Scenario:
You are an eighth-grade biology teacher who recently started a unit on dissection. You are
concerned about the behavior of one of your students, Brian. Brian is not well liked and is
generally ignored by his classmates. He frequently disrupts other students and uses the
dissection equipment incorrectly. You decide to observe Brian’s behavior over the course of
the next few days, record your observations on an A-B-C chart, and look for patterns to the
antecedents and consequences to Brian’s behavior. On the first day, you notice that Brian
pokes his classmate Alicia right as she’s about to use her forceps to lift the frog’s hind leg.
Alicia, upset, yells at him to “Stop it” and engages in an argument with him. A few minutes
later, you spot Brian spinning his dissection knife on the table right as Alicia’s about to cut
into her frog with a scalpel. Worried that he’s going to hurt himself, you rush over to talk to
him and take the dissection knife away. Brian tells you that he doesn’t want to dissect the
frog and considers it animal cruelty. You allow him to watch the dissection without
performing it himself.
A-The class is getting ready to dissect a frog
B-Brian pokes his classmate Alicia
C-She yells at him to stop and argues with him
A-Brian is spinning the scalpel on the table
B-Brian doesn’t want to dissect the frog
C-He is allowed to watch the dissection instead of participating
