Eric.ed.gov – Intensive Intervention Practice Guide: School-Based Functional Analysis

The National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention (NCLII), a consortium funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), prepares special education leaders to become experts in research on intensive intervention for students with disabilities who have persistent and severe academic (e.g., reading and math) and behavioral difficulties. By the end of the first year of their program, scholars in each cohort work in cross-institutional collaborative groups to create an Intensive Intervention Practice Guide. In each guide, scholars identify an approach to intensive intervention for a select population of students with disabilities, describe the existing evidence base behind it, and discuss the next steps in research needed to improve the understanding of designing and delivering the intervention. The “Intensive Intervention Practice Guides” are created for practitioners as well as faculty engaged in instructing pre- and in-service teachers. This practice guide discusses how applying strategies to assess and treat challenging behaviors, such as functional analysis (FA), is one way to help students struggling with challenging behavior while increasing teacher confidence and expertise. When practitioners understand why students engage in challenging behavior they can design a function-based intervention to decrease challenging behavior and increase appropriate behavior. The guide includes a list of resources that provide more information on the behavioral principles supporting FA and the specific procedures required to conduct them.