The TPS Portfolio
- TPS 4x4-Rating asks teachers to evaluate the frequency, duration, and intensity for as many four increasing target behaviors and as many as four decreasing target behaviors during as many as ten recording blocks. TPS can be configured with four kinds of rating systems: 0-1, 0-2, 0-3, or 0-4, noting that the larger the set of ratings, the greater the information obtained about behavior. TPS produces more than 100 highly informative graphs and analyses of students' performance. TPS 4x4-Rating produces daily and weekly Home Notes to inform parents of their child's progress. TPS automatically writes IEP goals based on a student's current performance levels. TPS tracks phase changes, enables teachers to enter antecedent function codes, and features automatic data entry, and so much more. Now in its fourteenth year, TPS 4x4-Rating continues to solve the problem of progress monitoring of behavioral interventions in school settings.
- TPS Partial Interval Recorder (PIR) enables highly efficient data collection during user-specified intervals. TPS PIR asks teachers to only record if a target behavior occurred (1) or not (0). TPS PIR is an excellent way to monitor an intervention when the occurrence of behavior is of primary interest.
- TPS Frequency & Duration offers specialized/dedicated staff a highly efficient way to record and graph frequencies and durations of four increasing target behaviors and four decreasing target behaviors during a variety of recording intervals or throughout the day. TPS Frequency & Duration produces dozens of graphs and analyses, including the classic "6-cycle" semi-log graph (or "celeration" graph.) Phase changes, notes, etc., are also supported in the TPS Frequency & Duration application. This special purpose application is ideal for obtaining samples of high resolution recording of students' behavior.
- TPS Event-Recorder is the choice when the demands of a behavioral intervention requires maximum data resolution. TPS Event Recorder enables a dedicate observer to simultaneously record start and stop times for 10 different target behaviors, and to count the occurrence of 50 kinds of behavioral events. The Event Recorder provides sophisticated analysis of behavior sequences to aid in the development of Functional Behavior Assessments, as well as analyzing inter-response times, average durations, frequency, etc. Each entry in the TPS Event Recorder produces a time stamp for highly detailed sequential analysis.
- TPS Discrete Skill offers teachers an excellent way to monitor students' progress on as many as ten skill acquisition programs. Each skill can be independently measured in four ways. TPS-Skill prints a variety of convenient data sheets to facilitate data collection. TPS-Skill is an excellent tool to monitor acquisition of self-care and daily-living skills, social & emotional skills, verbal behavior skills, as well as academic skills. TPS-Skill excels in recording frequencies, durations, percentages, discrete-trial training, because it supports all kinds of measurement.
- TPS FBA/BIP offers Behavior Specialists a flexible, detailed, and efficient way to summarize information from diverse sources, e.g., teacher interviews, parent interviews, student interviews, review of cumulative file, referrals, prior TPS data, etc. The FBA application is combined with a TPS rating rubric function that enables Behavior Specialists to very quickly develop a highly differentiated TPS rating rubric.
- TPS Forms offers Behavior Specialists access to the latest data collection systems provided by Microsoft (TM) 360. Forms are particularly well suited to TPS data collection in middle and high school classrooms that employ the inclusion model. Extensive analyses of TPS Forms-based ratings enable Behavior Specialists to efficiently monitor intervention progress for all students.
- Power TPS displays a variety of interactive dashboards summarizing TPS data at the student, teacher, school, and district levels.
- TPS Tools offers Behavior Specialists a range of productivity enhancing applications, e.g., a data sheet generator, a rating calculator that integrates as many as six dimensions of behavior, and a forced-choice reinforcer survey, an extensive User Guide, help files, video training, and more!
Using Categories of TPS Increasing Target Behaviors & Decreasing Target Behaviors to Measure and Manage Positive Behavior Intervention & Support (PBIS) Programs
TPS can monitor four increasing target behaviors and four decreasing target behaviors. Increasing target behaviors are the new behaviors we want the student to demonstrate, e.g., respect, responsibility, resilience, etc., to replace decreasing target behaviors, e.g., verbal or social aggression, physical aggression to person, physical aggression to property, and out of assigned area.
When we use the word, "behavior," we are referring not to specific actions, but to categories of behavior, i.e., groups of behavior defined by a relationship. Behavior analysts typically categorize behavior in terms of a functional relationship of various kinds of behavior with various kinds of reinforcers, e.g., behavior is correlated with tangible (physical), attention (social), escape (removal), or sensory (proprioceptive) reinforcers. While this kind of categorization has proven very useful in developing behavioral interventions, categorization can be applied to other features of the behavioral process, such as the categorization of arbitrarily applicable relationships, sequences of relationships, etc.
