Classroom Management

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Classroom Management the Power of Positive
Reinforcement A How To Guide

• Caroline Wallace
• University of Southern Maine

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Content

• Classroom management
• Guidelines for positive classrooms
• Reinforcement Ratios
• Best practices for praise
• Pulling it all together
• Expectations
• Teaching Teachers to Praise

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Classroom management

• Classroom behavior support practices should be
  blended with SW-PBS systems.
• Classroom practices should promote academic
  behavioral gains.

• You should create a setting that is
• Predictable
• Consistent
• Positive
• Promotes student independent behavior (reduce
  prompts)

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Key Tenets of Instruction

• Vary modes of instruction
• Pacing
• Goals
• Opportunities for student response
• Student feedback

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Instruction influences behavior

• Behavior is functionally related to the teaching
  environment.
• Continuum of reinforcement
• Environmental management
• Much teacher praise is reactive to and under
  the control of student behavior rather than vice
  versa. (Brophy, 1981)

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Establish a positive environment

• Begin each period with a celebration
• Your 1st comment to a child establishes
  behavioral momentum
• Interact positively once every 5 minutes
• Maintain strong praise/correction ratio
• Provide multiple paths to success/praise

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Establish multiple strategies for acknowledging
behavior

• Appropriate
• Social, tangible, activity, etc.
• Frequent vs. infrequent
• Predictable vs. unpredictable
• Immediate vs. delayed

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Examples of Positive Consequences

• Contingent use of breaks, privileges
• Access to special activities
• Contracts and token economies

• Teacher praise
• Demonstrations of teacher approval
• Points (leading to privileges and rewards)

• Mystery awards
• Public recognition (class-wide and school-wide)
• Parent contact

• Menus (store, list of reinforcers)
• Various combinations of reinforcers

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Establish strategies for acknowledging behavior

• Errors corrections

• Handling minors majors

• Contingent
• Specific
• Brief

• Follow procedures
• Businesslike efficient
• Pre-correct for next occurrence
• Look for an opportunity to reinforce

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A refresher on behavior
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Behavior is maintained by

• Attention
• Access to/escape from activities or tangibles
• Power/Control

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Goals of Behavior
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3 Cs of Self-EsteemR. J. Rethemver
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Praise

• Positive evaluations made by a person of
  anothers products, performances, or attributes,
  where the attributor presumes the validity of the
  standards on which the evaluation is based.
• Complex social communication
• Praise vs. Feedback

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Types of praise

• General

• Behavior Specific

• Students are given an approval but the behavior
  is not specified.
• Good job!

• Teacher specifically identifies the behavior for
  which the student is being praised.
• Jon, I like the way you are sitting quietly and
  listening.
• Key Elements
• Name of student
• Positive statement with specifics

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Praise is.

• Instructional (academically based)

• Managerial (socially based)

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Evidentiary Support

• As early as 1968, research has evidenced an
  inverse relationship between teacher praise
  disruptive behavior of students.
• 1970s vs. 1990s
• More praise for instructional than managerial
  (Beaman Wheldall, 1998)
• Research supports consistent low rates of praise
  in both general special education classrooms
  (Keller, Brady, Taylor, 2005)

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Evidentiary Support

• Correlation between teacher praise and on-task
  behavior of .63 (ages 5-7) and .41 (ages 7-11)
  (Swinson Harrop, 2001)
• Praise increased student motivation, accuracy of
  responding task persistence. (Keller, Brady,
  Taylor, 2005)
• Levels of on-task behavior were significantly
  greater when praise for behavior given, versus
  general praise.
• (Chalk Bizo, 2004)
• Effective for all populations
• Students with emotional/behavioral disorders
• College students
• Schoolwide Cascade Elementary School, Atlanta,
  GA

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Praise Ratios

• 5 Positives to 1 Negative

• Gottman research conducted on positive-negative
  interactions in marriages
• 90 accuracy in prediction rate
• Hart Risley study on interactions between
  parents children vocabulary IQ

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Reflection

• What is your ratio of positives to negatives in
  your classroom?

