The Behavior Equation

The Behavior Equation

Gail Joseph, PhD: And I love what your other guest, Jordan, was saying about just kind of remembering and reflecting on kind of the bottom pieces of the pyramid. And I would just really re-emphasize that that's where we always want to start. We just want to make sure that we've got relationships going, that we have all of these classroom prevention strategies that we've talked a lot about on throughout our series, and that we're really intentionally teaching social and emotional skills. And if all that's in place and a child is still engaging in some persistent patterns of challenging behavior that aren't just a challenging because we find them challenging but are seriously interrupting that child's ability to form relationships with adults and with peers and really interrupting their ability to learn, then we really want to start thinking about some more intensive, individualized behavior supports for that child.

Dawn: Okay, so where do you begin with that?

Gail: One of the things that we want to start with is to really understand what the function of the challenging behavior is. And I think that Jordan had talked about that, that when we talk about challenging behavior, we think about a form and we think about a function. And the form is really just what the behavior is, right? The form could be hitting or spitting or kicking, using complete sentences. The form is really just maybe words we don't appreciate. It's just like what it looks like. That's the form. And the more important thing is really the function or the message, the purpose, what it's serving for the child, right, what it's getting for the child when they engage in that. And so, no matter what, if we come up with a behavior support plan that only addresses the form and doesn't address the function, you're just going to see continued challenging behavior.

Dawn: Right. OK, so we need to address the function.

Gail: We need to address the function. And the other thing that I want to say is that if you have a child that we're at the top of the pyramid, there's a lot of support and resources to help you as well. So, remembering that we want to engage our coach with extra support or thinking about a referral process. All of that becomes, you know, there's a team that's in place to help support you.

Kristin: Because it can feel alone, right? You're the only teacher and you feel like, is anyone else feeling this way? Does anyone else have these issues in their classroom? Who's my people to help?

Gail: That's right. That's right. But let's just talk through what it might look like to do a behavior support plan, because there are some behavior support plans that you can do even by yourself, and we do them all the time. And probably the things that we're going to talk about are things that teachers do every day, but we're just going to kind of put it into a form that will help us understand all the different components. So like I was saying, the first thing to do is figure out the function. And the way that we figure out the function of the challenging behavior is we solve what we would call the behavior equation.

[cross-talk]

So, the behavior equation has three components to it. It has the antecedent, or sometimes we think about it as just what happens before, right? What happens right before to kind of set up that challenge behavior? What is the form of the behavior? So what's the behavior? What does it look like? And then, we have what happens right after, right? What's the consequence? So one easy way to remember that is ABC. The antecedent, that's what happens before, the behavior, that's the B, and then the consequence, right? So, what happens right after? And that's not what we want to have happen necessarily, but it's just that, like, how does it currently work in the classroom setting?

So, we're going to look at the ABCs. And then, the ABCs are going to help us come up with our very best guess, or our hypothesis, about what the function of that behavior is. What is the purpose that that behavior is serving for that child? So, one of the things that we would do to kind of come up with this behavior equation is actually do some observation. And one of the things we have here are some observation cards, and they have ABC. So the antecedent, the behavior, and the consequence. And what I love about these cards that you all have come up with is that they're laminated so you can use them over and over again, right, so you don't have to keep writing things down.

And so, I thought we should give this a try. So we're going to watch a couple videos of a little boy in a classroom. He's wearing a red shirt. And I want you to just write down, you know, what happens right before, what the behavior is, and then what you see happening right after. And then, maybe we'll all give our best guess of what we think the function is. Okay, so are you ready?

Kristin: Yes, we're ready. Gail: Pens are ready?

Kristin: Pens are ready.

Gail: Okay, so let's give this a look. Kristin: All right.