Behavior Pacts (previously called Behavior Contracts) are a collaborative way for school personnel to work directly with students and with the support of families to craft a set of agreements to support a student in mastering school-wide expectations.
Behavior pacts can be helpful for all students, and in fact, some classrooms use class-wide “compacts” to co-construct classroom norms/behaviors. Behavior pacts on an individual level can be very helpful for students who demonstrate avoid/escape behaviors and have not been successful with other Tier 2 interventions. The goal of a behavior compact is to replace an unexpected/undesired behavior with a preferred/more expected behavior. Therefore, it is important that the teacher understand the function of the student’s behavior and works with the student to both craft the contract and to directly teach/support the preferred behavior.
Effective Behavior Pacts are negotiated between teacher and student (not mandated by the teacher), positively describes what the student should do (not what the student shouldn’t do), provides a goal with rewards for meeting the goal (not consequences for missing the goal), and identify how the teacher will prompt/pre-correct to support the student
Key components of Behavior Pacts:
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Co-Constructed behaviors agreements and Goal statement
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Re-enforcements
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Teacher Pre-Corrective Feedback
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Data Collection
Co-Constructed Behavior Agreement and Goal Statement: Teacher & student co construct attainable and measurable goals for learning/demonstrating expected behaviors with support from parents. Understanding the function of their behavior (seek attention or stimulation/avoid work, stimulation or attention).
Re-Enforcement: The reinforcement should be connected to the function of the behavior as it serves to replace the unexpected/undesirable behavior. For example, if the student’s unexpected behavior functions to seek peer attention, then a re-enforcement (replacement behavior) for achieving their daily goal may be to “lead” the class in closure activities/routines.
Teacher Pre-Corrective Feedback: As always, students take time to adapt when implementing a new intervention and this especially true for interventions used to change student behavior. The Behavior Pact is unique in that it allows for student to collaborate with their teachers on how they receive feedback best. Once parameters for teacher feedback are set, it is important that teachers look hard for ways to praise!
Data Collection: Data on goal achievement for each day should be collected and posted into Student Success Platform once per week during this intervention cycle.