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INSTRUCTIONS, FEEDBACK, PRAISE, BONUS PAYMENTS, AND TEACHER BEHAVIOR 1
Author(s) -
Harris V. William,
Bushell Don,
Sherman James A.,
Kane John F.
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1901/jaba.1975.8-462
Subject(s) - praise , payment , reading (process) , staffing , psychology , merit pay , principal (computer security) , center (category theory) , mathematics education , medical education , pedagogy , social psychology , computer science , incentive , nursing , medicine , political science , law , chemistry , crystallography , world wide web , microeconomics , economics , operating system
The study was conducted within a training and demonstration center for teachers from several different school districts. The teachers staffing the center were employees of the host school district who volunteered to serve in the center. Unfortunately, these volunteers did not always use the program materials appropriately and therefore did not always provide clear models for visiting teachers. In particular, four of the volunteer teachers did not always instruct their students from the appropriate reading text, even when encouraged to do so by the principal of the school in which the center was located. Various procedures were employed to alter this situation. The experimenter, (associate director of the training and demonstration center) provided instructions, feedback, and praise regarding use of the appropriate reading text. These procedures had clear effects with only one teacher. Then, merit or bonus payments were provided for teachers who used the appropriate reading text for criterion periods of time; a procedure that was very effective with all four teachers. The problem worked on in this study is typical of those faced by workers in public institutions where change cannot be brought about by the researcher's authority. All teachers in the present study had the necessary skills to demonstrate accurately the prescribed program procedures, but they did not always do so until the bonus payment was used. Although the bonus payment procedure might be inappropriate in some school situations, the procedure could easily be adjusted to accommodate the established practices of many schools. For example, establishment of explicit performance criterion and use of in‐service stipends for meeting criterion performance during school hours, rather than attendance at meetings after school, might well be comparably effective.