Positive Behavior Interventions

Positive behavior supports help students feel safe, learn new skills, participate at school, and experience success.

Positive behavior interventions are proactive strategies that prevent problems, teach needed skills, and reinforce progress. They focus on understanding what a student needs instead of relying mainly on punishment after a problem occurs.

Schools may use Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) as a framework for organizing behavior supports. PBIS is not one program or reward system. It is a tiered approach that uses evidence-based practices and data to support students’ social, emotional, behavioral, and academic success.

Effective supports are respectful, culturally responsive, and matched to the student’s age, communication, disability, strengths, and individual needs.

Many behavior concerns can be reduced when adults make expectations clear and adjust the environment before a problem occurs. Helpful strategies may include:

• Teaching and practicing a few clear expectations
• Using predictable routines and visual schedules
• Giving directions in short, understandable steps
• Offering meaningful choices
• Preparing the student for changes and transitions
• Adjusting tasks that are confusing, inaccessible, or overwhelming
• Providing communication, movement, sensory, or regulation supports
• Building positive relationships and creating regular opportunities for success

Support should fit the reason a behavior is happening. A strategy that works for one student or situation may not work for another.

Students may need direct teaching and practice to learn skills such as asking for help, requesting a break, waiting, handling frustration, communicating discomfort, solving problems, or returning to a task.

Adults can notice and describe the specific skill being used. For example: “You asked for help before you became frustrated. That helped us solve the problem.” This behavior-specific feedback tells the student exactly what worked.

Reinforcement should be meaningful to the student and connected to the skill being taught. Teams should avoid using food, loss of needed supports, public behavior charts, or other approaches that may embarrass, isolate, or stigmatize a student.

A private, pre-arranged signal can remind a student about a skill without calling attention to them. The student and adult should agree on the signal, understand what it means, and practice using it when the student is calm.

Positive phrasing can also clarify what the student can do. Instead of only saying, “Stop talking,” an adult might say, “Write your first answer, then you may ask your partner for help.” The direction should be realistic, specific, and respectful.

Prompts should support independence, not become a permanent source of adult control. As the student gains the skill, the team should gradually reduce unnecessary prompts.

Families can use many of the same principles at home: predictable routines, clear directions, choices, practice, positive feedback, and supports that match the child’s communication and regulation needs.

This video demonstrates precision requests. Use any strategy flexibly and respectfully. If a direction or reward system increases distress, conflict, masking, or unsafe behavior, pause and reconsider what the child may need.

Schoolwide and classroom supports are helpful for many students. Some students need targeted small-group supports, and others need individualized, intensive support. A student does not have to wait to fail before the team responds.

If behavior is persistent, intense, unsafe, or interfering with learning, ask what data the team has collected and whether a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) is needed. An FBA helps identify patterns and the likely function of behavior. The team can use that information to create a positive Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP).

For a student with an Individualized Education Program (IEP), the team must consider positive behavioral interventions and supports when behavior interferes with the student’s learning or the learning of others. Families and students should participate in choosing, reviewing, and improving supports.

• What skill or need may the behavior be communicating?
• What happens before and after the behavior?
• What prevention strategies have been tried?
• How are expectations and replacement skills being taught?
• Is the student able to access and understand the task?
• How are communication, sensory, health, or mental health needs being considered?
• How will progress be measured and shared with the family?
• When will the team review the data and revise supports?
• How is the student involved in the plan?

Ask questions when a strategy:

• focuses only on compliance or punishment;
• removes instruction, communication, sensory, or disability-related supports;
• is not connected to data or the reason for the behavior;
• shames, isolates, publicly identifies, or humiliates a student;
• is used inconsistently or without staff training;
• does not include a way to teach a replacement skill; or
• continues even though data show that it is ineffective or causing harm.

Emergency safety interventions such as restraint and seclusion are not positive behavior supports. They are measures of last resort and are governed by separate requirements.

2025 Utah LRBI Technical Assistance Manual

Utah’s current guidance on positive behavior supports, classroom management, individualized interventions, discipline, and emergency safety interventions.

USBE Behavior Support Resources

Current Utah State Board of Education guidance and implementation materials for schools and families.

U.S. Department of Education: Behavioral Support Resources

A 2024 collection of federal guidance and evidence-based resources for proactive behavioral support and student well-being.

Center on PBIS

The federally funded technical assistance center for implementing positive, equitable, multi-tiered behavior supports.

Creating a Schoolwide Teaching Matrix

A 2024 Center on PBIS guide for developing, defining, and directly teaching positive schoolwide expectations and skills.

PACER: Creating a Positive Behavior Home Plan

A family resource for adapting positive behavior principles to routines and expectations at home.

What Works Clearinghouse: Teacher-Delivered Behavioral Interventions

A 2024 federal practice guide describing evidence-based behavioral supports for elementary classrooms.

You do not have to work through behavior concerns alone. Utah Parent Center parent consultants provide free, individualized support to families across Utah. We can help you prepare for a school meeting and understand positive supports, FBAs, BIPs, special education, and Section 504.

5296 S Commerce Dr., Suite 302, Salt Lake City, UT 84107
Phone: 801.272.1051
Toll-Free in Utah: 1.800.468.1160
Email: info@utahparentcenter.org

This page was funded by a grant from Interagency Outreach Training Initiative at Utah State University’s Center for Persons with Disabilities.