Functional Behaviour Assessment for a Student with Autism: Evaluation of a Training Program for Teachers and Education Program Assistants
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Date
2009-04-20T15:54:31Z
Authors
Carter, Rebecca D.
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Abstract
With the education system moving towards an inclusive learning environment,
more children with disabilities, including autism, have been included in regular education
classrooms and schools. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder with significant
impairments in social interaction, communication, and the presence of restricted,
repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities. This move,
while having positive results on the students, has caused some concerns around the best
practices for dealing with challenging behaviours in the classroom. One method,
Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA), has been widely recognized as a promising
practice for providing proactive interventions with students who exhibit challenging
behaviours. FBA has also been shown to be an effective method for linking assessment to
intervention. This is an important tool when developing Behaviour Support Plans (BSP).
A Behaviour Support Plan is a written document that summarizes the information
obtained from the Functional Behavior Assessment and outlines the intervention plan.
As children with autism are at a particular risk for developing challenging and disruptive
behaviours that interfere with their educational progress, FBA is an effective tool for
developing Behaviour Support Plans that decrease challenging behaviours, while
increasing prosocial behaviours. However, there are concerns regarding the use of FBA practices and procedures
within the school system. These concerns include the amount of time needed to perform
a complex assessment and lack of training by those responsible for conducting the
assessment. This study evaluated whether training school personnel in Functional
Behaviour Assessment would lead to the development of a Behaviour Support Plan, which would decrease a student with autism’s challenging behaviour in the school
setting. This study also demonstrated how FBA could be effectively implemented in the
school system by supporting school staff throughout the training, assessment, and
intervention stages. Three school personnel and one student with autism participated in this study.
School personnel received a six hour training session in FBA through verbal and written
instructions and case study examples. During training, participants learned the
fundamentals about function-based behaviour support, how to conduct a Functional
Behaviour Assessment and how to build an effective and efficient Behaviour Support
Plan. Once training had been completed, school personnel completed the FBA process
on a student with autism. The assessment procedure involved collecting information
regarding two target behaviours through interviews and observations and then developing
a BSP based on the assessment information that was collected.
Observational information was collected after the BSP was implemented to
determine if it had an effect on the student’s behaviour. While the two target behaviours
appeared to decrease after the BSP was implemented, the specific causes of these
reductions were unable to be drawn due to the possibility of other variables accounting
for the improved behaviour. Results of FBA training revealed that school personnel’s confidence level in their
ability to develop and implement FBA procedures had increased after training.
Discussion includes the potential benefits of training school staff to implement
Functional Behaviour Assessment procedures and the Behaviour Support Plans that are
directly linked to assessment information, limitations of this study, and directions for
future research in applied school practices.
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Keywords
Disabilities , Teachers , Training , Teachers’ assistants , Behavioral assessment , Evaluation , Nova Scotia , Education , Autistic children