Positive Reinforcement in Schools: Logic and Application

Special thanks go to the Editors of Beyond Behavior for allowing us to guest edit this special issue focused on the effective use of positive reinforcement for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Having both taught in self-contained classrooms for students with EBD, we are acutely aware of the power and necessity of positive feedback with students whose histories are rife with failure and negativity. Still, despite overwhelming and in our view, inarguable evidence of positive reinforcement’s positive potential, myths regarding its ineffective or even counter-productive nature continue to resonate in educational circles. While there are one or two purveyors of this faulty notion that have been particularly responsible for our most recent frustrations (and the impetus for this issue), we have also found that slivers of misinformation permeate the majority of schools. These faulty notions are what we counter with science and logic in this series of articles.

We see reinforcement not merely as an educational tool, but as a ubiquitously profound principle of behavior. What is technically known as reinforcement is simply a description of an acknowledgment for positive behavior, for the purpose of making such positive behavior more likely to occur again in the future. When a student behaves correctly we may acknowledge such with praise, such as “good job.” But even this most simple version of positive reinforcement has been the target of myths suggesting such statements actually have the potential of harming students’ self-perception and motivation (Kohn, 2001). To put this in perspective, when someone holds a door for us, the social convention is to thank that person. We believe that nobody worries that this acknowledgment will make the person less likely to hold doors in the future. So the purpose of this special issue is to clarify a simple universal logic for considering when and how to use reinforcement under a variety of circumstances.

We kick this off with a simple question: what are the behaviors (outcomes) we wish for our students if they are to maximize their probability for future success? Lest we fall into the faulty trap of purporting that the ends justify the means, let us add to the question a notion of student dignity. That is, it is not just what may make the student successful, but what can affect this outcome in a manner that also maximizes the student’s self-worth, independence, and dignity. This clearly rules out any interventions involving physical or emotional pain, and, for the sake of argument, let us say it also eliminates tangible reinforcement, that is, no toys, food, goodies, and so on. We submit that the evidence is clear that positive student outcomes in terms of both dignity and behavioral success are maximized by the use of positive reinforcement. But once we rule out tangible reinforcement it may be that school personnel are not familiar with other more instructionally relevant options. We wrote the lead article in this issue to tackle this basic logic and to provide logical responses to these most common myths.

In the second article, George Sugai and Brandi Simonsen discuss a full array of applications of reinforcement for students with challenging behavior. They provide a context for considering function of behavior and describe the application of instruction and reinforcement for such function-based replacement behaviors. Following this, the third article by Todd Whitney and Kera Ackerman provides a review of research-based methods for the delivery of positive feedback during instruction. They describe how positive reinforcement can be constructive in helping students to build knowledge from instructional engagement with teachers.

The fourth and fifth articles provide a focus on age-oriented populations. First, Jessica Hardy and Ragan McLeod provide an overview of special considerations for the effective use of reinforcement procedures with young children. They describe the unique considerations necessary with this special population and provide a decision-making flowchart to guide practices. Next, Todd Haydon, Meredith Murphy, Shobana Musti-Rao, William Hunter, and Jason Boone describe unique considerations in applying positive feedback to older students. They focus on some more systemic strategies for the delivery of reinforcement, including the Good Behavior Game, positive peer notes, and Tootling.

As a final piece, two of our field’s most distinguished elder-scholars, Mike Nelson and Jim Kauffman, provide a summarizing commentary. They discuss a history of issues related to positive reinforcement and pontificate on both the nature of myths in education and how we must continue our commitment to science.