Positive Reinforcement In The Classroom Essay

Just like Maag, has said that educators misunderstand or don’t understand at all, the concept of reinforcement, in the article “Positive Reinforcement in the classroom” by Degeling he talks about how teachers report that the use of reinforcement doesn’t work. He goes on explaining that teachers that have a successful management of their classroom, maintain clear and appropriate rules and boundaries, and that they deal with the antecedents of the students’ behavior problems. Degeling defines antecedents “as things that trigger or lead to specific behavior”. An example he gives is “boredom may be an antecedent to a child getting out of their chair and wondering around the classroom” that punishing the student is not going to deal with the problem. He listed six different

Structure the class (Degeling, 2012). As regards of positive reinforcement Dedeling quoted “Students are more likely to do things they will be rewarded for than punished for (Grossman, 2004). But unfortunately, teachers often focus more attention on punishing poor behavior, than on rewarding appropriate behavior (Martin et. al., 1999)” (Degeling, 2012). Even though positive reinforcement will probably not be effective in certain situations. That’s why it is important for educators to understand the principles of reinforcement and decide if is going to have an effect on the behavior of the student and/or students or not to have a good classroom management. Reinforces occur naturally in the classroom and maximizing their occurrence is important for a good classroom management and the positive behavior from the students. Some conditions for rewarding a behavior are 1.reward students for behavior that you think deserves to be rewarded, 2. Students need to be aware of the specific behavior that is being rewarded, 3. Your words and actions must be congruent, 4. The reward must be rewarding to the student, 5. Rewards that are spontaneous and unexpected are more powerful, and