Proactive ideas and strategies to help teachers, childcare workers, administrators, afterschool care and parents effectively work with children who have or have not been diagnosed with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder), ADHD, and ODD. This site is about advocating for positive and collaborative methods that encourage and celebrate diversity and best practice! Changing beliefs and attitudes from one of deficit to one of strength with an emphasis on children achieving their personal best.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT MAY BACKFIRE!
This post is in response to an inquiry received from one of the teachers that attended a New Zealand seminar. The question was in relation to a couple of students who would become very silly when they received positive feedback from their teacher. One of the areas that I cover in the seminar is centered on positive feedback for students who may react negatively when a teacher or authority figure tries to give them positive verbal reinforcement. Sometimes children may feel uncomfortable when given positive reinforcement and in turn may resort to exhibiting inappropriate behaviour. Refer back to the notes on positive reinforcement and starting to give feedback using the "third person labelling on the fly" where the teacher labels the behaviour but does not indicate whether it is positive or negative. Once the students are comfortable with this type of feedback move on to stopping at their desk and again using third person labelling. Depending on the age of the students you can also use "praise cards" or "check cards" on their desk to let them know they are doing good work. Not giving it too much attention. Work up to providing second person labelling and then positive reinforcement. Phillip Hall in his book "Educating Oppositional and Defiant Students" can also provide some good information for strategies. If anyone else has ideas, feel free to comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
We have launched our ONLINE SCHOOL
One of the biggest issues that I hear about from teachers and caregivers is the behaviour of the children or youth in their school, program ...
-
Contingency mapping is a new type of visual support strategy that has not been reported in the research literature to date (Brown, 2004). Co...
-
Teachers are continually being asked to do more, more, more within their classrooms. The lack of resources, funds and people are making i...
-
I always look at and read many of the articles that come out on www.edutopia.org . The website has a ton of excellent information regarding...
1 comment:
I have used positive reinforcement in the Retail and Wholesale work environment and the school-room (where I have retired to) and would have to agree with your view. Often + feedback needs to be appropriate to the individual person and situation at the time. Empathy with the person's situation is crucial to + reinforcement being sucessful. That's my two cents worth.
Post a Comment