Everyday Teaching Autism Resources

It’s recently that I start to notice more and more special education teachers and their aids are accumulating knowledge and strategies by understanding the principles of applied behavioral analysis and gaining a better understanding of the unusual behavioral patterns that arise due to language and social skills deficiencies and coping with them.

Teachers do not have be a behavioral analyst, nor do they need to study the theory of ABA again to better deal with everyday challenging behaviors in the classroom. Special education teachers only need to understand three things that are aligned with behavioral analysis:

1. How the environment and specific behavior interact to create an action
2. Whether there is a way to change the learning environment
3. What specific skills or behaviors can be taught as alternative actions and behaviors

Measure that Challenging Behavior

To understand how the environment and specific challenging behaviors interact to create an action, data collection is essential. Depending on memory to subjectively state target behaviors tends to reduce accuracy. Data collection should not be a difficult task. It is important to systematize the process to make it easy and accessible to everyone from a long-term perspective. That’s how we hear many behavior folks preach on the importance of data collection.

ABC Data Sheet Free Downlad

Next, let’s think about whether there is a way to change the environment where a specific behavior frequently occurs. This process is a time for teachers or support staff to demonstrate their creativity and to understand students’ interests and motivations.

If we read the pattern in the above figure, we can see that this student’s aggressive behavior is frequently observed during “small-group” activity time. Small-group activities are times when 2-3 students sit close together to listen to the teacher’s lesson or do an activity. Interestingly, this aggressive behavior is not observed during one-on-one teaching time with the teacher or support staff. Therefore, we can see a distinct pattern of behavior during small-group activities and one-on-one teaching. Just like that! Simple data collecting habit will help us see the overall behavior patterns.

Teachers love teaching things that are meaningful and make impact on child’s life. Teaching alternative behaviors or skills is the most effective intervention when dealing with challenging behavior in the long run. Which technique or alternative behavior to teach depends on the function of the target behavior and the student’s current skill levels. We are already half way there!