Behavioral Definitions
Common words listed below have been redefined to focus attention to their core behavioral meanings to support their use as TPS increasing target behaviors. As parents, teachers, and support professionals, we want the actions of children and students to exemplify these words through their actions. However, before children can do this, we must define these words using a consistent behavioral language, e.g., motivations, situations, behaviors, and outcomes, so that a child can correspond his/her understanding of these concepts to new situations sharing similarly defining features.
We commonly use lists of examples to teach concepts. While useful in showing how the concept can be applied to diverse situations, a list of examples does not define the concept. Rather, with enough exemplars, we can use our language skills to extract common features, and in doing so, we derive the underlying concept. Once the concept is derived from these commonalities, we can then state the rule or relationship tying the list of examples together into a generally applicable concept. Once the concept is defined in abstract terms, we can then use examples to show the utility of a concept to diverse situations.
Examples are thus the second step of the process. First we define core relationships, then we use examples to illustrate the application of these concepts to diverse situations. Without the core definition, children are unable to clearly understand the concept, leading them to misunderstand the meanings of these words and mistakenly apply them to new situations.
Concepts are not defined by a single example, such as naming Matthew's behavior of finishing homework as resilient. Concepts are defined by relating kinds of situations, to kinds of behaviors, and kinds of outcomes. Finishing homework is one example of resilience, but we need a different kind of approach to define resilience, so that we can apply resilience to any other kind of situation in which the core definition is applicable. We use multiple examples to teach a child to understand how to apply the concept of resilience, e.g., mowing the lawn after the grass has grown tall, washing and waxing the car, hiking all the way up the mountain, etc. However, in order for those examples to be successfully identified as resilient we must have a sufficiently flexible definition - on that is arbitrarily applicable. That is, a definition that does not require a specific action, but summarizes relationships between kinds of things.
All words in the list below are commonly understood, and a verbally competent person could without much difficulty provide examples for each. However, it is much more challenging to produce definitions of these words because we commonly rely so heavily on examples as a form of definition. Unfortunately, this leads us with poorly defined concepts and laundry lists of words with limited applicability. Moreover, examples typically rely heavily on action descriptions, thereby excluding situations and outcomes that are weigh heavily in the definitional process.
How do we go about teaching children to act in ways associated with these words? When a child is mature enough to understand his/her contribution to exemplifying a concept and has a sufficient vocabulary to understand these concepts, we can use these words to describe his/her behavior in a variety of situations where that action becomes relevant. For example, "Matthew, your math homework was challenging tonight, yet you finished it. I am proud of you, and I bet you are proud too. When you work hard to finish a challenging job, that is called resilience." Over time, Matthew's parents will use resilience to describe his behavior in a variety of situations to help Matthew learn the concept of resilience.
Relationships are essential to understanding concepts. While it is convenient to use examples in definitions of complex actions, rarely do examples explain a concept. I may show a child a picture of a coffee cup and say, "this is a coffee cup," and after some training, the child may point to the coffee cup when I request that he does so, he may be able to say, "coffee cup," and he may be able to write the word, "coffee cup," and he may be able to use the coffee cup that was in the picture. While these component processes help to support the understanding of a coffee cup, even with all of this training we have not yet defined to the child what a coffee cup is, how it works, how to distinguish a coffee cup from other drinkware, and so on.
The tangible nature of coffee cups enables us to provide tangible examples for instructional purposes. However, as we start to include non-tangible concepts, such as those in the list below, we have a much greater challenge at hand. We no longer have a convenient picture to use to as an example. We must use other words to describe the concept, e.g., "Responsiveness is when you..."
TPS enables each district, school, or classroom to establish four key measures of success and to specify a range of behaviors that are differentiated for each student as supported by commercially available curricula. The list below provides a brief behavioral definition of words that schools have used as increasing target behaviors. Words in boldface are measures commonly used to link TPS, BIPs, IEPs, and PBIS programs.
Common words listed below have been redefined to focus attention to their core behavioral meanings to support their use as TPS increasing target behaviors. As parents, teachers, and support professionals, we want the actions of children and students to exemplify these words through their actions. However, before children can do this, we must define these words using a consistent behavioral language, e.g., motivations, situations, behaviors, and outcomes, so that a child can correspond his/her understanding of these concepts to new situations sharing similarly defining features.
We commonly use lists of examples to teach concepts. While useful in showing how the concept can be applied to diverse situations, a list of examples does not define the concept. Rather, with enough exemplars, we can use our language skills to extract common features, and in doing so, we derive the underlying concept. Once the concept is derived from these commonalities, we can then state the rule or relationship tying the list of examples together into a generally applicable concept. Once the concept is defined in abstract terms, we can then use examples to show the utility of a concept to diverse situations.
Examples are thus the second step of the process. First we define core relationships, then we use examples to illustrate the application of these concepts to diverse situations. Without the core definition, children are unable to clearly understand the concept, leading them to misunderstand the meanings of these words and mistakenly apply them to new situations.
Concepts are not defined by a single example, such as naming Matthew's behavior of finishing homework as resilient. Concepts are defined by relating kinds of situations, to kinds of behaviors, and kinds of outcomes. Finishing homework is one example of resilience, but we need a different kind of approach to define resilience, so that we can apply resilience to any other kind of situation in which the core definition is applicable. We use multiple examples to teach a child to understand how to apply the concept of resilience, e.g., mowing the lawn after the grass has grown tall, washing and waxing the car, hiking all the way up the mountain, etc. However, in order for those examples to be successfully identified as resilient we must have a sufficiently flexible definition - on that is arbitrarily applicable. That is, a definition that does not require a specific action, but summarizes relationships between kinds of things.
