Behavioural science in education

Question 1

What is PBS and what does it involve?

Answer 1

Positive behaviour support.
Positive, preventative approach (proactive).
Assessment and reengineering of environments that brings about reductions in problem behaviours and subsequent increase in prosocial behaviours.

Question 2

What is school wide PBS and what does it involve?

Answer 2

Universal prevention strategy.
Operational framework for improving student academic and positive outcomes through creating supportive learning environments.

Question 3

What type(s) of framework is school-wide PBS?

Answer 3

Operational and decision-making framework.

Question 4

What does it mean to be an operational and decision-making framework?

Answer 4

Guides practitioners in selection and implementation of procedures shown in science to be the most effective for improving academic and behaviour outcomes for students.

Question 5

What are the 6 guiding principles of SW-PBS?

Answer 5

1. Uses scientifically based behaviour and academic interventions and supports.
2. Data based decision making.
3. Environmental manipulations
4. Teach and encourage prosocial behaviours and skills.
5. Implement evidence based practice with a high degree of fidelity (and accountability on the part of the teachers)
6. Monitor student performance and progress continuously.

Question 6

What kind of teaching and learning environments does SW-PBS produce?

Answer 6

Less reactive, aversive, dangerous, and exclusionary.
More engaging, responsive, preventative, and productive.

Question 7

What does SW-PBS improve? (4 points)

Answer 7

Classroom management and disciplinary issues.
Supports for children with additional learning needs.
Academic engagement and achievement.
Staff satisfaction, self-efficacy, and retention.

Question 8

What is the SW-PBS model?

Answer 8

A multi-tiered intervention decision-making model.

Question 9

What does primary prevention involve? And who are they effective for?

Answer 9

Universal supports based on science. Implemented to all students in the school and also relevant to staff.
School-wide expectations; consistent, positive culture; clear understanding of consequences.
Effective at reducing problem behaviours for about 80% of students.

Question 10

What does secondary prevention involve and who does it work for?

Answer 10

Specialised group systems for students with at-risk behaviours (small groups; focused work).
Meets the needs of about 15% of the 20% that primary prevention is ineffective for.

Question 11

What is check-in-check-out and what is it an example of?

Answer 11

Secondary prevention in SW-PBS. Children have a short checklist of behavioural expectations for the lesson which are marked off at the end by the teacher; reinforcement procedure provided if they meet expectations.

Question 12

What is tertiary prevention?

Answer 12

Specialised, individualised systems for students with high-risk behaviours. Typically involves a functional analysis that informs following proactive and consequence-based strategies.

Question 13

What kind of learning culture do schools using primary prevention tend to have?

Answer 13

A more positive learning culture.

Question 14

How is consistency of expectations achieved in primary prevention? (3 things)

Answer 14

Teaching matrix.
Acknowledge behaviour.
Consistent consequences.

Question 15

What is a teaching matrix?

Answer 15

Specifies system rules applied by all staff across all settings in the school; clarifies the rules.

Question 16

What do token economy systems involve? What are the 3 steps?

Answer 16

Using token economy boards to motivate students.
1. Specify target behaviour
2. Tokens (e.g., stickers) awarded on completion
3. Stickers are traded for a back up reinforcer.

Question 17

What are tokens a form of?

Answer 17

A conditioned reinforcer: initially neutral items with no reinforcing properties but that become reinforcing through classical conditioning. Tokens often accompanied by praise.

Question 18

What was the first recording of token economy in scientific research?

Answer 18

Alien & Azrin (1961): chronically ill patients in psychiatric hospital.

Question 19

Why are tokens thought to be effective?

Answer 19

They function as conditioned reinforcers.
They can also serve a bridge in time between the correct response the child provides and receiving the back up reinforcer at the end – i.e., helps with sustaining motivation with a learning task.

Question 20

What did Barrish, Saunders & Wolf (1959) create/demonstrate in their seminal paper?

Answer 20

The good behaviour game – essentially a group format of token economy.
Effects of individual contingencies for group consequences on disruptive behaviour in a classroom.
Class divided into 2 teams and received points for talking/being out of their seat; those with the fewest points would earn a prize. Played in short bursts.

Question 21

What is the good behaviour game?

