SELF-MANAGEMENT of Behavior

Self-management is a strategy in which a student keeps track of his/her own behavior, either for the purpose of increasing a positive behavior or skill or for the purpose of decreasing a problem behavior. Self-management is a valuable intervention because it empowers the student to monitor and change his/her own behavior; the student is his/her own agent of change rather than depending on adults to bring about change.
Self-management has been used with many students of different ages and with varying abilities. Self-management also can be individualized to meet the student’s specific behavioral and academic concerns. Self-management has been used to improve:

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Engagement
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Appropriate peer interactions
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Academic performance
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Problem behaviors (e.g., aggression, disruption)
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Appropriate classroom behavior (e.g., raising hand in class, sitting in seat)

Implementing the Intervention

Step 1: Consider the fit between self-management and the student.
Self-management as an intervention can help a student to monitor his own behavior in order to become aware of when to engage in behaviors or implement skills that he already has in his repertoire. Self-management cannot, by itself, teach a student a skill or behavior. Therefore, when deciding whether to use self-management with a student, consider the following:
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Assess the student to make sure that he knows the behavior, skill, or task that will be the target of the intervention, and is capable of completing it.
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If the student will be monitoring his performance of a task, examine the task before beginning the intervention—is the task functional and meaningful for the student? If the task can be altered to make it more meaningful to the student, that by itself may help him to complete the task.
Step 2: Determine what behavior the student will monitor.
Self-management has been used with many different behaviors. When deciding on which behavior to use, consider the following BEHAVIOR TESTS:
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Definition Test: The behavior needs to be “definable” so that the student is able to recognize exactly when she is engaging in the behavior. For example, “doing my work” is not as clear of a definition for task engagement as is “eyes on my paper, pencil in my hand, calculating answers to my math worksheet”.
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Positivity Test: While self-management procedures can be used to decrease a problem behavior, focusing on increasing positive behaviors (e.g., raising hand to ask for help) rather than decreasing negative behaviors (e.g., calling out in class) is a more positive endeavor for the student.
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Number Test: Monitoring a smaller rather than larger number of behaviors will help a student focus on improving her behaviors rather than getting overwhelmed by making too many changes and monitoring too many things at once. There is no magic number that signifies too many skills; consider your student when making that decision.
There are an infinite number of behaviors, skills, and tasks that a student can self-monitor. The following are some examples:
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Academic behaviors: task engagement, academic accuracy and productivity, adherence to assignment criteria or steps of a process.
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Social behaviors: talk outs during class, asking for help, appropriate responses (either to instructions or within a conversation), appropriate social initiations and/or interactions.
Step 3: Create the materials.
Develop the self-management program:
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Define the behavior so that it will be clear to the student. Define the behavior so that the student knows what he looks like when he is engaging in the behavior as well as what he looks like when he is not engaging in the behavior. Defining the behavior also will help in the creation of the questions/checklists and in training the student to use the self-management system.
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Create a self-management form. First determine what questions the student will ask of himself or what checklist he will use to evaluate whether he is performing the target behavior. Questions can be used if the student is self-monitoring a single behavior (e.g., “When the time went off, was I on-task with my math work?” or “Did I initiate a social interaction with a peer between period 1 and period 2?”). A checklist is a group of questions for a student to use to monitor his performance of steps of a process or his meeting of criteria for an assignment. An example of a process checklist for writing a paragraph might be: “1-I have an introductory sentence that states my main idea. 2-I have three sentences that support my main idea. 3-I have a conclusion sentence that summarizes my main idea. 4-All sentences are complete sentences (subject, verb, capitalization, punctuation). 5-All words are spelled correctly”. Like the definition of the behavior, be sure to make the questions and checklist as simple and clear as possible. Click Here to download additional examples.
After the questions and/or checklists have been developed, create the form. Typically a self-management form is a modified table. When creating the form, consider the student’s individual needs. Especially consider the student’s reading level. If the student’s reading ability is not strong, pictures can be used to represent the behavior, skill, or, task criteria (e.g., a picture of a pencil and book to represent the question of “Did I have the necessary materials for class?”) or to represent to the response to the question (e.g., happy face for “YES”; sad face for “NO”).
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The student calls out 20 times during a 30-min class period àthe student should monitor his call-outs at least once per minute.
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The student is monitoring her performance for meeting assignment criteria --> she should monitor only when doing that assignment.
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The goal is for the student to increase her social interactions during the transitions between classes in the hallwayàthe student should monitor his/her interactions just after the hallway transitions, so that self-monitoring does not interrupt or take the focus away from any social interactions occurring.
When the frequency of self-monitoring has been determined, the next decision to make is what type of cue will be used to signal to the student to self-monitor. Typically the cue is an audio cue. A cue is only necessary if the student is self-monitoring more often than naturally occurring cues. For example, for the student who is self-monitoring her social initiations with peers, she will self-monitor at the beginning of every class; therefore, entering the classroom and sitting at her desk, with the self-monitoring form in a folder on her desk, can be her natural cue. For students without these natural cues or who need more frequent cues, there are any possible audio cues that can be used: listening to a tape recorded chimes/bells through headphones or a tape recorder; a watch with a timer; a kitchen timer.
