A Functional Approach

Nov 10^th, 2010

I’ve gone back to being a kid again; I’m learning my ABC’s! My Educational Psychology ABC’s! We were discussing a functional approach to classroom behaviour. This means that teachers need to examine a student’s inappropriate  behaviour, as well as its antecedents (what comes before), and its consequences (what happens after) to determine a function. The ABC’s, then, are:

Antecedents

Behaviour

Consequences

In a classroom setting, I think this is a good to a point. If a teacher were to go too far with this, the student may get the impression after a while that everyone in his/her life is going to understand how they’re feeling and take that into perspective. For small children that maybe aren’t conditioned in controlling their emotions, this could be a very positive thing. However, if a student gets used too used to this, they may expect that this will happen in a middle school, high school, or college setting. This reasoning is probably why we were provided with a way to provide positive behaviour support. We were told that after identifying the source of the behaviour, we need to provide alternate ways for the students to act, or alternate ways to release the frustration. Hopefully as a teacher I can help my students learn to take out their frustration out in different, more positive ways. I admit it may be hard to take into perspective what’s been happening in a child’s life if they’re coming into my high school classroom and throwing things around; so this functional approach may be easier to implement with an elementary classroom.