Let's apply this more abstract form of categorization to a common PBIS increasing target behavior of respect. Most PBIS programs seek to support respectful behavior by listing specific actions that should occur in various school settings. For example, respectful behavior in the cafeteria or hallway would be observed as using a quiet voice. In the classroom respectful behavior would be observed as following the teacher's instruction. While useful in intervention planning, these situation-behaviors do not define respectful behavior. Providing a longer list of situations and behaviors is unlikely to help in the definitional process because the definition of respectful behavior and other PBIS behaviors like it require the use of abstraction. That is, we must define respectful behavior in terms of an arbitrarily applicable relationship between a category of situations and a category of outcomes.
Using this relational approach, respectful behavior is defined as behavior reinforced by alignment with another person's values. While it is true that respectful behavior in the cafeteria or hallway is exemplified by using a quiet voice, the action of the student in this situation is categorized as respectful only if the student's behavior is actively influenced by a relational rule, e.g., "I am using a quiet voice in the hallway because my teacher has asked me to use a quiet voice, and I want to please my teacher by doing what she has asked me to do in this situation." Of course, rarely will a student verbalize the relational rule in this technical way, but the main features of the rule are actively influencing behavior.
When the relational rule is underdeveloped, such as with kindergarten students, or students with language impairments, teachers must rely on a directly stated rule about expected behavior in a situation, e.g., no talking in the hallway. Yet, that rule too relies on a relationship, i.e., if a student follows the rule the teacher might acknowledge the student's rule following, or if the student is noisy in the hallway the teacher might impose a penalty for failure to follow the rule.
As you read the above you might be wondering if all of this is unnecessary complication. Indeed it may involve some complication in describing the involved processes, but it is also necessary to properly define and teach concept of respectful behavior. Only after a student understands the relational rule of respectful behavior, as stated above, will the student understand the concept of respectful behavior. Without this concept, the student cannot apply (generalize) the relational rule to new situations - which is the hallmark of concept understanding. When the student understands the concept of respectful behavior the student is greatly advantaged by the ability to apply this relational rule to any social circumstance in school, at home, or in the community.
The abstraction of a rule, such as discussed above, is far more common than it may seem. The process of understanding number value offers a convenient example. When the counting numbers are taught to early learners, teachers typically use little blue cubes or similar manipulatives to show the quantity associated with each number. When a student learns that a group of four blue cubes is named 4, the student must also learn that 4 of anything, regardless of shape, color, size, etc., is equivalent to the 4 blue cubes in terms of quantity, based on the defining quantity, but not on visible but irrelevant properties, e.g., shape, color, size, weight, etc. Only after the student understands (and can apply) this relational rule, e.g., repetition of four things - that could be entirely dissimilar - can be counted as 4, can the student abstract the concept of 4. Numbers are a convenient way to teach relational rules because quantities of things are resilient and observable, i.e., four blue cubes. Through the process of presenting the student with multiple exemplars, e.g., four cars, four tangerines, four balloons, four pieces of pizza, and so on, the student comes to understand the abstract concept of four, which then enables the student to apply the concept of four to any grouping of like items. Only after the student can apply the concept to an entirely new situation will the student successfully demonstrate an understanding of four as an abstraction of an arbitrarily applicable relationship.
Words such as respect, responsibility, resilience, etc., can be defined as specific actions that should occur in specific situations, and this provides a good start in teaching each of these concepts. However, for the concept of respect, responsibility, etc., to be truly useful, a student must understand these words in the same abstracted way that the student comes to understand counting numbers, colors, shapes, not having a specific quality, but as having a relational quality. We teach these words as specific actions, such as, "in the library, respectful behavior means that you use a quiet voice." However, using a quiet voice is not universally respectful. For example, when speaking to a hearing impaired person, deliberately speaking in a quiet voice could be viewed as disrespectful.
The goal of TPS increasing target behaviors, is to use multiple exemplars and other learning tools to support a student's abstraction of core social concepts. Continuing with the example of respect, we define respectful behavior as "behavior that aligns with the values of another person." A person who understands the concept of respect can successfully generate respectful behavior for any social situation - and most usefully, in social situations that have not been previously experienced.
TPS can monitor four increasing target behaviors and four decreasing target behaviors. Increasing target behaviors are the new behaviors we want the student to demonstrate, e.g., respect, responsibility, resilience, etc., to replace decreasing target behaviors, e.g., verbal or social aggression, physical aggression to person, physical aggression to property, and out of assigned area.
When we use the word, "behavior," we are referring not to specific actions, but to categories of behavior, i.e., groups of behavior defined by a relationship. Behavior analysts typically categorize behavior in terms of a functional relationship of various kinds of behavior with various kinds of reinforcers, e.g., behavior is correlated with tangible (physical), attention (social), escape (removal), or sensory (proprioceptive) reinforcers. While this kind of categorization has proven very useful in developing behavioral interventions, categorization can be applied to other features of the behavioral process, such as the categorization of arbitrarily applicable relationships, sequences of relationships, etc.
