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Exploring Mid-Level Teacher Use Of Behavior-Specific Praise And General Praise, Catherine Anderson

Curriculum and Instruction Undergraduate Honors Theses

Behavior-specific praise (BSP) is an evidence-based classroom management practice that can be used to increase desired behavior and decrease undesired behavior. Teachers use general praise (GP) more frequently even though it has proven to be less effective than BSP. This study extends previous research on frequency behavior-specific praise in mid-level classrooms. The expected outcome was that mid-level teacher rates of BSP would be much lower than GP. The proposed research questions include the following: What are middle school teacher’s rates of general praise vs. behavior-specific praise? Do teachers deliver behavior-specific praise more frequently to individual students or groups of students? …