In today’s educational landscape, educators and administrators face the challenging task of managing classrooms where students may exhibit aggressive or self-injurious behaviors. Safety-Care by QBS, LLC understands the complexities involved in maintaining a positive learning environment while ensuring student and staff safety.
This blog series provides educators with a comprehensive overview of best practices for physical management in classrooms, with a focus on prevention strategies and considerations for the use of physical management when necessary.
Key topics we’ll explore include:
In recent decades, research has increasingly focused on organizational interventions to reduce restraint and seclusion. Some efforts have involved changes in policies, mandatory behavioral consultations, or organization-wide change initiatives. While many of these approaches emphasize teaching skills to the individuals receiving services, others focus on changing staff behavior to create safer environments.
One promising area of research involves mindfulness training for staff. Mindfulness, the practice of maintaining present-moment awareness while calmly acknowledging and accepting thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, has shown significant potential in clinical and human services settings. For staff, mindfulness helps regulate emotions, reduce stress, and respond to challenging situations with clarity and empathy. By fostering these skills, mindfulness promotes more collaborative relationships with individuals served and reduces the likelihood of reactive or counterproductive behaviors.
- Understanding the root cause(s), or function, of aggressive and self-injurious behaviors
- How to implement effective prevention strategies
- Considerations for the use of physical management
- Best practices for safe and ethical physical management use
- Post-incident procedures for students and staff
- The importance of ongoing training and education
By prioritizing prevention and adhering to evidence-based practices, we can work towards minimizing the need for physical intervention in the classroom and fostering a positive, inclusive educational experience for all students.
Understanding Aggressive and Self-Injurious Behaviors
Before discussing prevention strategies and safe use of physical management, it’s crucial to understand the nature of aggressive and self-injurious behaviors in the classroom setting. This understanding forms the foundation for effective and appropriate intervention and support.
Aggressive and self-injurious behaviors rarely occur without reason. They often serve as a form of communication, especially for students who may have difficulty expressing their needs or emotions vocally. Common triggers (or antecedents) and underlying causes include:
Sensory overload: For some students, particularly those with autism or sensory processing disorders, the classroom environment can be overwhelming. Bright lights, loud noises, or unorganized and crowded environments can be triggers for these individuals.
Attention-seeking: In some cases, students may have learned that certain behaviors reliably gain attention from their peers or adults in the environment.
Escape or avoidance: Some students may engage in challenging behaviors to avoid tasks or situations they find difficult or unpleasant.
Access to something: Students may be denied access to a preferred item or want to get something that is unavailable, leading to challenging behavior.
Structure and routine: Novel situations, changes in routine, or lack of structure in the classroom and throughout the day can lead to some challenging behaviors.
Medical issues: Underlying health problems, pain, or discomfort can manifest as behavioral issues, especially in students with limited communication abilities.
Trauma responses: Students with histories of trauma may exhibit challenging behaviors as a response to perceived threats or triggers, particularly situations that are similar to past abuse or trauma events.
The Importance of Functional Behavior Assessments
To effectively address and prevent challenging behaviors, it’s essential to understand their function, or why the behavior occurs. This is where Functional Behavior Assessments (FBAs) are important.
An FBA is a systematic process of identifying the function (or why) of a specific behavior. It involves:
Data Collection: Observing and recording instances of the behavior, including what happens before (antecedents) and after (consequences).
Interviews & questionnaires: Interviewing significant others in the child’s life (i.e. parents, caregivers) and utilizing screening tools such as the Functional Analysis Screening Tool (FAST) or Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS), can help paint a more detailed picture of behavior patterns.
Analyze data: Based on your observations and data, identify patterns in when and where the behavior occurs, and what typically precedes or follows it.
Develop a hypothesis: Make a decision about why the behavior is occurring based on your analysis.
Determine a plan: Develop interventions based on your hypothesis and monitor changes in behavior.
Continue with data collection and analysis: If behaviors decrease over time, it is likely your plan is effective. If not, continue to analyze your data and revisit your hypothesis. Sometimes a functional analysis (FA) may be necessary to test the function of the behavior but should only be conducted by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA).
By conducting an FBA, educators and behavior analysts can identify the specific variables triggering or maintaining the challenging behavior and develop student-specific and effective intervention strategies to prevent and minimize the occurrence of the target behavior.
