• Do you work with students or other individuals who have challenging behaviors?
• Would you like to learn and use a process for changing these behaviors?
• Are you interested in learning about such a process?

Positive Behavioral Supports (PBS) is an approach to working with students who have challenging behaviors. Positive behavioral supports is an individualized, on going process with three key components: preventing, teaching, and reacting. Prevention means that we change circumstances that tend to lead to challenging behaviors. Teaching means that we replace challenging behaviors with new skills. Reacting means that we plan consistent, proactive responses to challenging behaviors.

The PBS Process

The Positive Behavioral Supports process can be used to develop an individualized behavioral intervention plan for children, adolescents, or adults who display problem behaviors. A team approach to problem solving is utilized to successfully address behaviors ranging from noncompliance to aggression to self-injury. The team approach lends support to the primary teacher, promotes creative problem solving through brainstorming, allows for an even distribution of the work load in the development of the plan, and assures consistency of responses to the challenging behavior when it occurs. Our experience indicates that it is best to have a school counselor or psychologist facilitate the process because of time constraints facing classroom teachers.

The PBS Model

The Positive Behavioral Supports model integrates behavioral, analytic, and humanistic theories and focuses on identifying the function of challenging behaviors. Research suggests that effective PBS strategies identify the communicative intents or motivation for behavior, teach alternative ways to communicate, identify environmental events or medical circumstances that elicit troublesome behavior, modify events and circumstances to better meet individual needs, provide access to a greater number of preferred choices throughout an individual's day, and encourage the development of adaptive behaviors through differential reinforcements strategies.