Developing School-Wide Positive Behavorial
Intervention Systems Model

Preface

 

Learning cannot occur in an environment that does not promote individual, small, and large group activities; time for individualized instruction; and, peer and adult interaction. It must also serve as a laboratory for trying something new and practicing that which in order to become more proficient. The foundation for such an environment includes structure, order, security, and a sense of trust and acceptance. The vast majority of teacher identified needs is attributed to an inability, on their part, to establish a structured, well-communicated environment, which is not oppressive. The learning environment must facilitate the learning experience.

Among the most important advances in student discipline procedures over the past decade is recognition of the need for school-wide behavior support systems. Historically, discipline in schools has been driven by attention to specific children with problem behaviors. This continues to be an essential component of school policy. However, a major advance has occurred through recent efforts to define proactive, school-wide systems of support. The goals of school-wide systems are to define, teach and support appropriate behaviors in a way that establishes a culture of competence within schools. When a competent culture is established the students are more likely to support appropriate behavior and discourage inappropriate behavior by their peers. In competent cultures the teachers find themselves working with the majority of the students, rather than continually trying to control the entire student body.

[Note: The following five paragraphs are found on the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports Website: www.pbis.org/english/index.html and discussed in greater detail. This is an outstanding site for ideas for implementing schoolwide discipline plans.]

 

Definition of Discipline

Unfortunately, "discipline" commonly is defined by procedures that focus on control with punishment consequences. This traditional discipline perspective is incomplete without attention to the development and support of pro-social behavior, and research suggests that punishment by itself is ineffective in achieving long term suppression of problem behavior and enhancement of pro-social behavior. Therefore, a useful definition of discipline is "the steps or actions, teachers, administrators, parents, and students follow to enhance student academic and social behavior success." As such, discipline is conceived as an instrument for success for all teachers, all students, and all settings. Instead of using a patchwork of individual behavioral management plans, schools are moving toward school-wide discipline systems that address the entire school, the classroom, areas outside the classroom (such as hallways, restrooms), and the individual student with challenging behavior, and that result in a continuum of positive behavior support for all students.

 

Critical Assumptions

Schools that implement school-wide systems of positive behavior support focus on taking a team-based system approach and teaching appropriate behavior to all students in the school. Schools that have been successful in building school-wide systems develop procedures based on the following critical assumptions following:

1. Behavioral Expectations are Defined. A small number of clearly defined behavioral expectations are defined. These often are simple, positively framed, rules, such as: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, and Be Safe; or Respect Yourself, Respect Others, and Respect Property.

2. Behavioral Expectations are Taught. The behavioral expectations are taught to all students in the building, and are taught in real contexts. The goals of the teaching are to take broad expectations (like Be Respectful), and provide specific behavioral examples (In class, being respectful means raising your hand when you want to speak or get help. During lunch or in the hall, being respectful means using a person's name when you talk to him or her). "Teaching" appropriate behavior involves much more than simply telling students what behaviors they should avoid. Behavioral expectations are taught using the same teaching formats applied to other curricula. The general rule is presented, the rationale for the rule is discussed, positive examples ("right way") are described and rehearsed, and negative examples ("wrong way") are described and modeled. Students are given an opportunity to practice the "right way" until they demonstrate fluent performance.

3. Appropriate Behaviors are Acknowledged. Once appropriate behaviors have been defined and taught, they need to be acknowledged on a regular basis. Some schools do this through formal systems (tickets, rewards), others do it through social events. Schools that are successful in creating a competent culture typically establish a pattern in which adult interactions with students are "positive" four times as often as they are "negative". To achieve this standard, some strategy is needed to build and maintain positive adult initiations to students (both in class and outside of class).

4. Behavioral Errors are Corrected Proactively. When students violate behavioral expectations, clear procedures are needed for providing information to them that their behavior was unacceptable, and preventing that unacceptable behavior from resulting in inadvertent rewards. Students, teachers, and administrators all should be able to predict what will occur when behavioral errors are identified.

