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Core Foundations of Behavior

SECEP’s Core Foundations of Behavior

Proactive Behavioral Interventions and Supports

Southeastern Cooperative Educational Programs (SECEP) provides comprehensive programming to a diverse population of students with challenging needs. The SECEP programs are based on the premise that the education of children must include dignity and respect for the individual child.  It is our belief that all children have rights and choices that must be recognized and honored in the educational setting.  

A fundamental part of SECEP’s behavioral philosophy is built on positive-based, proactive interventions and supports that contribute to a climate of safety. SECEP, as an educational agency, utilizes the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to inform the development of positive behavioral supports and interventions for the students served in SECEP centers and classrooms. SECEP has organized its Core Foundations of Behavior procedures and staff training around three overarching behavioral categories of Antecedent/ Behavior/ Consequence (ABC). By considering the unique needs of the individual student when developing interventions and supports, SECEP provides a behavioral program designed to provide efficient and substantive positive behavioral change with the student.

The ABC framework allows SECEP to train staff to have functional understanding of the following: 

Antecedents:

  • Program and Classroom Structure
    • Routines and Rituals
    • Room Arrangement and Organization
    • Daily Transitions
    • Engagement and Enriching the Environment
  • Antecedent-Based Strategies
    • Clear classroom rules and expectations
    • Predictability in the environment
    • Classroom arrangement
    • Instructional strategies
    • Opportunities for choice
    • Incorporate student interest and preferred activities
    • Provide and enriched environment
  • Prompting Hierarchy
    • Full Physical
    • Partial Physical
    • Model
    • Gestural
    • Positional
    • Visual
    • Verbal
  • Functions of Behavior
    • Sensory Stimulation
    • Escape
    • Attention
    • Tangibles

Behavior:

  • Defining Behavior in Objective and Measurable Terms
  • Understanding/Analyzing Data
    • Goal
    • Criteria
    • Mastery
    • Date and Staff
  • Measurement Procedures (appropriate Data Collection)
    • Frequency/Rate
    • Duration
    • Latency
    • Opportunities
    • Intervals
    • Permanent Product
    • ABC Data Collection

Consequence:

  • Reinforcement
    • occurs when a consequence follows a behavior that maintains or increases the behavior in the future
  • Differential Reinforcement
    • the process of delivering reinforcers for desired behaviors and withholding reinforcers for problematic behaviors

The utilization of proactive behavioral interventions and supports is primary in reducing and de-escalating challenging behaviors. SECEP staff are trained to utilize a range of proactive behavioral interventions and supports to maintain positive student engagement or to deescalate a student’s challenging behavior.

A common element found in all SECEP programs is the occurrence of challenging student behaviors.  Some of these challenging behaviors include, but are not limited to, hitting, kicking, biting, and/or scratching self or others.  All staff who work for SECEP understand that the potential for these kinds of challenging behaviors is an ever-present risk, and staff must be physically capable of responding to these situations to ensure the safety of students as well as their own safety. In most instances, more than one staff will be present to assist in helping de-escalate a student’s challenging behavior by providing additional proactive interventions.

When a student presents a challenging behavior, it is important that the staff begin assessing the underlying “function” of that behavior. Understanding the function of a student’s behavior allows the staff to respond utilizing proactive interventions and supports developed for the student and geared toward maintaining the student’s positive engagement and their safety. To fully analyze the function of a challenging behavior that a student repeatedly uses, staff may initiate a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) process.  The results of the FBA can then be used to develop an individual behavioral intervention plan (BIP) for the student to assist the student in modifying their behavior.