Strategy 12: Functional behavioural assessment: ‘Change problem behaviours by changing their antecedents and consequences’

Functional behavioural assessment (FBA) is a subset of the behavioural approaches outlined in the previous chapter. In essence, FBA refers to the procedures used to determine the function or purpose of a learner’s repeated undesirable behaviour and what leads to it being maintained. More specifically, it examines why a learner acts in a specific way, and what he or she obtains or avoids when acting this way. This information is then used as a basis for substituting more desirable behaviour in a behaviour-support plan.1