Self-Management – Steps and Examples

Unlike typically developing children, children with ASD do not develop self-management skills easily (Koegel et al., 2001). Self-management involves six key steps (Koegel, Koegel, Harrower et al., 1999; Koegel, Koegel, Hurley, & Frea, 1992) to be followed by the instructor:

1. Describe the desirable behavior in terms that are measurable and objective.
2. Help the student choose rewards that are reinforcing to him or her.
3. Decide on a method of collecting data that is appropriate (e.g., age, cognitive abilities) for the individual.
4. Teach the student to self-monitor his or her behaviors with the assistance of the adult, then independently.
5. Move from external self-monitoring to internal (i.e., the student no longer physically records data regarding the behavior).
6. Collect data to determine if the student maintains behavioral improvements.

The goals of teaching a student to self-monitor are to allow him or her to independently identify appropriate behaviors, distinguishing them from inappropriate behaviors, and self-reinforce those behaviors, as well as recruiting natural reinforcement from the environment (Baer, Fowler, & Carden-Smith, 1984; Koegel et al., 2001; Todd, Horner, & Sugai, 1999).

Mr. A taught Shantelle to use self-monitoring to increase the number of small-group directions she followed. First, he defined small group direction following as, “whenever the teacher tells a group of students to perform an action, Shantelle will do it immediately (within 5 seconds).” He and his group of five students, including Shantelle, practiced what following directions looked like as they were singing songs. They also talked about what it looked like when students were not following directions. Mr. A gave Shantelle a sheet of paper that had color photos of what it looked like when she was following directions (e.g., she was doing the same thing as the other students) and when she was not (e.g., she was sitting while the others were standing; she was not facing the teacher while the others were).

Given several choices, Shantelle decided she wanted high-fives for following directions and to ultimately earn free time on the computer. Next to her chair in group, Mr. A placed three jars, one full of marbles, the other two empty and labeled, “followed direction,” and “didn’t follow direction,” respectively. Also attached were the pictures that were on her direction-following sheet. Whenever Shantelle followed a direction in a song (e.g., “stick out your tongue,” “nod your head”), she held her hand up for a high-five from Mr. A and moved a marble to the “followed direction” jar; she put one in the other jar when she did not follow a direction. At first, Mr. A had his own marbles and collected data with Shantelle and double-checked her self-monitoring. When their numbers matched, she earned two extra marbles. The self-monitoring procedure was slowly faded by increasing the number of marbles needed to earn free time. Mr. A also collected data to determine if Shantelle was generalizing the skill of following directions independently to other tasks (e.g., physical education, social skills instruction).