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Behavior-Specific Praise

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Teachers of students with or at risk for emotional or behavioral disabilities (EBD) face countless stressful professional challenges throughout their careers. Students with EBD are being scattered amongst General Education classrooms and can often exhibit behavioral changes in which many teachers who have not had proper training or experience in managing may find overwhelming. One strategy to help maintain engagement and reduce behavioral challenges in a classroom that includes students with or at risk for EBD is to increase the rate of Behavior-Specific Praise (BSP). Offering students praise in the form of a statement which explains which acceptable behavior they are being praised for can enhance the student’s ability to remain on task and engaged in classroom activities and discussions. Professional development in the area of BSP is necessary in developing teachers who are more prepared to effectively face the challenges of having students with EBD. Many strategies have been suggested for training teachers in the use of BSP, each with different methods of presenting the information to educators. The researchers in this study believe that further training in BSP is needed in order to produce positive …show more content…

The percentages of on-task behavior were averaged out in order to produce a correlation between teacher rates of BSP and the student engagement, and the majority of the findings produced a strong positive increase in on-task behaviors as BSP was increased. Teachers were asked, following the study, if the training they received was useful. Teachers reported that the likelihood of continuing to utilize the BSP strategy was high, and that they would be reporting the positive results in their classrooms to their colleagues as well. A more interesting response from teachers was that, despite the effectiveness of BSP, they found it difficult to execute the

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