R. Janney and M.E. Snell: Behavioral Support: Teachers’ Guides to Inclusive Practices (Second Edition)

Excerpt

Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) is a powerful method for developing effective and long-lasting interventions towards the elimination of problem behaviors and the increase of desirable behaviors. It includes a variety of methods designed to identify the environmental variables that maintain a problem so that they can be removed or structured alternatively and hence, the occurrence of appropriate behaviors will become more likely (e.g., Umbreit et al. 2007). FBA has been widely used in clinical and inclusive settings focused on individuals with developmental disabilities with great success. Since its inclusion in the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, however, it has increasingly been applied to mainstream school settings as a core component of the schoolwide positive behavior supports (PBS) approach (Weber et al. 2005). Following this trend, the publication of the second edition of “Behavioral support: Teachers’ guides to inclusive practices” is exceptionally timely which provides a comprehensive illustration of the processes and tools that school staff can use to develop interventions based on FBA to effectively address behavior problems in schools. …