• How can you change the ratio?

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Competing Thoughts

• Keeping track of numbers can be tedious How do I
  remember and is there enough time in the day?
• Many educators believe that students learning
  should be maintained by natural consequences, not
  artificial rewards.
• Historically we praise intelligence because we
  believe it fosters self-esteem.
• Teachers may be already utilizing other systems.
• Teachers are reacting to behavior vs. feeling
  in control.

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Success is a process
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Process vs. Person Praise

• Process Praise

• Person Praise

• Strategy/effort-oriented
• Acknowledges student for what they have
  accomplished through practice, study,
  persistence, good strategies

• Trait-oriented
• Focuses on student as a whole or global traits
• Innate ability

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Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

• Fixed mindset

• Growth mindset

• Intelligence is a fixed trait
• Seek tasks that prove their intelligence avoids
  those that might not
• Effort threatens their status

• Intellectual ability is developed through effort
  education
• Enjoys challenge
• Effort is a positive thing!

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Dweck et al. studies

• Type of praise teaches students to make
  inferences about their ability vs. effort.
• Students value performance vs. learning
  opportunities.
• Response to failure linked to attributions of
  ability or effort.
• Noted impacts on task persistence, enjoyment,
  performance, reporting scores.

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Examples

• Process Praise

• Person Praise

• It was a hard, long assignment, but you stuck to
  it and got it done. You stayed at your desk, kept
  up your concentration, and kept working. Thats
  great!

• You got them all right. You are really smart at
  math!

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Best Practices for Praise

• Authentic
• Specific
• Contingent
• Individualized
• Varied

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Authentic

• Genuine, efficient, and effective
• Positively stated in a sincere tone of voice

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Specific

• Specify explicitly what positive behavior the
  student has performed

• Clean
• Relates to specific behavior, no buts

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Contingent

• Delivered immediately after the target behavior
  has occurred

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Individualized

• Respect students preferences for public vs.
  private recognition
• Culturally sensitive
• Developmentally sensitive

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Varied

• Celebrate different contexts
• Effort, progress, achievement, choices
• Diversity, similarity
• Vary words used to avoid monotony
• Include individual, group, and whole class
  acknowledgment

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A note about mistakes

• Students need to know how to handle constructive
  criticism when they make mistakes. 
• We all make mistakes!
• Embrace capitalize on mistakes
• Sharing supports individual group confidence

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Pulling it all together

• Become ego architects

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Focus on the behavior

• People who fly into a rage always make a bad
  landing.

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Expectations

• The primary variable in the classroom is the
  teacher.
• The only behavior in the classroom that the
  teacher can control is their own.
• Treat everyone with respect
• If you act like you dont like them, then it
  doesnt matter how much you like them.
• If you act like you like them, then whether you
  like them at all becomes irrelevant.

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Considering expectations

• Awareness of diverse students
• Behaviors most often criticized are successive
  approximations of desired behaviors
• In order to increase opportunities for praise you
  may have to adjust expectations, HOWEVER
  long-term it will foster increased outcomes
  (Flora, 2000)

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Consider
What student behavior do you value? How is the students behavior acknowledged? Is recognition benefitting student, group, or whole class?


