Your Student Is Hungry, Tired, Angry—Now What? Addressing Distal Setting Events in the Classroom

When student behavior problems persist despite effective classroom management and vary in intensity depending on factors outside of teacher control, teachers are often left feeling discouraged and ineffective (Clunies-Ross, Little, & Kienhuis, 2008). Teachers may know how to handle behavior problems associated with classroom-based antecedents (i.e., events that occur immediately before, or "trigger," challenging behavior) and consequences (i.e., events that occur immediately after, and reinforce, challenging behavior; Borgmeier, Loman, & Strickland-Cohen, 2017) but not those affected by events that took place hours before the student came to school. In these cases, understanding and intervening on behavior problems based solely on their immediate antecedents and consequences may be less effective. One productive way of addressing these out-of-school factors, and returning a sense of control over student behavior, is to view them as "distal setting events" (Alberto & Troutman, 2013). This article explains the concept and how to address distal setting events in the classroom.