Prosocial Skills and Challenging Behaviors

Catalog description

Initial focus will be on developing prosocial behavior, thereby facilitating involvement in the least restrictive environment, and how intervention may be adjusted based on needs of students with varying disabilities. Both school-wide and classroom-wide strategies will be discussed. Therefore, programs in common use in the schools, such as PBIS, and how they relate to Response to Intervention will be studied. Subsequent focus will be on behavioral interventions for more challenging behaviors and how issues may change from the elementary to high school years. Environmental modifications, techniques of non-aversive behavioral control and methods to maintain attention, and effective reinforcement techniques will be taught. Techniques such as problem solving, crisis prevention, and conflict resolution, also potentially used to develop prosocial behavior, will be extending in this class to deal with more significant behavior problems, including issues such as self-stimulation and self-abuse. Issues related to the law and the range of service provision outside the school, such as residential placements, will be discussed in relation to challenging behaviors and how the schools collaborate with external professional groups. Candidates will gain applied knowledge and practice creating functional behavior assessments plans.