All words in the list below are commonly understood, and a verbally competent person could without much difficulty provide examples for each. However, it is much more challenging to produce definitions of these words because we commonly rely so heavily on examples as a form of definition. Unfortunately, this leads us with poorly defined concepts and laundry lists of words with limited applicability. Moreover, examples typically rely heavily on action descriptions, thereby excluding situations and outcomes that are weigh heavily in the definitional process.
How do we go about teaching children to act in ways associated with these words? When a child is mature enough to understand his/her contribution to exemplifying a concept and has a sufficient vocabulary to understand these concepts, we can use these words to describe his/her behavior in a variety of situations where that action becomes relevant. For example, "Matthew, your math homework was challenging tonight, yet you finished it. I am proud of you, and I bet you are proud too. When you work hard to finish a challenging job, that is called resilience." Over time, Matthew's parents will use resilience to describe his behavior in a variety of situations to help Matthew learn the concept of resilience.
Relationships are essential to understanding concepts. While it is convenient to use examples in definitions of complex actions, rarely do examples explain a concept. I may show a child a picture of a coffee cup and say, "this is a coffee cup," and after some training, the child may point to the coffee cup when I request that he does so, he may be able to say, "coffee cup," and he may be able to write the word, "coffee cup," and he may be able to use the coffee cup that was in the picture. While these component processes help to support the understanding of a coffee cup, even with all of this training we have not yet defined to the child what a coffee cup is, how it works, how to distinguish a coffee cup from other drinkware, and so on.
The tangible nature of coffee cups enables us to provide tangible examples for instructional purposes. However, as we start to include non-tangible concepts, such as those in the list below, we have a much greater challenge at hand. We no longer have a convenient picture to use to as an example. We must use other words to describe the concept, e.g., "Responsiveness is when you..."
TPS enables each district, school, or classroom to establish four key measures of success and to specify a range of behaviors that are differentiated for each student as supported by commercially available curricula. The list below provides a brief behavioral definition of words that schools have used as increasing target behaviors. Words in boldface are measures commonly used to link TPS, BIPs, IEPs, and PBIS programs.
- Responsiveness: Being actively productive upon receiving a prompt to begin
- Revision: Adjusting perspective based on feedback
- Resolve: Goal persistence; personal promise
- Reflection: Observing and evaluating
- Resourcefulness: Problem-solving
- Resilience: Completing all components of a challenging activity
- Restoration: Repairing a damaged relationships
- Regard: Supporting friendships; social skills
- Relationship: Understanding causal interactions of things, people, situations, etc.
- Reasoning: Consideration of alternatives; critical thinking
- Reset: To begin again; emotional centering
- Realism: To be practical, sensible, etc.
- Retention: To acquire durable knowledge
- Reciprocity: Mutual cooperation
- Reliability: High correspondence between saying and doing
- Respectful: Responding in alignment with another person's values
- Responsibility: Making choices that maximize future outcomes for self and others
- Recognition: Acknowledging a feature of the environment
- Reach: Valuing growth in a skill
- Restitution: Reducing the impact an error with a positive contribution
- Resistance: Overvaluing one's current perspective
- Relevance: Evaluation of appropriateness of an action or outcome
- Categorization: Aligning a thing or situation with an abstract property
- Cautionary: Evaluating and responding to the likelihood of risk
- Celebrate: Attending to a positive outcome
- Challenge: A situation that requires new kinds of actions
- Chance: A situation with incomplete understanding of influences over outcomes
- Choice: The initiation of behavior based on a predicted outcome
- Collaborate: Working toward a common goal
- Collegiate: Social interaction with persons sharing common experiences
- Community: A group of persons sharing values
- Companionship: A person of whom you share values
- Comparison: Evaluating the correspondence between two entities
- Compassion: A perspective of caring about another person's needs
- Competence: A level of skill that enables commensurate access to levels of achievement
- Competition: A zero-sum game
- Completion: Achieving all components of a specified activity
- Compliant: Actions that align with rules to avoid punishment
- Concentration: Deliberate and effective focus on a situation
- Conflict: A situation where an action produces discordant outcomes
- Connectivity: The idea that one event relates to many other events
- Conscientious: Sustained awareness of the effect of one's actions on others
- Consequence: An event occurring after an action that effects the likelihood of future action
- Considerate: An action whose primary influence is its benefit to others
- Consistency: Repetition of a valued action
- Constructive: Actions that increase the likelihood of another person's achievement
- Contextual: That the meaning of actions are dependent on the surrounding environment
- Control: An extent by which we influence future events
- Conversation: Language interchange between persons that involves speaking and listening
- Cooperation: Actions supported by mutually beneficial outcomes
- Correlation: A statement of an association or dependence between two entities
- Cost: Understanding the exchange rate between the values of two entities
- Courtesy: Socially appropriate behavior motivated by rules of conduct
- Promise: A commitment statement about one's future action.
- Prosocial: An action motivated by the benefit to a group.
- Productive: The ratio of work done to allocated time
- Protective: Actions that interfere with another person's access to negative outcomes