Association for Behavior Analysis International

Children with emotional/behavioral disorders, autism, or related disabilities who engage in dangerous behavior at school are at risk for a number of undesirable outcomes, such as limited access to educational services, limited time with peers, limited access to community activities, or referral to more restrictive settings. In addition, children who engage in dangerous behavior at school may also experience crisis procedures such as physical restraint, use of protective equipment, referral to a school resource (i.e., police) officer, or exclusionary time-out, all of which increase the risk of injury and trauma. Educators may struggle to address these behaviors while ensuring students’ Individualized Education Plans (IEP) are implemented. This symposium presents data from four studies that addressed dangerous behavior in a variety of classroom settings while simultaneously teaching appropriate skills and reducing use of crisis procedures. This includes the development and implementation of universal protocols for staff, practical functional assessment and skill-based treatment (SBT) of problem behavior (Hanley et al., 2014), and an enhanced choice model of SBT (Rajaraman et al., 2021). Interventions are described as compassionate and trauma-informed in that they focus on ensuring safety, building rapport, providing children with choices about their treatment, and addressing dangerous behavior without extinction.

Audience members should have a thorough understanding of operant learning processes and procedures and an interest in school-based practice.

Students with autism who attend public school are expected to cooperate with a wide range of difficult instructions throughout the day. Students who engage in severe problem behavior might require physical management and even physical restraint if those instructions lead to episodes of dangerous behavior. Rajaraman et al. (2021) suggested that physical restraint should be considered potentially traumatizing for students in ABA programs and that those students might regularly experience such trauma. Following the break from school due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented a universal protocol for all returning students with the goal of minimizing the need for any physical contact between staff and students. This presentation will provide a brief overview of how to implement that protocol as well as practical functional assessment and skills-based treatment (Hanley et al., 2014) in a public school setting. We evaluated the extent to which trauma-informed ABA practices could minimize the need for physical management in a public school ABA program. Data suggest that the adoption of a universal protocol for new students, the practical functional assessment process, and skill-based treatments lead to fewer physical restraints.

Emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) are correlated with low socio-economic status and exposure to trauma. These vulnerabilities highlight the importance of systematically and formatively assessing client assent and preference while delivering treatment for dangerous problem behavior that impedes educational progress. The enhanced choice model of skill-based treatment (ECM-SBT; Rajaraman et al., 2021) involves concurrently offering skill-based treatment, access to enriched breaks, and regularly programmed instruction, allowing participants to move fluidly among contexts. In this presentation, we will describe procedures and outcomes of a retrospective consecutive controlled case series including nine elementary students with EBD, conducted in a public special day school. Application of ECM-SBT was associated with low levels of dangerous behavior during assessment and treatment and reduction of non-dangerous forms of challenging behavior. All participants mastered targeted alternative responses including functional communicative and delay acknowledgement responses, and cooperation with increasingly effortful chains of instructional demands, though trials to mastery varied by participant. Throughout treatment, participants allocated most responding to skill-based treatment versus alternative contexts. Future directions and implications to be discussed include potential interactions between language skills and response within phases of treatment, and allocation among ECM contexts as a means of informing programming and ensuring client assent.