About this Research Topic

Background

Behavior-specific praise (BSP) is a low-intensity, teacher-delivered strategy that lets students know they are meeting expectations and identifies what specific behavior they did well. This acknowledgment makes it more likely the student will engage in prosocial behavior again in the future, provided they find teacher attention reinforcing. Examples of BSP would be, “Jastice, good job using the mnemonic to draft your essay,” and “Jorge, thank you for pushing in your chair, that keeps our room safer as we line up for lunch.” BSP has the advantage of clearly letting the student know what they did well and what obtained the teacher's attention, compared to general praise, such as saying, “Good job,” or “Awesome work!” which does not. Researchers have shown coaching educators (including self-coaching in the form of self-monitoring) to increase rates of BSP can be considered an evidence-based practice. The knowledge base on teachers delivering BSP to students is much smaller, however, and was classified as a potentially evidence-based practice.

More studies of teacher-delivered BSP are needed of high methodological rigor meeting quality indicators for education research, containing three or more student participants when single-case research designs are employed. For example, studies are needed that report (a) how student disability status was determined (e.g., review of active IEP where multidisciplinary school team applied federal/state guidelines to determine disability), (b) procedural fidelity (including fidelity of training provided to educators, fidelity of baseline or control conditions to show non-contamination, integrity of intervention conditions, dosage), and (c) training of intervention agents and data collectors including to what criterion they were trained and how each met the criterion (e.g., practice sessions until three consecutive were 90% IOA or higher). Only when studies are of high methodological rigor can they be considered when evaluating the knowledge base on BSP. Primarily, replication studies are needed that show the effects of BSP on student outcomes (e.g., academic engaged time, and challenging behavior). Additionally, studies are needed to test widely held assumptions that have great face validity but do not yet have empirical data to support them. Specifically, studies are needed that (a) directly compare the effects of BSP and general praise on student outcomes and (b) compare the effects of various ratios of BSP to reprimands/correction (e.g., 3:1, 4:1, 5:1) on student outcomes.

We invite contributions of methodologically sound (e.g., CEC 2014 quality indicators met) group experimental, group quasi-experimental, and single-case research designs. Studies should feature teacher-delivered vocal-verbal behavior-specific praise (general education teacher, special education teacher, paraeducator, other educators) with actual students in authentic preK-12 classrooms of any type (general education, inclusion, resource, self-contained). Students can be in general education, have a disability, or at risk for academic or behavioral challenges/disabilities based on screenings or direct observation of behavior. The dependent variable(s) for student outcomes should include academic engagement time and/or disruptive/challenging behavior. We encourage researchers to report interobserver agreement (IOA) for direct observations, obtaining IOA for >20% of sessions, averaging >80% IOA with a range not below 60%. Lastly, we encourage researchers to report student and educator social validity using a validated measure at both pre- and post-intervention timepoints.

Keywords: Praise, Feedback, Reinforcement, Behavior, Strategy, Low-Intensity, Intervention, Support, Student, Teacher, PBIS, MTSS, Ci3T

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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