Rhode Island Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS)


The Rhode Island PBIS website has been established through the Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College, a UCEDD. This site is intended to give schools and the general public information on the PBIS movement and philosophy in Rhode Island. This site will provide capacity building information and technical assistance to schools implementing, adapting, and sustaining effective school-wide disciplinary practices. In addition, this site will also provide general resouces and information to the general public, parents, and educators wanting to learn more about PBIS, the impact it has on discipline and school-wide approaches, data-based decision making, and evidence based research.


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Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an initiative of the Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities. It is a systems approach to enhancing the capacity of schools to educate all students, especially those with challenging social behaviors, by establishing:

• Clearly defined outcomes that relate to academic and social behavior
• Systems that support staff efforts
• Practices that support student success, and
• Data use to guide decision making.

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports is a broad range of systemic and individualized strategies to achieve important social and learning outcomes, while preventing problem behavior. PBIS integrates:

• Valued outcomes
• Science of human behavior
• Validated procedures, and
• Systems change.

PBIS:
1. Is a proactive systems approach to school-wide discipline, designed to respond to current social and educational challenges.
2. Is based on three levels of prevention: (a) Primary, (b) Secondary and (c) Tertiary
3. Is not a curriculum, discipline package or product, but a process for individualized and sustained decision making, planning and problem solving.
4. Has an instructional focus where emphasis is placed on teaching behavioral expectations directly; teaching social behaviors such as academic skills; maximizing academic engagement and success; and considering the influence of instructional support.
5. Is based on empirically sound practices and applications in schools.
6. Uses data to guide interventions and management decisions.
7. Increases the contextual fit between the context of problems and what is known to work.
8. Establishes a continuum of behavior support.

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