Answer 21

Essentially a group format of token economy.
Effects of individual contingencies for group consequences on disruptive behaviour in a classroom.
Use a classroom management system with interdependent group contingency: whole group rewarded for positive behaviour by its individual members.
Played in short bursts of 10-30mins.

Question 22

What is interdependent group contingency and what is it used for?

Answer 22

When the whole group is rewarded for positive behaviour by its individual members.
Used to promote prosocial behaviour and decrease problem behaviour.

Question 23

How did Kellam et al. (2011) demonstrate the long-term benefits of the good behaviour game?

Answer 23

Follow-up of children exposed to the game for 1yr in 1985, now aged 19-21.
Found that those who received the game had significantly lower levels of drug use, alcohol use disorders, smokers, examples of delinquency, prison, suicide ideation - compared to those who had not played the game.

Question 24

What is precision teaching used for?

Answer 24

Improving academic attainment in a typical subject areas (or any behaviour in which they are lacking).
Can be used to monitor progress.

Question 25

What are the 2 steps of precision teaching?

Answer 25

1. Identify problematic areas of learning.
2. Daily practice arranged by the teacher involving teaching fluency, testing, monitoring.

Question 26

What is Maths Recovery?

Answer 26

Developed in Australia in the 1990s. Intended as a tool for intensive individualised numeracy teaching for children who were at risk (far below attainment of numeracy skills expected given time in school).
5 developmental stages with progressive levels of sophistication.

Question 27

What was the problem with Maths Recovery and what was one adaptation that followed?

Answer 27

It was too complex to be appropriate.
Ten-DD is an adaptation.

Question 28

What were the adaptations of Maths Recovery for TEN-DD?

Simplifying …
Doing … of breaking down …
Providing suggestions for … and …
Providing …
Providing suggestions for …

Answer 28

Simplifying teaching instructions.
Doing task analysis of breaking down complex skills into smaller components.
Providing suggestions for prompting and prompt fading.
Providing mastery criterion.
Providing suggestions for generalisation so children could use skills outside of the original teaching situation.

Question 29

What is TEN-DD and what is is an example of?

Answer 29

Teaching Early Numeracy to children with Developmental Disabilities.
An example of/based on systematic instruction.

Question 30

What are the (8) key features of systematic instruction?

Answer 30

1. Defining the skill and setting a mastery criteria.
2. Accurate and regular assessment - data based decision-making
3. Task analysis
4. Repetitive teaching (often discrete trial teaching)
5. Consistent teaching.
6. Specific prompting and error correction procedures recommended.
7. Positive reinforcement (operant conditioning).
8. Teaching procedures explicitly and accurately documented.

Question 31

What is repetitive/discrete trial teaching?

Answer 31

Teaching so that there is ~10-12 learning opportunities per minute.
Children work in short, intense bursts over a 3-5min period.

Question 32

What is Headsprout Early Reading and what does it involve?

Answer 32

An example of a teaching programme incorporating systematic instruction.
Online programme.
80 episodes.
Non-readers to Year 3 (age 7-8) level.
Individualised and adapt according to errors or fluency.
Incorporates reinforcement procedures.

Question 33

How does Headsprout Early Reading adapt to children’s errors and fluency?

Answer 33

If child is struggling: increases level of intensity of prompts and simplifies instructions.
If a child is doing well: increases complexity of instruction; speeds up responses that the child is expected to make.

Question 34

How many episodes (and how long are they) of Headsprout Reading Comprehension are there and what do they teach?

Answer 34

50 online episodes, each 30mins.
Teach the 4 main components of reading comprehension: literal, inferential, summative, derived meaning.

Question 35

what is literal, inferential, main idea/summative, and derived meaning/vocabulary comprehension?

Answer 35

Literal: looking and finding the fact.
Inferential: where an answer is not explicitly stated in the text but have to look for clues in the text.
Summative : taught how to identify what a passage is mostly about.
Derived meaning: taught to be able to identify the meaning of a word from the context of the words that come around it.

Question 36

Teaching children to vocalise what strategy they will use during tasks in Headsprout Reading Comprehension offers the opportunity for …?

Answer 36

For teachers to prompts them if they were going to use the wrong strategy.

