Positive Behavior Support (PBS) and functional behavioral assessment (FBA) are two significant concepts of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These two concepts are not new, but they are important for improving the quality of efforts to educate children and youth with disabilities. The purposes of this article are to describe (a) the context in which PBS and FBA are needed and (b) definitions and features of PBS and FBA. An important message is that positive behavioral interventions and supports involve the whole school, and successful implementation emphasizes the identification, adoption, and sustained use of effective policies, systems, data-based decision making, and practices. Systems-level challenges are also discussed.

The potential for using functional communication training (FCT) as a means of preventing minor problem behaviors from escalating to more serious ones was investigaged. Eight children who exhibited minor problem behaviors at home or at school particiapted in small learning groups focused on teaching language skills. Four of these children participated in groups in which the teacher employed FCT (i.e., functional communication skills to gain attention were taught and reinforced). The other four children participated in a control group receiving expressive language training (ELT; i.e., children were taught to answer wh questions). Children in the ELT group were subsequently switched to FCT in an extended intervention phase. The children who participated in the FCT group generally did not exhibit increases in either the intensity or frequency of problem behaviors over time. The level of their problem behavior remained low. However, children in the ELT group exhibited increases in both intensity and frequency of problem behaviors. Their problem behavior decreased after they were switched to FCT. In sum, FCT appeared to prevent minor problem behaviors from escalating to more serious ones. Critical variables in producing these results are discussed, as is the role of coercion processes. Heuristic suggestions are made for extending the investigation of FCT as a preventive strategy.

This study was the first of a two-phase investigation of factors affecting the outcomes of behavioral support for individuals with severe disabilities in communtiy settings. It involved an initial literature review and semistructured interviews to obtain the perspectives of informed participants from three constituent groups: family members, direct service providers, and trainers/consultants. The descriptive data from these interviews were synthesized via content analysis procedures, resulting in the identification of 12 factor categories. The categories ranged from individual, setting, and plan-specific variables to broader considerations such as support provider interactions and systemic issues (e.g., agency/program-wide procedures, prevailing philosophies). The results of this study offer implications for practice and new directions for investigation.

A growing trend in early intervention for children with disabilities is to provide education and related services in inclusive environments. One factor affecting the degree to which children with disabilities benefit from intervention in inclusive settings is the support staff's proficiency in teaching. We evaluated a rapid training program for improving the teaching skills of six support staff in a community-based preschool. Following baseline, staff were taught basic teaching skills (e.g., prompting reinforcing, and correcting errors) through verbal and written instructions, role playing, and on-the-job monitoring and feedback. Results indicated all staff reached the 80% correct teaching skills criterion during participation in the training program. Results also indicated that children with disabilities made progress toward acquiring adaptive skills when staff applied the teaching skills within the context of naturally occuring activities in the preschool. Acceptability evaluations completed by support staff suggested the training program was well received among the staff and addressed child-teaching skills that could be realistically applied within the ongoing preschool routine. Discussion focuses on the need for continued research on staff-training methodologies for developing other types of teaching skills useful in inclusive settings and on how application of such skills can play an important role in positive behavior support.

This article describes an approach to schoolwide positive behavior support (PBS). A specific problem (hallway noise) was addressed using PBS procedures. Students were taught appropriate behavior, the environment was altered to clarify when appropriate behavior was expected, and rewards were established to support appropriate behaviors. Evaluation data document that when these procedures were implemented, there was a reduction in hallway noise levels. Implications for schoolwide discipline systems are provided.

The social skills training literature for children diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) has recently emphasized the parent's role in generalizing treatment gains, and several studies have promoted the utilization of parents as the primary treatment providers for their children. In this study, two parents were instructed in implementing a token reinforcement and shaping program designed to improve the social behavior of their 8-year-old boy diagnosed with PDD. Interestingly, although the child's parents directly targeted only eye gaze for change, question response latency also improved during treatment. This is one of just a few studies to demonstrate positive repsonse generalization by targeting one "pivotal" behavior. Although as a clinical replication the study lacks many of the experimental controls characteristic of more formal research designs,the study demonstrates that procedures developed in laboratory settings can be meaningfully replicated in "real world" settings.