Let's apply this more abstract form of categorization to a common PBIS increasing target behavior of respect. Most PBIS programs seek to support respectful behavior by listing specific actions that should occur in various school settings. For example, respectful behavior in the cafeteria or hallway would be observed as using a quiet voice. In the classroom respectful behavior would be observed as following the teacher's instruction. While useful in intervention planning, these situation-behaviors do not define respectful behavior. Providing a longer list of situations and behaviors is unlikely to help in the definitional process because the definition of respectful behavior and other PBIS behaviors like it require the use of abstraction. That is, we must define respectful behavior in terms of an arbitrarily applicable relationship between a category of situations and a category of outcomes.
Using this relational approach, respectful behavior is defined as behavior reinforced by alignment with another person's values. While it is true that respectful behavior in the cafeteria or hallway is exemplified by using a quiet voice, the action of the student in this situation is categorized as respectful only if the student's behavior is actively influenced by a relational rule, e.g., "I am using a quiet voice in the hallway because my teacher has asked me to use a quiet voice, and I want to please my teacher by doing what she has asked me to do in this situation." Of course, rarely will a student verbalize the relational rule in this technical way, but the main features of the rule are actively influencing behavior.
When the relational rule is underdeveloped, such as with kindergarten students, or students with language impairments, teachers must rely on a directly stated rule about expected behavior in a situation, e.g., no talking in the hallway. Yet, that rule too relies on a relationship, i.e., if a student follows the rule the teacher might acknowledge the student's rule following, or if the student is noisy in the hallway the teacher might impose a penalty for failure to follow the rule.
As you read the above you might be wondering if all of this is unnecessary complication. Indeed it may involve some complication in describing the involved processes, but it is also necessary to properly define and teach concept of respectful behavior. Only after a student understands the relational rule of respectful behavior, as stated above, will the student understand the concept of respectful behavior. Without this concept, the student cannot apply (generalize) the relational rule to new situations - which is the hallmark of concept understanding. When the student understands the concept of respectful behavior the student is greatly advantaged by the ability to apply this relational rule to any social circumstance in school, at home, or in the community.
The abstraction of a rule, such as discussed above, is far more common than it may seem. The process of understanding number value offers a convenient example. When the counting numbers are taught to early learners, teachers typically use little blue cubes or similar manipulatives to show the quantity associated with each number. When a student learns that a group of four blue cubes is named 4, the student must also learn that 4 of anything, regardless of shape, color, size, etc., is equivalent to the 4 blue cubes in terms of quantity, based on the defining quantity, but not on visible but irrelevant properties, e.g., shape, color, size, weight, etc. Only after the student understands (and can apply) this relational rule, e.g., repetition of four things - that could be entirely dissimilar - can be counted as 4, can the student abstract the concept of 4. Numbers are a convenient way to teach relational rules because quantities of things are resilient and observable, i.e., four blue cubes. Through the process of presenting the student with multiple exemplars, e.g., four cars, four tangerines, four balloons, four pieces of pizza, and so on, the student comes to understand the abstract concept of four, which then enables the student to apply the concept of four to any grouping of like items. Only after the student can apply the concept to an entirely new situation will the student successfully demonstrate an understanding of four as an abstraction of an arbitrarily applicable relationship.
Words such as respect, responsibility, resilience, etc., can be defined as specific actions that should occur in specific situations, and this provides a good start in teaching each of these concepts. However, for the concept of respect, responsibility, etc., to be truly useful, a student must understand these words in the same abstracted way that the student comes to understand counting numbers, colors, shapes, not having a specific quality, but as having a relational quality. We teach these words as specific actions, such as, "in the library, respectful behavior means that you use a quiet voice." However, using a quiet voice is not universally respectful. For example, when speaking to a hearing impaired person, deliberately speaking in a quiet voice could be viewed as disrespectful.
The goal of TPS increasing target behaviors, is to use multiple exemplars and other learning tools to support a student's abstraction of core social concepts. Continuing with the example of respect, we define respectful behavior as "behavior that aligns with the values of another person." A person who understands the concept of respect can successfully generate respectful behavior for any social situation - and most usefully, in social situations that have not been previously experienced.
TPS Ratings Categorize Frequency, Duration, and Intensity of Behavior
The TPS rating scale categorizes teachers' observations of multiple properties of increasing and decreasing target behaviors. For decreasing target behaviors, such as physical aggression, recording a rating of 4 indicate a very high frequency, duration, or intensity of, say, verbal aggression, a 3 indicates a high frequency, duration, or intensity of verbal aggression, while a rating of 2 indicates a moderate frequency, duration, or intensity of verbal aggression, a 1 indicates a low frequency, duration, or intensity of verbal aggression, and a zero indicates that verbal aggression did not occur.
