1. Ensuring Social and Academic
Inclusion of Students with Special
Learning Needs in Mainstream
Classrooms
Dr. Terry Cumming
School of Education
University of New South Wales

2. The Challenge

Today's students are displaying more
challenging behaviours than ever before;
teachers report that it is a serious threat to
effective teaching/learning

Educators often lack specialised skills to
address severe problem behaviour

This has left them reliant on reactive and crisis
management interventions to solve chronic
behaviour problems

Traditional discipline methods simply do not
change the behaviour among the most
challenging students

3. Contributing Factors
(Mayer, 1995)

Poverty and language barriers

Home
− Inconsistent discipline
− Punitive management
− Lack of monitoring

Lack of pro-social community engagement

Antisocial network of peers

4. Contributing Factors

School
− punitive disciplinary approach
− lack of clarity about rules, expectations, and
consequences
− lack of staff support
− failure to consider and accommodate individual
differences
− academic failure

5. A Solution

The answer is not to create new solutions,
but to enhance the school's organisational
capacity to:
− Accurately adopt and efficiently sustain their use
of research-validated practices
− Provide a seamless continuum of behavioral
and academic support for all students
− Increase focus, teacher training, community
training, and funding for early intervention

6. PBS is NOT...

specific practice or curriculum…it’s a
general approach to preventing problem
behavior

limited to any particular group of
students…it’s for all students

new…its based on long history of
behavioral practices & effective
instructional design & strategies

7. www.pbis.org

8. Responsiveness-to-Intervention & SWPBS

9. School-wide Systems

Develop a behaviour team
− Establish need, priorities, commitment
− Mission statement
− Working structures
− Regular meeting schedule
− System for communicating information to the
team as well as other school staff
− Opportunities for PBS professional development
− Develop ways to share information with others
and the community

10. School-wide Systems

Identify problems
− Analyze needs to create short and long term
goals
− Focus on academic and social behavior
practices
− Focus on systems needed to support practices
for students

Set of 5 or fewer rules stated positively
− List problem behaviours and replacement
behaviours

Develop procedures for teaching expected
behaviours

11. School-wide System

Develop procedures for encouraging
expected behaviours

Revisit procedures for discouraging problem
behaviours

Develop strategies to make data-based
decisions

Repeat above procedures in respect to non-
classroom settings

12. Academic Systems Behavioral Systems
1-5% 1-5%
5-10% 5-10%
80-90% 80-90%
Intensive, Individually Designed Interventions
•
Address individual needs of student
•
Assessment-based
•
High Intensity
Intensive, Individually Designed Interventions
•
Strategies to address needs of individual
students with intensive needs
•
Function-based assessments
•
Intense, durable strategies
Targeted, Group Interventions
•
Small, needs-based groups for
at risk students who do not respond
to universal strategies
•
High efficiency
•
Rapid response
Targeted, Group Interventions
•
Small, needs-based groups for at-
risk students who do not respond
to universal strategies
•
High efficiency/ Rapid response
•
Function-based logic
Core Curriculum and
Differentiated Instruction
•
All students
•
Preventive, proactive
•
School-wide or classroom
systems for ALL students
Core Curriculum and
Universal Interventions
•
All settings, all students
•
Preventive, proactive
•
School-wide or classroom
systems for ALL students and
staff
Tiered Instructional and Positive Behavioral Interventions and
Supports (PBIS) Framework

13. In the Classroom

Use of school-wide expectations and rules

Behaviour Management
− Teaching routines
− Positive student-adult interactions

Instructional Management
− Curriculum and instructional design (student-
centered learning)
− Differentiated instruction

Environmental Management
− Positive environment for ALL students

14. Behaviour Management

Rules
− Create classroom specific from school-wide
− Teach social skills directly at specific times
− Monitor and reinforce all day
− Reteach for new students as they enter

Establish predictable routines
− Teach and practice routines

Formal classroom management system
− Reinforcement systems
− Consistency is key

15. Behaviour Management

Effective Strategies
− Engage in active decision making
− Circulate throughout room, scan constantly
− Attend only to positive behaviour when possible
− Give students task choice
− Humor, not sarcasm
− Positive reinforcement for students who comply
with rules and routines
− Modeling
− Be a teacher, not a friend
− Deal with inappropriate behaviour immediately
and consistently

16. Instructional Strategies-
Attention

Gain and maintain attention

Use a simple and portable cue to prompt
students to listen

Avoid starting instruction until all students are
listening

Provide specific verbal praise to peers to
redirect attention

Reinforce students who are attending
immediately

Use proximity control

17. Instructional Strategies-
Questions

High rates of opportunities for students to
respond

Information before questions

Reinforcement for correct responses

18. Instructional Strategies-
Feedback

Precise: specific about what was done
correctly/incorrectly

When giving corrective feedback, provide
instruction

High rates of positives to negatives

19. Instructional Strategies: Errors

Error correction (skill deficit?)