5. Program Evaluations and Adaptations are Made by a Team. School-wide systems of behavior support involve on-going modification and adaptation. Successful schools establish a simple, efficient strategy for continually assessing if they are being successful, and a decision-making process that allows adaptation to behavioral challenges. At the school-wide level, general measures of the school climate include behavior incident reports, attendance rates, tardies, detention and suspension rates, etc. When problem behaviors become more intense and frequent, functional assessment-based methods may need to be considered.

6. Administrative Support and Involvement are Active. School-wide behavior support involves the active and on-going support and involvement of key administrators.

7. Individual Student Support Systems are Integrated with School-wide Discipline Systems. School-wide behavior support is a process for establishing a positive culture in a school. The procedures do not, however, replace the need to also build and maintain a comprehensive set of procedures for supporting the smaller number of students who require more intense and durable behavioral support.

Schools that have been successful in implementing school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports describe the following benefits:

1. Increases in attendance

2. Students self-reports of a more positive and calm environment

3. Teacher reports of a more positive and calm environment

4. Reduction in the proportion of students who engage in behavioral disruptions

5. Reduction in the number of behavioral disruptions

 

Prerequisites for setting up a school-wide system of discipline

An effective school-wide system of discipline or positive behavioral interventions and supports is only as good as the structures and processes that are in place to support their sustained use. When setting up a school-wide system of discipline or positive behavioral interventions and supports, the following steps should be followed:

Step 1: Establish a school-wide leadership or behavior support team to guide and direct the process. This team should be made up of an administrator, grade level representatives, support staff, and parents.

Step 2: Secure administrator agreement of active support and participation.

Step 3: Assess the status of school-wide discipline or positive behavioral interventions and supports and define short and long term goals for improving the school-wide system.

Step 4: Secure a commitment and agreement from at least 80% of the staff for active support and participation.

Step 5: Establish an implementation action plan that is based on the status assessment, and emphasizes the adoption of research validated practices.

Step 6: Establish a data system that permits the regular and efficient monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the implementation of the school-wide system of discipline.

 

Components of a comprehensive school-wide system of discipline or positive behavioral interventions and supports

All effective school-wide discipline systems have six major components in common (Colvin, Sugai, Kameenui, 1994): (a) an agreed upon and common approach to discipline, (b) a positively stated statement of purpose, (c) a small number of positively stated expectations for all students and staff, (d) procedures for teaching these expectations to all students, (e) a continuum of procedures for encouraging displays and maintenance of these expectations, (f) a continuum of procedures for discouraging displays of rule-violating behavior, and (g) procedures for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the discipline system on a regular and frequent basis.

 

How do we know if a school-wide system of discipline or positive behavioral interventions and supports is effective?

Many schools make the mistake implementing a school-wide system of discipline or positive behavioral interventions and supports without monitoring its effectiveness on a regular and frequent basis. Regular monitoring and evaluation are needed to (a) prevent ineffective practices from wasting time and resources, (b) improve the efficiency and effectiveness of current procedures, (c) eliminate elements of the system that are ineffective or inefficient, and (d) make modifications before problem behavior patterns become too durable and unmodifiable.

One of the easiest ways of monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of a school-wide system is to collect and analyze discipline referrals or behavior incident reports. By examining data patterns on a monthly basis, schools can make timely decisions about what is working, what needs to be changed, and what needs to be eliminated. The most useful discipline referral data displays indicate (a) number of referrals per day per month, (b) number of referrals by location (e.g., playground, classroom, hallway, bus), (c) number of referrals by type of rule violation (e.g., insubordination, fighting), (d) number of referrals by type of consequence (e.g., discussion, in-school detention, out-of-school suspension), and (e) number of students by number of referrals (i.e., repeat rule violators).

 

Developing a Functional Implementation Model

As the foundation for Safe Schools, this model has been developed for the effective design, implementation, and evaluation of school-wide behavioral support system. The model is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of each classroom and school. It provides a framework for the sequential building of a comprehensive classroom behavioral support system by individual teachers. It also provides a process for developing a school-wide behavioral support system using the collective thinking of the entire faculty. Each component of the plan reflects and communicates the school's philosophy and mission. All expectancies, beliefs, rules, interventions, and consequences are clearly articulated. This process is based on effective school's research.

