PTR was originally designed for school settings but has also been adapted to preschool settings and children aged 2-5. This version is called Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children (PTR-YC). The method is built on the five steps outlined below.
The first step will be to assemble a team to work in the child’s best interest. The team will at least need a facilitator that knows PTR and can guide the rest of the team through the process. Typically, the teacher will also need to be involved. Sometimes other roles or people may be needed to improve the process, such as a parent, an administrator or special education teacher. The team will then need to prioritize what challenging behavior they will attempt to reduce, but also what behavior or skill to improve for the child’s benefit.
The team needs a baseline – how often does the challenging and desired behavior happen? Typically, the challenging behavior will happen quite often, or at least, beyond an acceptable rate. Conversely, the desired behavior happens far less than we would like. This data will be tracked continuously.
This is what defines a whole category of methods used to find the drivers behind behaviors. The reviewing of antecedents, i.e., what comes before the behavior, and the consequences, that which follows the behavior. Specifically, something in the environment is hypothesized to reinforce the challenging behavior. Either through positive reinforcement (something is added to make the behavior more likely to continue) or negative reinforcement (something is removed to make the behavior more likely to continue). We define this as the function of the behavior – the child needs this behavior in order to get or avoid something. For example, the child may use a challenging behavior in order to gain attention from an adult. Another example is if a child keeps avoiding or postponing a certain by acting out. The data needed to assess the factors in the child’s environment that triggers and reinforces the challenging behavior is collected through a checklist.
The behavior intervention plan is what will drive the change. The BIP will outline the implementation of interventions that are grounded in a holistic assessment of the problem behavior. If we have correctly identified the antecedents that triggers the challenging behavior, we need to modify these to make the challenging behavior less likely to occur. If we have identified what reinforces the challenging behavior, we need to make it less likely that the challenging behavior leads to reinforcement. We also need to replace the challenging behavior by teaching a replacement behavior that will serve the same function but in a more appropriate manner. Using a previous example, gaining the attention of an adult is a crucial skill for children to have. The child may have had difficulties gaining attention previously but has learned that it’s easy to get attention by screaming loudly for long periods. We would need to make sure that the adults will teach and reinforce a more positive way of getting attention.
Remember that we should have been continuously gathering data and tracking the rate of the challenging behavior and desired behavior. If all goes well, the challenging behavior will reduce, and the desired behavior will increase, after we implement the BIP. In other cases, we will need to troubleshoot. Did we implement the BIP correctly? Did we identify the function correctly? Did we properly reinforce the replacement behavior? Hopefully the data will trend in the right direction after adjusting.
PTR-YC has been evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. The reduction in problem behaviors as rated by teachers was almost four times greater compared to the reduction in the control group. The increase in social skills rated by teachers were nearly three times greater. The increase in time engaged with activities (rated by observers) was also almost three times larger compared to controls. The reduction in challenging behaviors as rated by observers was more than twice the reduction seen in controls. To summarize, PTR-YC may offer a promising method for building skills and reducing challenging behaviors in preschool settings.
Dunlap, G., Strain, P., Lee, J. K., Joseph, J., & Leech, N. (2018). A Randomized Controlled Evaluation of Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 37(4), 195-205.
Dunlap, G., Wilson, K., Strain, P., & Lee, J. (2013). Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children. Paul H. Brookes.
Harvey, H., Dunlap, G., & McKay, K. (2021). Primary and Secondary Effects of Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Young Children. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 41(2), 100-114.
