BCBA Sasha Long explains how behavior contracts boost student buy-in by having students co-create collaborative agreements with teachers and parents. The contract must include three components: expected behavior, supports needed, and reinforcement reasons. Long walks through five practical templates and stresses that student input on supports and consequences directly increases fidelity and engagement.
Sometimes one of the hardest parts of a behavior plan is getting buy-in from the student. If you have a child or student who is struggling with buy-in on a behavior plan, a behavior contract may be the right solution for you. I'm Sasha Long, I'm a BCBA and former special ed teacher, and today I'm going to walk you through what a behavior contract is, what are the must-have things that you have to include on it, and why it can be so effective. I'm also going to show some different templates so you can see some options of what it can look like in action and have a good idea if this would be a good fit for your learner. All right, so let's get started. A behavior contract is an agreement between the teacher, the student, and the parent that outlines and puts limits on the student's behavior and the expectations in that setting. What is really key about a behavior contract is that it includes all three of those people in the creation. So when you're making a behavior contract, the student is sitting at the table with you creating it together as a collaborative You are not handing the child a completed behavior contract and being like, "Hey, here's your contract, go ahead." No, this is an evidence-based strategy, but it only works if you use the strategy with fidelity, which means the student has to be involved in the creation. That's why we increase buy-in, because the student is helping make this tool from the start. Now, we can't just like decide whatever we want to include or not include in a behavior plan, behavior contract. There's a few essential components that you must include. The format, the way that you're explaining these things can be completely differentiated, but you have to include these 3 components within your behavior contract. You first have to outline the expected behavior. What do you want the student to do? What would be meeting expectations in that classroom setting, in the home setting, in the clinical setting, wherever this is being implemented? What is a child expected to do? Second, what are the supports? What kind of accommodations? What kind of What type of tools are we giving to help that child be successful? And then last, what is the why? Why should that child meet these expectations and engage in these behaviors? Sometimes we have to add in some contrived reinforcement, or first we can embed reinforcement in the environment. So we want to include those 3 things: the behavior, the supports, and the why. When we have all 3 of those things and the child is included in the creation, then you have yourself a behavior contract. Let's look at some examples. Okay, so first up, this example is pretty straightforward. Here we're gonna put the definition of the behavior, our criteria for success, supports, what happens when criteria is met, and what happens when the criteria is not met. And then again, everyone signs. Now, when I said that the child needs to be involved in its creation, we wanna be sitting with the child when we write all of these things in. What supports need to be successful? The child is helping create these supports. They're like, "Hey, I could use extra time," or, "I could use a break, you know, for 5 minutes when needed." they're helping fill in all these answers. It's not the adults creating this, it's everyone creating this as a team. So here's a pretty straightforward version. I also like this one even though it's pretty simple, but I like how it breaks up the team into kind of 3 components. We have the students' responsibilities, teachers' responsibilities, parents' responsibilities. So in the student responsibilities, that's where we're going to include what the student should be doing and the why. The parent and the teacher responsibilities are going to give those support, so we're still kind of including all 3 of those components in there. And really simple, straightforward, but I like how this breaks it up into a team. Here's what the student will do, teacher and parent. Everything is embedded here into those 3 answers. Next, this one again kind of straightforward. We have what the challenging behavior is, what should be done instead, ways to ask for help, and consequences. Again, everyone should sign and agree. Student will be helping to create consequences for expected behavior and for challenging behavior. This is where we're going to add the support in, this is what we're gonna add the reinforcer in. If you are using a token economy, you can incorporate your token economy into your behavior contract. I like doing this for students that really thrive off of a token economy. Again, a good token economy, there's a lot of things that have to be included in there, but if you have a really effective token economy running, you can incorporate this into your behavior contract. So you can include how students will earn points, what they can exchange for, and then this will include what we said, that definition, the supports, the reinforcer is within, embedded into that point system. Here's a simple version that you can do to track kind of multiple behaviors over the week. Here are the 3 behaviors, we're defining those behaviors, here's how they're earning points, and then we can add in some of those supports within this behavior definition. All right, so those are behavior contracts. This evidence-based strategy will help increase student buy-in. This has been so successful for students that are reluctant. If you have students that are not into anything, that you're not getting that buy-in from, try this strategy. I'm Sasha Long from The Autism Helper. 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