When developing the self-management forms and deciding on which cue system to use, think about the following:
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Make the materials as INCONSPICUOUS as possible. For example, in a classroom full of students, using a small notebook the student can keep in his or her pocket rather than a large piece of paper taped to the desk would help to make the student who was self-monitoring feel less conspicuous. Giving the student the forms quietly before class or attaching them to a notebook might be a better option than calling the student to the front of the classroom to collect the forms in front of his/her fellow students.
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Make the materials as AGE-APPROPRIATE and NON-STIGMATIZING as possible. A watch with a timer is a typical accessory for students; also, its sound is not so loud as to attract attention and it can easily be controlled by the student. Happy and sad faces may be appropriate for younger students with difficulty reading, but a more age-appropriate alternative for older students with reading difficulties may be a plus sign (+) for YES and a minus sign (--) for NO on a self-management form.
Step 4: Train the student.
The following training procedures are only a guide—modify them as needed in order to meet the individual needs of students.
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Before beginning to train the student, write out the steps of the self-management process by picturing how the student will carry out the process. Think about how the student will a) get the necessary materials (e.g., the forms and the audio cue device), b) use the materials during the targeted period (e.g., how often the student will self-manage and how he will record his behavior), c) return the materials after the targeted period is finished, and d) examine the results of his monitoring (i.e., What is the frequency of the behavior that he was self-monitoring?; Is the behavior increasing or decreasing?). Write the steps in simple, clear language so that it will be easy for the student to know what to expect of others, of herself, and when these steps will occur. The steps of the self-management process will also be helpful for teachers to use to keep track of whether or not the students are correctly completing the steps of the self-management process.
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When first meeting with the student, define the target behavior. Discuss the rationale for choosing this behavior as well as the rationale for using self-management. Check for the student’s understanding by asking her to repeat the target behavior definition.
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In order to help the student understand what self-monitoring is, first demonstrate all steps for the student. Second, have the student perform all steps while being directed by the teacher. Third, have the student practice the process, first in a simulated setting, then in actual situations. During training, at first it might help to practice during very short intervals or time periods (e.g., 30 seconds). This usually can be rapidly increased once the student learns to recongnize the target behavior and use the recording device.
Special considerations for training:
Prompting should be used to help the student learn the self-management process. In the beginning, prompting may be necessary to ensure that the student is practicing the procedures correctly and without errors. At this stage, prompts should be more direct (e.g., modeling of the steps, or a verbal direction to complete a step). As the student becomes more proficient with the procedures, the prompts can gradually become less direct (e.g., a hand signal to direct the student to complete a step or verbal prompts only at the beginning of the process rather than before every step).
Step 5: Collect data on the student’s use of the self-management procedures and the student’s target behavior.
Throughout the intervention, the teacher should monitor both the student’s progress with the target behavior as well as the accuracy with which the student completes the self-management procedures. For example, if the self-management process consists of 4 steps (1-Obtain materials from file cabinet; 2-Check y/n for behavior at 1-min intervals; 3-Total the frequency of the behavior being monitored; 4-Hand in self-management sheet to the teacher), then the teacher will observe the student to determine whether he exhibited the target behavior as well as whether he correctly implemented the steps of the self-management process. The teacher should monitor the student’s progress with the target behavior and the self-management procedures more frequently at the beginning of the intervention; the frequency can be reduced as the student becomes more proficient with the process and as his behavior improves.
One simple way that teachers can monitor the student’s target behavior and adherence to the self-management procedures is through “matching”. Matching is when the student and teacher independently monitor the student’s behavior. When the targeted period of self-management is over, the student and teacher compare the information they collected. Generally, the teacher’s recordings are considered to be “correct” and the student’s data are compared to the teacher’s data for accuracy. The purpose of doing this is for the teacher to check the student’s accuracy with both recording the target behavior and with completing the self-management procedures. Matching can occur more frequently at the beginning of the intervention and can be faded as the target behavior improves and the student becomes more independent with the self-management procedures.

SELF-MANAGEMENT

Important Considerations
Consider variations and other components to add to the basic self-monitoring process. There are many variations of self-management (see A.K.A. table). The following are descriptions of some possibilities:
1. / Self-graphing: The student takes the data he collected on the target behavior and graphs it in order to see the progress he has made. For example, a student who is self-monitoring on-task behavior would count the number of times he was on-task and either enter that information into a computer graphing program, or more simply mark his data on a hand-drawn graph in order to visually see the progress he is making. Self-graphing of behavior or performance has been shown in the research to produce as much as a 39 percentile point improvement.
Self-evaluation: This consists of the student evaluating herself on specified criteria using a number scale. For example, the student has two behavioral expectations to meet during class: Follow directions and Keep hands and feet to self. The student can rate herself on each expectation by giving herself either 2 points for meeting the expectation, 1 point for meeting the expectation most of the time, or 0 points for not meeting the expectation. The student is more than just monitoring her behavior; instead she is evaluating her behavior by giving more weight to the positive behaviors.