For increasing target behaviors, such as "respectful behavior" when configured with a 0-4 rating scale, a rating of 4 for the increasing target behavior could report a teacher's observation of a very high frequency, duration, or intensity of respect, a 3 could report the observation of a high frequency, duration, or intensity of respect, a 2 could represent a moderate frequency, duration, or intensity of respect, and a 1 could represent a low frequency, duration, or intensity of respect. Recording a zero could indicate that no behavior was observed, while leaving the recording cell blank indicates that the opportunity for behavior did not occur, the latter being ignored by TPS analyses.
Defining the exact levels of frequency, duration, and intensity for each nonzero recording category, i.e., 1-4, is not that difficult. However, it is very difficult to use these discrete categories to record a behavior rating because it would then require teachers to record occurrence, duration, and intensity for each observation and to then compute in some way the best rating category. This would require a herculean effort to accomplish for four increasing target behaviors, four decreasing target behaviors throughout an approximately six hour school day for the entire school year. Fortunately, the statistical technique of Fuzzy Logic pioneered by Lotfi Zadeh at MIT in the 1960's can come to the rescue. Zadeh's mathematical technique enables us to consider ratings 0-4 as having overlapping ranges, rather than precise, bright-line distinctions. The idea of fuzzy logic suggests another simplification that offers us an enormous increase in efficiency: rather than defining ranges of behaviors associated with 0-4 ratings, we establish in detail the kinds of performance associated with a level-4 rating for increasing target behaviors and a level-zero for decreasing target behaviors. In other words, we determine behaviors that define the full and desirable level of competency for increasing target behaviors (rating of 4) and then we compare our observations of a student's behavior to that standard. As the alignment of our observations and the behavioral criterion decreases, so too decreases the rating the student receives during that recording period. Criteria for decreasing target behaviors is relatively easy to define, e.g., zero aggression. However, as a student's aggression increases, and thus, varies from this zero level, successively higher ratings are recorded.
The image below shows the Data Entry section of TPS. At the top are listed increasing goals (green shading) and decreasing goals (red shading). On the right side is an area designated as "Notes for Pete Moss." As we see, Pete earned a range of ratings for his increasing target behaviors and decreasing target behaviors. Each day, teachers enter these ratings for each student participating in a behavioral intervention. Note the "P" in the small yellow box. Entering a P populates increasing target behavior recording cells with a 4 and decreasing target behavior recording cells with a 0. The teacher then changes only those ratings that deviated from the perfect performance level. If a student had a perfect day, and often they do, the teacher is rewarded by having to enter only one keystroke - a P in the yellow box.
Characteristics of Total Progress System (TPS)
1. TPS is efficient – defined as the ratio of useful information obtained to administrative costs of obtaining such information about students’ performance. With relatively little effort teachers can measure multiple dimension of a wide range of increasing and decreasing target behaviors.
2. TPS is informative – defined as the quantity of data useful for guiding the decision processes, such as in evaluating the efficacy of a behavioral intervention, determining the level of additional staff support, evaluating instructional techniques, etc.
3. TPS measurement resolution is extensive – up to four increasing and four decreasing target behaviors can be recorded during as many as ten recording periods each day.
4. TPS is behavior analytic – TPS data measures students' observable behavior; behavior ratings are based on categories of behavior, not to be confused with survey ratings or other verbal reports.
5. TPS is communicative to parents – Daily and weekly Home Notes are linked to TPS ratings, thus summarizing students' actual performance.
6. TPS links to IEP processes. TPS automatically writes textually consistent IEP goals based on present-level performance in terms of percentages of increasing and decreasing target behaviors.
7. TPS is accessible – teachers or classroom aides with little data collection experience can successfully and accurately record TPS ratings using conveniently printed data sheets for batch data entry, or use TPS Online with its efficient browser-based access to the TPS file that has been shared in Microsoft (TM) OneDrive. If you know how to surf the net, you know how to enter TPS data!
8. TPS is systematic – TPS data measures progress as a result of the entirety of a student's support system, e.g., Behavior Intervention Plan, IEP goals, Positive Behavior Intervention Support initiatives, etc.
9. TPS is archival – TPS data for each school year are efficiently saved in the school's cloud archive.
10. TPS is standard – TPS establishes a consistent method of data collection, graphic display, and data analysis that is applicable to all behavioral interventions. As Behavior Specialists, Teachers, Principals become familiar with TPS graphs, they can apply these analytic skills to all students receiving behavioral services.