What should Ms. Rollison know about behavior in order to help Joseph?

Transcript: Kathleen Lane (Dajè)

As you look at these different illustrations of these three different students, in each instance the teacher did exactly the same behavior. So, for Dajè, they passed out the work, and the student did it and she did a great job and she finished it quickly and accurately and was able to go on to a computer game. And in this situation she was reinforced for both the accuracy and the speed of her work. So when she completed it she was allowed to do something that was reinforcing for her, and in this case it was to play a math game on a computer.

Transcript: Kathleen Lane (Dawson)

In Dawson’s situation, this child completed the work quickly and accurately, just as in the former case, but in this instance the teacher then gave more work. Now, certainly that teacher didn’t intend to have this become a punisher. The teacher’s probably thinking, “Oh, I need to make sure that I continue to keep this child academically engaged; therefore, I’m going to give more work.” But from the student’s perspective it’s, like, “Hey, I finished this, and I did a good job and so the consequence is that I get more work.” This will shape his behavior in the future. If he’s viewing extra worksheets as a punisher then that child is likely to slow down the rate of his work completion or maybe even shape his accuracy, so he will be less likely to do it accurately because that child may want to avoid worksheets, unless those worksheets were something that the child really liked to do. If the student enjoyed doing worksheets then they may not be perceived as a punisher.

Transcript: Kathleen Lane (Cheralynn)

Now, in Cheralynn’s case, I think this is perhaps the most interesting case. When this child received her class work, she made a rude comment, and as a consequence of that comment the teacher responded by removing her from class. Now, if this behavior pattern occurred consistently in the future, then that would lead me to believe, as an outside observer, that this student doesn’t want to do the work that’s being assigned. And then we have to look at the reason why. Why is she making these rude comments so that she can escape the work? In some cases, it’s because the work is too difficult, and you’ve probably read lots of illustrations about the importance of making sure that the assignment is of appropriate difficulty level, and that is very true. If something is too hard, you’re going to work to avoid it because we’re not going to want to do things that we’re not successful with. In her situation, as she’s looking at this assignment, it could be that it’s too difficult and, therefore, she acts out to get out of something that’s too difficult. But at the same time, it may be that she’s bored with the task because it is way beneath her ability level. Let’s say you give a student geometry problems, and they’ve been successful in geometry and they’ve demonstrated mastery and you’re giving them yet another set. Those students may act out to get out because it is not interesting or it’s boring because they’ve already mastered the concept. So we as teachers really need to be careful to not only look at our behavior and how that’s influencing kids’ behavior, we really need to think about the reason why the student is responding as they are because we don’t want to unintentionally reinforce the wrong behaviors. In Cheralynn’s case, we don’t want her growing old out in the hallway. We want to make sure that she’s in the classroom and is engaged, so we need to look at this to think about why is she acting out to get out. Is it because it’s too easy, is it too difficult, or is there something more reinforcing happening in the hallway?