Promoting behavioral assessment with a function-based tool

Pre-service teachers lack diagnostic competencies to assess typical challenging student behavioral profiles, which serve a function aimed at fulfilling underlying motives and needs. Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) provides a framework to understand such behaviors. A function-based tool to FBA that incorporates relevant aspects such as stimuli, organism, reaction and consequences (SORC) can support pre-service teachers in identifying challenging behavioral profiles and their behavior-relevant characteristics. This study evaluated the effect of a digital SORC-based FBA module on improving pre-service teachers’ FBA skills when analyzing challenging behavioral profiles in video cases. The sample consisted of 308 first-year bachelor's students in education from a German university. In a randomized controlled trial (intervention vs. control), both groups completed five video-case analyses. Chi-squared tests were used for identified challenging behavioral profiles. Mixed ANOVA was used for identified behavior-relevant characteristics. Both groups identified challenging behavioral profiles with comparable accuracy. Participants who completed the digital SORC-based FBA module identified significantly more behavior-relevant characteristics ( η p 2 = .25). While knowledge of classroom management may be sufficient to identify general challenging behavioral profiles, FBA skills are required to assess behavior-relevant characteristics that are critical for implementing function-based interventions. Pre-service teachers’ behavioral diagnostic competencies can be promoted with a digital SORC-based FBA module. • Pre-service teachers lack skills to assess functions of challenging behavior. • Digital function-based tool improved teachers' behavioral assessment skills. • Participants identified more behavior-relevant characteristics after intervention. • Intervention fostered skills that go beyond general classroom management. • Digital tool enables scalable growth of teachers' diagnostic competencies.