Behavior Management

Description of the Strategy

Behavior management is a broad term that describes a continuum of practices, routines, processes, and [Page 1205]actions that support the academic and social success of individuals or groups of students. Behavior management consists of an array of important tools for establishing and maintaining healthy, productive relationships between children and adults. When effectively and efficiently applied in classroom contexts, environments are created in which teachers can teach effectively, students can learn, socially appropriate and effective student-student and student-teacher interactions are promoted, students use effective self-management skills, and socially inappropriate or undesired student behaviors are inhibited or eliminated.

The effectiveness of behavior management is enhanced by efficient schooland classroomwide procedures that include establishing clear expectations for student behavior and systematically teaching these to students, actively monitoring students and providing consistent positive reinforcement for appropriate behavior, and responding to minor problem behaviors swiftly and consistently using a continuum of strategies to correct and discourage their emergence. The general idea is to address the matter of teaching and supporting students' use of appropriate social behavior in the same manner as teaching and supporting their successful performance of other (e.g., academic) learning tasks; that is, through systematic teaching and positive reinforcement. A number of specific strategies fit under the umbrella of behavior management, including self-regulation, positive reinforcement (social, tangible, edible, and sensory), modeling, precorrection, contingency contracting, token systems, differential reinforcement, extinction, response cost, time-out, and overcorrection.

The centerpiece of effective behavior management is establishing a clear relationship between students' behavior and the consequences that follow, known as a contingency. Thus, consequences that are reinforcing to the student are arranged to consistently follow behavior that is appropriate and desired. Conversely, behavior that is inappropriate or not desired is followed by consequences that are not reinforcing or that are experienced by that student as aversive. Clear antecedents (i.e., instructions, prompts) also should be provided to encourage the emission of desired behavior. For example, at the beginning of class, the teacher announces, “Remember to raise your hand and wait for me to respond before you speak.” When students engage in this behavior, the teacher praises their compliance and calls on them. The teacher does not recognize students who fail to raise their hands before speaking or may respond with a corrective statement (“I'm looking for students who remember to raise their hands”).

To establish an effective contingency, the teacher must provide clear directions and respond consistently and differentially to the student's behavior. Desired behavior must be followed with positive consequences and undesired behavior with no consequences or with consequences that are mildly aversive. Thus, a contingency actually is a three-term relationship, consisting of an antecedent (A) event, the student's behavior (B), and a consequent (C) event.

The goal of effective behavior management is to increase the likelihood that students will respond appropriately to antecedent stimuli without having to experience immediate differential consequences every time. This is accomplished gradually, beginning with immediate and consistent reinforcement for engaging in the desired behavior following the antecedent direction and leading to increasingly intermittent delivery of reinforcement.

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