Recently, formal education along with various education services such as after-school classes and edu-care at school has been expanding. Gradually, students have been staying at school for longer periods of time. Of course, schools have a strong influ...
Recently, formal education along with various education services such as after-school classes and edu-care at school has been expanding. Gradually, students have been staying at school for longer periods of time. Of course, schools have a strong influence on students' growth and development along with their home. Especially for elementary school, because it is targeted for young children, it is more important to develop fundamental habits compared with middle and high school. But the number of students per class is large and many teachers lack teacher's training and experience teaching students with challenging behaviors and then have difficulty in dealing with these students. Punishment-based intervention was used in the past, as a quick and effective method. Punishment-based intervention was untested and generalization and maintenance about the result of it was limited. Moreover, some researchers pointed out that responsive and punitive intervention could increase challenging behaviors. That has heightened concern about alternative intervention dealing with challenging behaviors like PBS emphasis on context happening challenging behaviors .
In the present study, the class-wide PBS has been applied to prevent challenging behaviors of students with and without disability in the elementary school inclusive classroom. All of the students in the class were provided universal supports, and students who needed more help were provided group and individual support.
A total of 33 students including 1 student with a disability in a 3rd grade elementary school have participated in this study. In addition, their homeroom teacher, two of their subject teachers, a special education teacher, a special education paraprofessional and their parents participated during the research. As for the PBS at the universal level, reading aloud classroom rules, presenting daily routines every morning, adjusting the classroom environment such as the seating arrangement, chanting for paying attention, using token economy, checking lateness at school, program for class unity and a secret helper were implemented. At the group level, changing the seating arrangement and providing tokens for reinforcement as well as feedback to the student's parents, and group counseling programs were implemented. At the individual level, providing feedback to the student's parents in detail everyday, intervention based-on functional assessment, activities or reinforcers that the student preferred and peer support were implemented. The challenging behaviors of students without disabilities have been compared with frequency before and after the intervention. Additionally, the frequency of the challenging behaviors was checked daily and reviewed monthly. The challenging behaviors of the student with a disability were measured using multiple probe baseline design settings, and the changes in class climate have been evaluated by the ex pre-ex post analysis(dependent t-test).
As a result of providing the class-wide PBS to students with and without disabilities, the significant changes in their behaviors were observed. First, a reduction in the challenging behaviors of students without disabilities was found. Second, a reduction in the challenging behaviors of the student with a disability was found. Third, the changes in the class climate in relationship to students, instructional environment, learning/evaluation, and attitude/culture aspects were found.
The above results warrant that the class-wide PBS would be an effective approach in decreasing the challenging behaviors of students with and without disabilities and positively improving class climate. Also, this study was not limited to focus on the student with a disability, but provided all kinds of support levels(universal, group, individual), that made all students have high-quality education. In addition, this study is meaningful to suggest an intervention program and materials for elementary school teachers to use easily in their class. But this study was limited to generalize the result of the investigation, because only 1 inclusive classroom located in Gyeonggi province was targeted. It is necessary to conduct long-term research to improve student's quality of life. Also, it is necessary to describe qualitative changes along with statistical figures about the changes of the students' challenging behaviors and class climate for follow-up study.