Understanding the function of a behavior is key to developing proactive strategies that can prevent the need for physical intervention. It allows educators to address the underlying needs of the student in a more positive and supportive manner, potentially eliminating challenging behavior altogether.
Prevention & Minimization Strategies for Classroom Behavior
Preventing aggressive and self-injurious behaviors is always preferable to managing them. By implementing effective proactive strategies, educators can create a supportive environment that reduces the likelihood of challenging behaviors.
Below are some key prevention strategies (many of which are discussed in Safety-Care’s curriculum) that can be used in classroom settings:
Creating a Positive Classroom Environment
A positive, structured classroom environment can significantly reduce many behavioral issues. Considerations to make your physical and social environment more supportive include:
Meet basic needs first: Students who come to school tired, hungry, and thirsty are likely not ready to learn. Make sure students have access to healthy snacks, water, and medical care as needed.
Set clear expectations: Establish and communicate clear, consistent rules and routines. It can often help to include visual supports like pictures or written schedules or first-then boards.
Sensory considerations: Modify the environment to accommodate sensory needs by providing quiet areas, fidget tools, adjusting lighting and reducing noise.
Provide access to choices: Students who have opportunities to make their own choices throughout the day may become more independent. Providing choices also reduces the likelihood of staff engaging in power struggles with students, which can lead to challenging behaviors.
Positive, friendly staff: Staff should always model positive, friendly behaviors and respect, regardless of what students are doing.
Positive reinforcement: Regularly acknowledge and reward behaviors that contribute to learning. By focusing on what students are doing right, you reduce the likelihood of reinforcing behaviors you don’t want in the classroom, and it may prompt other students to engage in those behaviors to receive the same reward.
Minimizing Crisis Behaviors Through De-escalation Strategies
While we cannot prevent every challenging behavior, recognizing patterns in triggers (antecedents) allows us to intervene early to avoid situations escalating to crisis, where physical management may become necessary.
Staff self-management: Managing your own behavior when challenging student behavior occurs is crucial to minimizing the incident. Use a calm, neutral tone and clear, concise language when talking to the student. Avoid power struggles by considering your own body language and posturing, not nagging the student, offering choices when appropriate, and avoiding threatening consequences for their actions.
Prompt appropriate communication: It may be helpful to prompt the person to tell you what they need or what. As discussed earlier, many behaviors occur because a student is trying to communicate something. By prompting appropriate communication, you may be able to meet their need or want if they are able to express it appropriately.
Prompt alternative behaviors: You may find it more helpful to prompt behaviors the student can engage in that are classroom appropriate, like sitting down, having a quiet voice, or keeping their hands to themselves. This allows staff to avoid telling the student to stop doing something (in which the student may move on to another undesired behavior) or to calm down, which is generally not effective.
Give the person time: Staff can teach self-regulation and self-monitoring skills to enable students to recognize their own emotions and apply strategies to de-escalate on their own. Sometimes talking to the student makes it worse, and it some cases we may just need to monitor the situation and give the person time to calm down on their own.
By focusing on these proactive and early intervention strategies, educators can create a supportive, understanding environment that reduces the likelihood of aggressive or self-injurious behaviors. This approach not only improves safety but also enhances the overall learning experience for all students.
Conclusion
Understanding why aggressive and self-injurious behaviors occur in the classroom helps educators identify effective strategies for preventing those behaviors or intervening early when we cannot. Establishing a supportive environment with staff who are friendly and helpful and many opportunities to access reinforcement (rewards) goes a long way in decreasing challenging behaviors and keeping everyone safe. By identifying triggers that reliably occur before these behaviors, we can intervene early and avoid crisis situations where we may need to use physical procedures to safely manage behaviors. However, there are still instances where prevention and minimization will not be effective and physical management may become necessary for everyone’s safety.
In our next blog we will discuss considerations and best practices for when physical management becomes necessary.
References
Greer, B.D., Neidert, P.L., Doier, C.L., Payne, S.W., Zonneveld, K.L.M., & Harper, A.M. (2013). Functional analysis and treatment of problem behavior in early education classrooms. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 46(1), 289-295.
How to ABA. How to do a functional behavior assessment in ABA: A comprehensive guide. Retrieved from: https://howtoaba.com/how-to-do-a-functional-behaviour-assessment/