Critical topics addressed in this training and plan development process include:

  1. clarifying teacher beliefs on discipline;
  2. establishing school-wide expectancies;
  3. developing and enforcing school wide and classroom rules;
  4. strategies for targeting specific behaviors;
  5. developing common in class interventions;
  6. developing common in school interventions; and
  7. developing a teacher request for assistance process

Goal: To identify and provide intensive support to schools regarding the development of comprehensive discipline strategies both proactive and reactive as well as alternatives to dealing with the suspension of students especially those with disabilities.

Outcomes:

Participant Criteria:

Commitment of Principal:

Faculty:

District:

Sequence of Events

1) Interview principal

2) Identify with principal locations for facility observations

3) Identify with principal classrooms to observe (+,-)

4) Begin observations/Interviews - note: interviews can be submitted in writing

5) Interview Faculty

 

Provide Training on Plan's Key Elements

1) Purpose, Expectancies, & Desired Outcomes

2) Philosophy & Mission

3) Beliefs in Discipline

4) Expectancies

5) Targeted Behaviors

6) Expected Behaviors

7) In-class interventions

8) In-school support

9) Out-of-school support

10) Communication

 

Impact

Introduction

Each school, prior to training was asked to identify targeted outcomes to determine the effectiveness of this approach based on their criteria. Every school identified monitoring the number of out of class referrals as their number one concern. When students are not in class, learning is not occurring irrespective of the reason. Consequently this report focused on an assessment on the reduction of the number of classroom referrals over the course of a year as the plan was being implemented. In two schools we were able to track the data for four years. This is a work in progress and we will be returning back to those original school and examining the academic performance and behavior performance in the year 2000-20001.

Process

Prior to the training Bureau staff met with school staff:

After the first meeting training staff trained an additional group of school staff to serve as facilitators.

 

Pre-training Site visits

 

Outcomes

Outcomes were collected from selected schools to determine impact. These outcomes were both quantitative and qualitative in nature. The following data is a synthesis of results and is extrapolated from a variety of sources (school referral data, school logs, structured interviews etc.).

Quantitative outcomes (1997 - 1 year later)

Elementary School(s) - N=8

Middle School (5)

High School - (1)

NOTE: results were not retained - probably due to lack of follow up training

Outcomes at two schools which provided "refresher" in-services at the beginning of each school year (types varied):

# of Referrals
School Year95-9696-9797-9898-99
MMS26181223908983(tighter criteria)

 

As the foundation for Safe Schools, this module has been developed for the effective design, implementation, and evaluation of school-wide discipline plans. The model is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of each school. It provides a framework for the sequential building of a comprehensive plan by the school-based staff. Each component of the plan reflects and communicates the school's philosophy and mission. All expectancies, beliefs, rules, interventions, and consequences are clearly articulated. Only those all staff members agree upon are adopted. This process is based on effective school’s research. Furthermore, it is founded on the belief that for a school discipline plan to be effective, the school must train the "plan-based" staff who are the experts in the needs of their students.

Critical topics addressed in this Module include: 1) developing a problem solving process; 2) determining teacher delivery style; 3) clarifying teacher beliefs on discipline; 4) establishing school-wide expectancies; 5) developing and enforcing school wide and classroom rules; 6) strategies for targeting specific behaviors; 7) developing common in-class interventions; 8) developing common in-school interventions; and 9) classroom organization. This module will also discuss optional strategies regarding the development and implementation of a behavioral and academic level system.

This module is organized as follows:

 

* It should be noted that each topic is a specific segment of this module. However, topics are described in such a manner that they can be presented as "stand alone" training. Hence the appearance of redundancy in some of the "comments" sections.

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Copyright ©, 2000. Lee R. Clark. All Rights Reserved.
Not for dissemination without permission of Project Director.
Last modified 2001-03-21.