provide an opportunity to practice the skill and provide verbal feedback ("That's much better, thank you for showing respect towards others")

Environmental Strategies

What do I want my classroom to look like? How do I want children to treat me as a

person? How do I want children to treat one another? What kind of information or values do I want

to communicate to students about being an adult, an educator, a woman or a man in today's society?

How do I want children to remember me when the last day of school ends and I am no longer part of their daily lives?

For Individual Students

Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) Should focus on child’s behaviour in specific situations than on

underlying traits or dispositions Focus on individual rather than a norm group Interested in discovering situational influences on behaviour

rather than history Behaviours may change as the result of the context in which

they occur The purpose of assessment is to obtain information that will

assist in intervention Assessment is conducted in a variety of ways Behaviour change strategies are reliant on data collection

Functional Behaviour Assessment

When a student’s behaviour consistently interferes with his or her own learning, consistently interferes with the learning of others, or consistently interferes with your ability to conduct class, a behaviour intervention plan for that student should be developed.

In order to do this, conduct an assessment to make sure the behaviour is not due to curriculum mismatch. If the curriculum is not mismatched, you will want to do a functional assessment of the student’s behaviour.

Steps in Conducting a FBA

Identify the Target behaviour and the replacement behaviour

Problem Analysis Examine data, ABC analysis Identify the function of the behaviour

Design an appropriate Behaviour Intervention Plan based on the results of the FBA

Progress monitoring

Setting Events

What academic or nonacademic activities are most associated with the student’s problem behaviour?

What changes in routines set the stage for the problem behaviours?

What times of the day are problem behaviours occurring most frequently?

Does the problem behaviour occur more in particular classrooms, with particular teachers, or during particular assignments?

Where, when, and with whom are the behaviours most and least prevalent?

Are some of the setting events occurring at home or on the way to school?

ABC Analysis

Using anecdotal observations to determine the antecedent, behaviour, and consequence

Used to determine the function of a particular behaviour

Functions Attention Power/control Escape/avoidance Sensory stimulation Frustration: deficits in language, communication,

academics, social skills

Replacement Behaviour

What will be taught to replace the inappropriate behavior that meets the same identified function?

Replacing the behavior with an appropriate skill is an important step in extinguishing the problem behavior

Behaviour Plan Development

Once it has been decided what some possible reasons for misbehavior are, it is now time to put a working behavior plan in place.

Keep in mind that flexibility is important and some components of the initial plan may need to change over time.

Behaviour Plan-Elements

Behaviour of concern, stated specifically Replacement behaviour (should serve the

same function as behaviour you are trying to eliminate/decrease)

Specific social skills to be taught Description of behavioural and instructional

strategies to be used

Behaviour Plan-Elements

Description of environmental changes & preventative measures to be taken (i.e. strategic seating, limited “escape route”, furniture arrangement for maximizing safety of all students)

Progress monitoring, including but not limited to: Frequency counts Duration counts Documentation of student response ABC chart Anecdotal notes

Rules of Thumb

Target no more than 3 behaviors to change according to severity when first developing the plan.

Give the interventions a minimum of 2-3 weeks before changing and trying something else.

Expect that some behaviors may get more intense before they improve.

Be sure that any and all appropriate staff members have access to and understand the BIP.

Rules of Thumb

Keep consistent data to track and analyze progress (or lack thereof).

Be flexible. Change reinforcers periodically so as not to

satiate student with the same thing. Use a variety of reinforcers to include verbal,

tangible, activity-based and parent-involved (as much as possible).