¶ … Misbehavior in Students: Positive Reinforcement Strategies to Cope With Negative Student Behavior" Marsh Submission to Behavioral Interventions

Misbehavior in Students: Positive Reinforcement Strategies to Cope with Negative Student Behavior

This paper addresses peer praise and reinforcement as a possible positive coping strategy for teachers to employ when dealing with different forms of student misbehavior.

Misbehavior in Students: Positive Reinforcement Strategies to Cope with Negative Student Behavior

There are many reasons a student may misbehave in class. These causes may range from diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disabilities, problems in the students' homes, and students' frustrations with the structured discipline of the classroom environment. One frequently overlooked cause of student misbehavior is a student's desire for attention from his or her peers as well as adults. As with the misbehaviors designed to solicit adult attention, students may attempt to intentionally provoke their classmates in an attempt to be noticed and recognized, even only as an irritation. This can result in the problem of these disruptive students becoming even more socially isolated, as well as academically behind their classmates, or receiving attention from peers only when they become discipline problems for the teachers. (Wright, 2002)

"The best strategies for establishing acceptable behaviors are those strategies that are pro-active and preventative" of such negative behaviors on the part of students. From the first day, a teacher must strive to create as fair and a tension free teacher-student dynamic in the classroom as possible. (Watson, 2005) One way to increase classroom cohesiveness and to create a more positive attitude on the part of students towards problem classmates is to introduce a new teaching technique known as "positive peer reporting." In such a format, students are encouraged to report on the positive behaviors they see...

Students are rewarded for noting specific improvements in their peers, and noticing that their peers are meeting specific positive goals in terms of classroom performance and behavior. When the classroom has accumulated a certain number of rewards points, the class can receive a collective reward, to be determined before the peer reporting project begins, ideally at the beginning of the year. (Wright, 2002)
One of the advantages of involving students in such a collective form of behavior correction is that, when properly administered, it that it sets defined guidelines for acceptable behavior standards in all students and establishes clear rewards for adhering to those guidelines. As a form of behavioral modification, also provides consistent, positive, and reinforcing feedback to all students, from peers rather than only from the authority figure of the teacher. (Watson, 2005) Peer reporting empowers all students, rather than leaves student self-esteem in the classroom solely at the mercy of the teacher, and it acknowledges the need for children to be positively socialized in their peer group, as well as towards adults.

As delineated by the creator of the positive peer reporting strategy, Jim Wright (2002) however, there are some problems in administering the praise in a fair fashion. For example, especially if the strategy is implemented mid-year as a result of poor and attention-seeking behavior on the part of specific students, certain students can feel stigmatized. Although it may be true that many classrooms have a few specific problem students, and that the majority of infractions are committed by a select handful of students, rather than the class as a whole, choosing only a few students as particular targets for the intervention, whereby "two students in the room who appear to be socially rejected and who seek peer attention in negative ways, are selected for the teacher's "list of students to be praised…