Assignment:
Discussion Board
In early elementary grades, it is especially common for students to talk while the teacher is speaking, call out answers instead of quietly raising their hands. During instruction and a teacher asks the class to answer a question, the target behavior is to quietly raise their hand and to speak only when prompted to, or called on. The three research-based reinforcement strategies that would be useful in this scenario are positive reinforcement, praise, and negative reinforcement.
The first method to reinforce the behavior of students raising their hand and waiting to be called on would be positive reinforcement. According to the text, positive reinforcement is defined as "any stimulus, when presented after the occurrence of a behavior that increases the future occurrence of that behavior" (Maag, 2018, p. 63). If a student calls out the answer, or speaks out of term instead of responding to the student, the behavior is ignored. Then I would pick a student who does have their hand raised quietly. Similarly, when a student does perform the targeted behavior and quietly raises their hand it is important to praise the child for performing that behavior. When a student receives praise for a behavior, they are more likely to continue performing that behavior in order to seek the approval from their teacher.
The third strategy to enforce target behaviors is negative reinforcement. Maag (20189 defines negative reinforcement, or escape conditioning, as "the process of removing a stimulus an individual finds to be aversive after that individual performs some behavior in order to increase the future occurrence of that behavior (p. 84). Negative reinforcement is demonstrated if a student is ignored because he is not raising his hand, in order to answer the question a teacher asked or to ask another question, the student will raise their hand quietly.
References
Maag, J. (2018). Behavior management: From theoretical implications to practical applications (3rd ed). Boston, MA: Cengage.