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Strategies for increasing praise

• Peer coaching
• Self-evaluation
• Teach students to recruit teacher praise
• Specific strategies

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Peer Coaching

• Observing a colleagues lesson providing
  feedback assistance based on the observation.
• Conditions most useful
• Structured observations using objective
  descriptive recordings of teacher behaviors
• Training peer coach to reliably code teacher
  behaviors
• Debrief set goals

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Self-evaluation

• Checklists

• Video-taping instructional behavior

• Audiotape instructional language

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Self-assessment tool www.pbis.org
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Teach students to recruit praise

• Direct instruction on how, when, how often to
  ask for help or show work.
• Strategies
• Modeling
• Role-play
• Error correction

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Strategies to consider
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Case ExampleSutherland, Copeland, Wehby (2000)

• Raise your hand when you are finished with your
  math practice and I will collect your work then
  Id like you to get out your journal and begin
  writing on todays topic. Mrs. Johnson waits by
  her desk and watches as her students finish their
  math practice and transition into language arts.
• Six minutes later James completes the last
  problem on his practice, checks to make sure that
  his name is on his paper, and raises his hand.
  After collecting two other students papers, Mrs.
  Johnson makes her way over to James and takes his
  paper while observing Mikes progress. James
  reaches into his desk, removes his journal, and
  begins writing on todays topic, My favorite
  meal is He writes two paragraphs and waits for
  his classmates to finish.
• After a couple of minutes he sees Mike, two rows
  over, asking a classmate how to spell
  spaghetti. James jumps from his seat and makes
  his way to Mikes desk, saying s p a g
• James! Mrs. Johnson is not happy. Who gave you
  permission to get out of your seat?

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Case Example continued

• If Mrs. Johnson wanted to use praise more
  effectively, 1st she would determine what level
  of behavioral skills James is able to exhibit.
• Mastered complete assignment, raise hand, begin
  journal
• Difficulty during down time James has
  difficulty sitting in his seat
• (2) strategies
• Avoid down time
• Catch James when he is in his seat James, I like
  the way you are sitting patiently.

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Final Thoughts
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References

• Beaman, R., Wheldall, K. (2000). Teachers use
  of approval and disapproval in the classroom.
  Educational Psychology, 20(4), 431-446.
• Brophy, J. (1981). Teacher praise a functional
  analysis. Review of Educational Research, 51,
  5-32.
• Burnett, P.C. (2001). Elementary students
  preferences for teacher praise. Journal of
  Classroom Interaction, 36(1), 16-23.
• Chalk, K. Bizo, L.A. (2004). Specific praise
  improves on-task behavior and numeracy enjoyment
  A study of year four pupils engaged in the
  numeracy hour. Educational Psychology in
  Practice, 20(4), 335-351.
• Craft, M.A., Alber, S.R., Hewardm W.L. (1998).
  Teaching elementary students with developmental
  disabilities to recruit teacher attention in a
  general education classroom Effects on teacher
  praise and academic productivity. Journal of
  Applied Behavior Analysis, 31(3), 399-415.
• Dweck, C.S. (2007). The perils and problems of
  praise. Educational Leadership, 34-9.
• Flora, S. R. (2000). Praises magic reinforcement
  ratio five to one gets the job done. The
  Behavior Analyst Today, I(4), 64-69.

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References

• Kamins, M.L. Dweck, C.S. (1999). Person versus
  process praise and criticism Implications for
  contingent self-worth and coping. Developmental
  Psychology, 34(3),835-847.
• Keller, C.L., Brady, M.P., Taylor, R.L. (2005).
  Using self-evaluation to improve student teacher
  interns use of specific praise. Education and
  Training in Developmental Disabilities,40(4),
  368-376.
• Mueller, C.M. Dweck, C.S. (1998). Praise for
  intelligence can undermine childrens motivation
  and performance. Journal of Personality and
  Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52.
• Selected information from Technical Assistance
  Center www.pbis.org
• Sutherland, K.S. Wehby, J.H. (2001). The effect
  of self-evaluation of teaching behavior in
  classrooms for students with emotional and
  behavioral disorders. The Journal of Special
  Education, 35(3), 161-171.
• Sutherland, K.S., Wehby, J.H., Copeland, S.R.
  (2000). Effect of varying rates of behavior
  specific praise on the on-task behavior of
  students with EBD. Journal of Emotional and
  Behavioral Disorders, 8(1), 2-8,26.