Positive Reinforcement in The Canadian School System

 In recent years, schools all over North America are starting to focus more on positively reinforcing good behaviour rather than negatively reinforcing bad behaviour, such as skipping school, missing assignments and disrupting classes. This is being achieved through programs such as First Step where students are positively reinforced for good behaviour, like completing assignments, instead of receiving positive reinforcement for bad behaviours, such as skipping school. (Sprague & Perkins, 2009) However, students are receiving reinforcement not only in school from educators, but also at home from parents or from other students. This creates an issue; any intervention implemented in school may be overcome by outside forces. In order to eliminate student’s negative behaviours, the education system needs to not only shift to programs that use positive reinforcement but also investigate environmental factors that may be giving positive reinforcement for negative behaviours.

When a child is acting out in class it causes not only the teacher grief but also hinders the learning of other students in the room. Acting out can refer to any number of activities such as defying the teacher’s authority, speaking out of turn, or distracting other students. When teachers react by removing the student from class or giving detention, they can, in fact, positively reinforce the negative behaviour because they give the student attention or allow for escape from class. When these punishments act as positive reinforcers it makes the problem behaviours worse. This cycle is difficult to break, but in a study done by Ayllon and Roberts in 1974 they found that by teaching kids good academic skills, like reading or paying attention, disruptive behaviour can be curbed and even stopped (as cited in De Martini-Scully, Bray and Kehle, 2000). Children learn to read naturally in their academic career, therefore it makes sense to use these simple skills as alternative behaviours to ones such as speaking out in class or acting aggressively toward other students. Instead of receiving a positive reinforcement like attention for a negative behaviour, students are rewarded for these alternate behaviours. In a study conducted by De Martini-Scully, Bray and Kehle in 2000, three girls around elementary school age were studied. All three demonstrated disruptive classroom behaviour, mostly defiance of the teacher. The intervention implemented began with a token economy with mystery reinforcers. A token economy is where tangible reinforcers are given for behaviour such as points or stickers, they can then be traded for back-up reinforcers such as free time or other special privileges. However in this case the reinforcers remain hidden in hopes of increasing probability of responses (De Martini-Scully, Bray and Kehle, 2000). The girls were instructed to follow the classroom rules, if they did, they received a token. Three tokens allowed the girls one reinforcer that was hidden until given. After a period of withdrawal, where no reinforcers were given, the teacher was able to move to simple verbal praise for adherence to classroom rules. This study found that even verbal reinforcement, which is easy to administer and causes few distractions to other students, is enough to maintain a child’s positive behaviour. By turning these essential skills into opportunities for positive reinforcement, teachers can not only eliminate problem behaviours in the classroom but also find new and effective teaching methods.