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ABSTRACT
Functional assessment involves generating hypotheses about the purpose a behavior serves and the environmental variables maintaining it in order to develop effective and efficient interventions. Functional assessment has been used extensively with students with severe disabilities in special education settings. However, few applications of functional assessment have been reported with students with mild disabilities in general education classrooms. The purpose of this article is to address the use of functional assessment in general education classrooms with students with mild disabilities. We present the theoretical foundations of functional assessment, describe the procedures involved in conducting a functional assessment, discuss some of the obstacles to applying functional assessment in general education classrooms, and make recommendations for the future use of functional assessment in general education classrooms with students with mild disabilities.
M ANAGING CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS OF students with disabilities in inclusive settings is a major concern for educators. Teachers are often expected to demonstrate skills in evaluating students' academic and social needs and developing structures and policies that allow all students in the general education classroom to benefit from the curriculum. The inclusion of students with disabilities, particularly those with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD), present increased behavioral challenges that heighten the demands placed on general education classroom teachers to develop effective and efficient management techniques and interventions. Functional assessment represents one method for helping teachers develop such effective and efficient interventions in inclusive settings. Functional assessment involves analyzing contextual factors related to the occurrence of a challenging behavior in order to draw conclusions about the purpose that the behavior serves for a student (Foster-Johnson & Dunlap, 1993; Horner, 1994; Tobin, 1994). Determining the purpose that a behavior fulfills for a student can help teachers identify contextual modifications that reduce the occurrence of inappropriate behaviors and teach the student appropriate replacement behaviors-behaviors that accomplish the same goal in a more socially appropriate fashion.
Functional assessment has been used extensively to develop situationally appropriate interventions for students with developmental disabilities in special education settings (Dunlap, Kern-Dunlap, Clarke, & Robbins, 1991; Dunlap et al.,1993; Kern, Childs, Dunlap, Clarke, & Falk, 1994; Lalli, Browder, Mace, & Brown, 1993; Northrup et al., 1994; Repp & Karsh, 1994; Sasso et al., 1992). The majority of these investigations have used...