Question 37

What did Masden et al.’s (1968) study on classroom management reveal about the effects of rules, ignoring appropriate behaviours, and showing approval of appropriate behaviours reveal?

Answer 37

Rules had no effect.
Ignoring inappropriate and showing approval for appropriate were very effective in improving classroom behaviour.

Question 38

Who wrote the paper “behind the schoolhouse door: managing chaos with science skills and strategies” (A Guide to Classroom Management: A scientific look at education)?

Answer 38

Glenn Latham (1997).

Question 39

What did Latham summarise findings based on?

Answer 39

Observations and interviews in schools over 16yrs of over 1000 teachers in 252 schools (1980-1996) throughout the US and 14 other countries.

Question 40

What were the main negative findings from Latham (1997)?

Answer 40

Almost without exception, teachers reported frustration and anger at how poorly they had been trained at university and how ill-equipped their training was for setting them up to effectively manage student behaviour.

Question 41

What 2 key features did Latham (1997) say created an effective learning environment?

Answer 41

Effective methods of instruction – those demonstrated by research to be effective (where precision teaching, using token economies, etc. comes in).
Management of student behaviour – using the 8 skills generated from years of data collection.

Question 42

What are Latham’s 8 proposed skill/abilities for teachers?

Answer 42

1. Teach expectations.
2. Get and keep students on task.
3. Maintain a high rate of positive teacher-to-student interactions.
4. Respond non-coercively to inappropriate behaviour that is consequential.
5. Maintain a high rate of risk-free student response opportunities.
6. Serve problem-behaviour students in the primary learning environment.
7. Avoid being trapped.
8. Manage behaviour scientifically.

Question 43

What does Latham’s “teaching expectations” involve?

Answer 43

Reasonable.
Clearly understood.
What is expected - no ambiguity.
Consequences for meeting/failing to meet expectations.
Maximum for 4-5 expectations for any one time.
Taught formally and situationally.
Framed instructively rather than prohibitively.

Question 44

When it comes to teachers using evidence-based behavioural strategies, what does Latham recommend? (5 things)

Answer 44

1. Communicating your expectations.
2. Ignoring inconsequential behaviour.
3. Selectively reinforce appropriate behaviour (differential reinforcement).
4. Stopping then redirecting inappropriate behaviour immediately.
5. Applying consequences (clearly and consistently).

Question 45

What does it mean to teach formally and situationally?

Answer 45

Formally: set up practice and role-play for the taught skills.
Situationally: teachers and staff ensure children have the opportunity to practice skills in the place they would occur.

Question 46

What does Lathams “get and keep students on task” involve?

Answer 46

Be quick to avoid distraction.
Be active.
Interact.

Question 47

What did Latham find regarding his skill “maintaining positive teacher-to-student interactions? (positive learning environments)”

Answer 47

90% of appropriate behaviour went unrecognised and teachers were 2-5x more likely to pay attention to inappropriate behaviour.

Question 48

What did Latham’s intervention for maintaining positive teacher-student interactions/a positive learning environment show?

Answer 48

Beginning of the year = 80% of children deemed necessary to receive special education; ratio of 34:9 negative-positive interactions.
Intervention: teachers taught to reverse their approach.
After training = 4:167 negative-positive comments ratio.
Next school year = number of students classified as developmentally delayed and in special education reduced to 11%.

Question 49

Which approaches should be avoided and which maximise success regarding maintaining a high-rate of risk-free student response opportunities?

Answer 49

Using failures and mistakes as teaching tools should be avoided.
Learning/teaching needs to be pitched at a level where the child is feeling successful and not at risk of ridicule or criticism for errors.
Approaches based on behavioural science maximise success: e.g., precision teaching, systematic instruction, discrete trial teaching.

Question 50

What does removing a child from the classroom indicate?

Answer 50

Lack of effective behaviour management system.

Question 51

What are 8 coercive classroom management ‘traps’ based on conventional wisdom?

Answer 51

1. criticism
2. sarcasm (mocking a student)
3. threats (if you don’t…)
4. questioning (why did you…)
5. logic (reasoning with students)
6. arguing
7. forcing (physical or verbal)
8. despair (showing hopelessness)