From Isolation to Collaboration: Rethinking your approach to FBA's

What happens when FBAs move from a one-person process to a shared team effort? This post explores the evolution from working in a vacuum to building collective understanding, ownership, and more inclusive environments for students.

From Working in a Vacuum to Working as a Team: Rethinking the Functional Behavior Assessment Process

When I first started as the first behavior specialist in my school district, there was no blueprint. There wasn’t much guidance, and there certainly wasn’t any formal training. I was the first. I was the only. There was no network to tap into, no mentor down the hall, and no established system to follow.

I had a strong background in Applied Behavior Analysis and experience teaching in a social-emotional program. I understood behavior. I knew how to implement FBAs and behavior intervention plans because every student I taught had one. I knew what to teach and how to follow a plan.

What I didn’t know was how to write one from scratch.

I felt like a fish out of water when it came to completing functional behavior assessments and developing behavior plans independently. So I did what many educators do when there’s no roadmap. I learned by doing. Over the years, I tweaked and refined my process. I created data collection forms. I collected everything paper-pencil at first, then transitioned to digital tools. I used Google Sheets. I experimented with partial interval data and different systems for organizing information. There was a lot of adjustment, a lot of learning, and a lot of reflection.

Because you don’t know what you don’t know. And one of the hallmarks of a good educator is the willingness to reflect, refine, and evolve. You don’t keep practices in place just for the sake of keeping them. When you know better, you do better.

For a long time, my FBA process happened in a vacuum. I came in as the outside analyst. I observed the student, defined the behavior, reviewed records, conducted interviews, and analyzed the environment. I gathered information from teachers and case managers, sometimes asking them to walk me through escalation cycles and antecedents. I compiled all of that into a report and determined the function of behavior.

And technically, I was doing my job.

But I was doing it alone.

I completed the analysis by myself. I wrote the behavior plan by myself. Even though I collected interview data from staff, the interpretation and conclusions were still mine. I was the keeper of the knowledge about behavior function, de-escalation, and intervention strategies.

About three years ago, I started hearing more about how FBAs and BIPs should really be a collaborative process. That idea forced me to pause and reflect.

I’m stationed at the district office, and I know that in many districts, school psychologists are assigned to one or two sites and are responsible for completing FBAs and writing behavior plans. That wasn’t how my district operated, and that part wasn’t the issue. What I realized was that my approach, regardless of structure, wasn’t sustainable.

I was coming in with all the knowledge, explaining it as clearly as I could, handing over a checklist, and hoping for follow-through. The missing piece wasn’t competence. It was buy-in, ownership, and shared understanding.

I am deeply passionate about equipping others with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to understand behavior. Behavior is communication. Our role is to help teams understand the context of behavior. When it happens. Where it happens. And most importantly, why it happens. Only then can we answer the most important question: What do we want the student to do instead?

When I was the sole expert in the room, I unintentionally reinforced the idea that behavior was something to be “fixed” by an outside specialist. That mindset doesn’t build capacity. It creates dependency.

That realization led me to shift toward a collaborative approach to functional behavior assessments.

This approach requires multiple meetings with school teams, but the goal is simple and powerful: we all need to understand behavior.

Together, we determine the priority areas of need for the FBA. Together, we complete a comprehensive environmental analysis. We examine the physical setting, the social setting, and the student’s interactions throughout the day. We look at whether expectations are clear, whether routines and schedules are predictable, and what contextual factors may be influencing behavior. We also consider individualized factors that are often overlooked.

Because while reducing challenging behavior and teaching replacement skills matters, the bigger question is this: How do we create more inclusive classroom environments?The shift is from “What’s wrong with this student?” to “How can we redesign the environment to better support them?”

That’s where the real impact lives.

In practice, this collaborative FBA process might look like this:

• Meeting One:The team develops a shared, observable definition of the target behavior. We identify what we need to focus on and create ABC data collection tools together so everyone understands what to observe and record.

  
  

• Meeting Two:After data collection and observations, we complete the environmental analysis collaboratively. We analyze patterns, identify barriers, and implement small, immediate adjustments that can support the student while the assessment continues.

  
  

• Meeting Three:We review the data and determine the function of behavior as a team. From there, we build the behavior intervention plan together. We identify precursor warning signs, determine how adults will respond when challenges arise, outline how replacement behaviors will be prompted and reinforced, and plan how those skills will be explicitly taught.

This process doesn’t just produce a stronger behavior plan. It builds shared language, shared responsibility, and shared confidence.

So if you have strong teams, good rapport, and trusting relationships, I encourage you to consider a collaborative FBA approach. It’s a powerful way to share your expertise, build capacity in others, and shift how teams think about behavior.

Because when we truly understand why behavior happens, we unlock the door to meaningful intervention. And once that door is open, we can finally begin changing our own practices to better meet the needs of our students.