Disruptive and Challenging Behavior Among Schoolchildren

The significance of providing behavioral management strategies and interventions among young children who have disruptive and challenging behaviors has been a societal phenomenon and a national concern in the recent years (Powell, Fixsen, & Dunlap, 2007). Many young children in school display challenging and disruptive behaviors in school. Some of the widespread challenging behaviors are lack of concentration and organization skills, attention problems, off task behaviors, disruption in classroom, aggressiveness, impulsive behavior and lack of social skills (McConnell, 2001). If these inappropriate behaviors were not properly assessed and treated, young children’s negative behavior will persist and impact the child’s physical, emotional and spiritual development as well as their social relationships making them isolated (Arnold et al., 1999).

Overtime, because of this growing national concern, On June 4, 1997, amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) became law (P.L. 105-17). These amendments introduced several new concepts which are specifically important to children’s education particularly those whose behaviors violate school codes of conduct or are outside the concept of socially acceptable behavioral norms: (a) positive behavioral support (PBS) and (b) functional behavioral assessment (FBA) ( “Public law”, 1999) . Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) seeks to specifically identify why and how the children is exhibiting problem behaviors and then develop a technique to encourage acceptable alternatives of that behavior. When FBA’s are conducted, educators will use observations, face to face interviews and record review to understand the relationship between the environment and the target...

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.... Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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