Premack principle, often referred to as Grandma's law, describes how individuals will perform an arduous or undesirable activity if given access to a desirable activity after the completion of the original task. Premack discovered that highly preferred restricted activities in and of themselves can be reinforcing when preceded by activities that…

Classroom management can be a significant challenge for teachers, especially novice teachers who report classroom management as their highest need for professional development. School districts are often left with the burden of providing such professional development but typically need more time and resources to provide extensive coaching. There…

This exploratory study extends the literature on teachers' stress and self-efficacy in relation to behavior management. Sixty-six middle and high school teachers' use of praise and reprimand during a 20-min observation, in the general education setting, were examined. Following the observation, teachers completed stress and self-efficacy scales,…

Without effective support, students with disabilities experience more exclusionary discipline and benefit less from classroom instruction. Students with disabilities can benefit when teachers implement key classroom positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) practices (e.g., prompts, opportunities to respond, and specific praise), but…

In this article, we introduce behavior-specific praise as a portable, feasible strategy for teachers and families to increase student engagement as well as to decrease off-task and disruptive behaviors in a variety of environments. We provide step-by-step guidance to illustrate how behavior-specific praise can be used by teachers during in-person…

A tremendous amount of evidence supports the importance of building relationships between educators and students (Kincaide et al., 2020). Because of this, there is an emerging focus in both research and practice on how student-teacher relationships are assessed, the impact of these relationships on student outcomes, and methods for building and…

This study addressed teacher perspectives of behavior management in the post-virtual learning classroom. The problem that was addressed was the decline of middle school student classroom behavior compared to the pre-pandemic classroom, which is crucial for educators due to its influence on the quality of teaching and learning. The purpose of this…

Effective use of classroom management practices is critical to creating positive classroom climates supporting students' academic and behavioral outcomes, and teachers in rural areas have a strong need for training in classroom management. One classroom management practice with significant support is behavior-specific praise (BSP). Research shows…

Research has demonstrated that behavior specificity is a salient characteristic of teacher praise efficacy. Praise variety may also be an important characteristic to reinforce desired student behavior based on research about the quality of reinforcers. In this study, we used an alternating treatments design to examine the effects of varied and…

This article provides a conceptual framework for using fixed-interval praise delivery in the educational setting. Fixed-interval praise delivery can be conceptualized as an antecedent-based strategy that disrupts the natural behavior to contingency relationship in a four-term contingency model (Establishing…

The quality of the relationship that develops between a student and teacher has been connected to pivotal instructional and behavioral outcomes for students. The student-teacher relationship can specifically be harnessed to reduce minor behavioral infractions. However, it is an element of the learning environment that is often overlooked. This…

The present study evaluated the effects of two reinforcement contingencies on teacher use of behavior-specific praise (BSP) in the classroom. An alternating treatments design was used to compare the implementation of both an independent and interdependent contingency to increase frequency of BSP delivery. Four general education elementary school…

Explicit training is needed to support pre-service teachers in use of preventive behavior management strategies including behavior specific praise. This descriptive demonstration focused on a training process in universal prevention strategies, specifically behavior specific praise, to improve pre-service teachers' use of classroom management…

Teaching elementary students how to read is undeniably crucial, yet a substantial number of children encounter difficulties despite early interventions (NCES, 2022). Cross-age tutoring, a pedagogical approach that pairs older students with younger peers, emerges as a cost-effective solution that brings academic and social benefits to both the…

Professional development for educators is often not evidence-based and insufficient to improve classroom management skills. Video-analysis has been shown to be effective at improving pedagogy of classroom teachers. We expanded on prior literature by using an early childhood general education teacher. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was…