Breaking Down Behavioral Skills
You have taught the skill (or so you thought), but they just aren't getting it. Has this ever happened to you? It's happened to us plenty of times. It can be frustrating to think, "I don't know what else to do to get them to understand."
Sometimes, we need to break skills down even further than we already are. This evidence-based practice is called a Task Analysis.
Tell me more about this so-called 'task analysis:'
Simply put, a task analysis is the group of steps that make up a skill or behavior. That's really all there is to it! You are probably thinking, "Hey, I do this already!" And you probably do if you teach academics. Where this practice can become tricky however, is when it is time to task analyze behaviors.
Why you should be using a task analysis for any behavioral skill you are teaching:
- Just like teaching academics, we need a scope and sequence for teaching behaviors. You wouldn't instruct a child in short vowel words and then assume they could fluently read a fourth grade passage in under a minute. Same goes for behaviors. We need to be able to plan for all of the little steps in between (benchmarks if you will) and teach these too! This is where true mastery comes from. Though they may be able to tell us, we cannot assume they can fluently perform all of the sub-skills. Knowing what skills to teach and what order to teach them in will help generalization occur (when a student is able to use a skill across different settings, people, times, etc.) which is almost impossible if not planned for.
- The teaching strategy needs to match the student need and present level of performance. Task analysis involve two procedures called 'chaining' and 'shaping.' Both are used at different times for different skills, but their use is fully dependent on the learner. Some students can handle learning a few steps at a time when it comes to a behavioral skill. Others may struggle with that first step. Being flexible with your instruction when it comes to teaching social skills, coping skills, or any behavioral skill is crucial, and having the steps already outlined will help you do this.
Example A) Tim understands and is able to raise his hand and wait for teacher attention for up to 1 minute before engaging in disruptive behavior. He has already mastered the skill of both raising his hand and waiting up to a minute. For Tim, your instruction would focus on increasing his wait time (1 min 10 secs, 1 minute 20 secs, 1 minute 30 secs, and so-forth).
Example B) Maya is able to physically raise her hand, but often needs prompts to raise it instead of yelling. She also struggles to wait calmly for 5 seconds most days. Your teaching procedure, prompts, and reinforcement will look very different for Maya because she hasn't mastered the skills that Tim has when it comes to gaining attention and waiting appropriately.
Again, writing out the steps you need to teach both of these skills will help you determine when to prompt, when to reinforce, and when to move on to the next step.
3. Task analyses ensure quality instruction is being provided across the school day. If we told two different staff members to teach Sam and Jenn how to resolve peer conflict, they would likely teach each of them a bit differently. Though neither may be 'right' or 'wrong,' the differences in instruction may not totally support the student's true comprehension or performance of the skill. One staff member may orally breeze through the the steps with Sam, the other staff member may actually have Jenn practice each step in many different situations while providing him or her with feedback. Which student do you think will master the art of solving peer conflict faster? Likely Jenn.
But, if you have written down all of the steps to problem solving, as well as the additional teaching strategies involved such as prompting, modeling, feedback, and reinforcement, you will have much greater consistency across staff when it comes to teaching.