Signal an error has occurred (refer to rules,
"We respect others in this room and that
means not using put downs")

Ask for an alternative appropriate response
("How can you show respect and still get
your point across?")

Provide an opportunity to practice the skill
and provide verbal feedback ("That's much
better, thank you for showing respect
towards others")

20. Environmental Strategies

What do I want my classroom to look like?

How do I want children to treat me as a
person?

How do I want children to treat one another?

What kind of information or values do I want
to communicate to students about being an
adult, an educator, a woman or a man in
today's society?

How do I want children to remember me
when the last day of school ends and I am
no longer part of their daily lives?

21. For Individual Students

Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA)

Should focus on child’s behaviour in specific situations than on
underlying traits or dispositions

Focus on individual rather than a norm group

Interested in discovering situational influences on behaviour
rather than history

Behaviours may change as the result of the context in which
they occur

The purpose of assessment is to obtain information that will
assist in intervention

Assessment is conducted in a variety of ways

Behaviour change strategies are reliant on data collection

22. Functional Behaviour
Assessment
When a student’s behaviour consistently interferes
with his or her own learning, consistently interferes
with the learning of others, or consistently interferes
with your ability to conduct class, a behaviour
intervention plan for that student should be
developed.
In order to do this, conduct an assessment to make
sure the behaviour is not due to curriculum
mismatch. If the curriculum is not mismatched, you
will want to do a functional assessment of the
student’s behaviour.

23. Steps in Conducting a FBA
Identify the Target behaviour and the
replacement behaviour
Problem Analysis
 Examine data, ABC analysis
 Identify the function of the behaviour
Design an appropriate Behaviour Intervention
Plan based on the results of the FBA
Progress monitoring

24. Setting Events

What academic or nonacademic activities are most
associated with the student’s problem behaviour?

What changes in routines set the stage for the
problem behaviours?

What times of the day are problem behaviours
occurring most frequently?

Does the problem behaviour occur more in
particular classrooms, with particular teachers, or
during particular assignments?

Where, when, and with whom are the behaviours
most and least prevalent?

Are some of the setting events occurring at home
or on the way to school?

25. ABC Analysis

Using anecdotal observations to determine
the antecedent, behaviour, and consequence

Used to determine the function of a particular
behaviour

Functions
− Attention
− Power/control
− Escape/avoidance
− Sensory stimulation
− Frustration: deficits in language, communication,
academics, social skills

26. Replacement Behaviour

What will be taught to replace the
inappropriate behavior that meets the same
identified function?

Replacing the behavior with an appropriate
skill is an important step in extinguishing the
problem behavior

27. Behaviour Plan Development

Once it has been decided what some
possible reasons for misbehavior are, it is
now time to put a working behavior plan in
place.

Keep in mind that flexibility is important and
some components of the initial plan may
need to change over time.

28. Behaviour Plan-Elements

Behaviour of concern, stated specifically

Replacement behaviour (should serve the
same function as behaviour you are trying to
eliminate/decrease)

Specific social skills to be taught

Description of behavioural and instructional
strategies to be used

29. Behaviour Plan-Elements

Description of environmental changes &
preventative measures to be taken (i.e. strategic
seating, limited “escape route”, furniture
arrangement for maximizing safety of all
students)

Progress monitoring, including but not limited to:
− Frequency counts
− Duration counts
− Documentation of student response
− ABC chart
− Anecdotal notes

30. Rules of Thumb

Target no more than 3 behaviors to change
according to severity when first developing
the plan.

Give the interventions a minimum of 2-3
weeks before changing and trying something
else.

Expect that some behaviors may get more
intense before they improve.

Be sure that any and all appropriate staff
members have access to and understand the
BIP.

31. Rules of Thumb

Keep consistent data to track and analyze
progress (or lack thereof).

Be flexible.

Change reinforcers periodically so as not to
satiate student with the same thing.

Use a variety of reinforcers to include verbal,
tangible, activity-based and parent-involved
(as much as possible).