The secret

Premack gave a group of rats free access to drinking water and a running wheel (Premack, 1959). He recorded their behavior across several minutes. Initially (at baseline), each rat spent some time drinking and some time running, but on average rats spent more time running than drinking: about 250 seconds running and only about 50 seconds drinking. Then, Premack restricted the rats’ access to the wheel: they were allowed to run only after they had drunk a certain amount of water. The rats soon learned the contingency and started drinking water in order to gain access to the running wheel. Unsurprisingly, the total amount of running decreased, because the rats now had to work to obtain access to the wheel. But the total amount of drinking increased to more than 100 seconds, as the rats now performed this behavior more often in order to gain access to the wheel. In effect, the activity of running was acting as a reinforce, and it was increasing the probability of an otherwise infrequent behavior, drinking:

S (running restricted) → R (drinking) → C (access to wheel)

Premack went on to show a similar pattern in human children (Premack, 1959). He put the children in a room that contained a pinball machine and a bowl of candy, and he recorded how much time each child spent playing pinball and eating candy. Some of the children spent more time playing pinball. Premack then restricted access to the pinball machine, allowing these children to play only after they had eaten some candy. Candy eating increased, showing that access to the preferred activity (pinball) could reinforce the less-preferred activity (candy eating). Conversely, children who preferred eating candy in the first place could be trained to play more pinball, by making access to the candy contingent on playing pinball.

Thus, in both rats and children, the opportunity to perform a highly frequent behavior can reinforce a less-frequent behavior. This idea came to be known as the Premack principle. Examples of the Premack principle abound in human life. For example, left to their own devices, most children will spend more time watching television than doing their homework. Thus, watching television is a preferred activity, and it can be used to reinforce the less-preferred activity of homework. The parent restricts television time, making it contingent on homework. As a consequence, the child spends more time doing homework than he would have done if television had not been restricted. A later extension of the Premack principle, the response deprivation hypothesis, suggests that the critical variable is not which response is normally more frequent but merely which response has been restricted: by restricting the ability to execute almost any response, you can make the opportunity to perform that response reinforcing (Allison, 1993; Timberlake & Allison, 1974). For example, perhaps you have a chore, like cleaning your room or doing laundry, that you normally detest. But if access to this activity is restricted, it can become reinforcing. If you have been studying for several hours straight, the idea of “taking a break” to clean your room or do the laundry could begin to look downright attractive. If so, you’ve experienced the Premack principle at work.

Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior New York: Worth Publishers, 2007
Mark Gluck
Eduardo Mercado
Catherine Myers
p316-317

35 lbs

Chris has lost 35 lbs.

35 lbs! Since June 6. Today is August 21, so that's 11 weeks.

I've lost weight, too, though I can't report how much since I haven't been weighing myself. At least 5 lbs, maybe more. Shorts that were too tight to wear at in June are loose now.

AND: I think I finally understand the Premack principle, which I'm certain is the basis of the VB6 diet we've both been following. VB6 is the first diet I've encountered that uses eating to reinforce not eating^* -- and it works, just as the principle predicts. I would never have guessed, even though I've been reading about the Premack principle for years. I wouldn't have guessed because until now I haven't understood the principle.

I am now thinking PP is the secret to life. (Unless response deprivation is the secret to life. Clearly I need a MOOC on radical behaviorism.)

I'll try to find time to explain tomorrow.


^* Or, more accurately, eating stuff you do like to reinforce eating stuff you don't like

10 faulty notions

William L. Heward's list:

1. Structured curricula impede true learning.
2. Teaching discrete skills trivializes education and ignores the whole child.
3. Drill and practice limits students' deep understanding and dulls their creativity.
4. Teachers do not need to (and/or cannot,should not) measure student performance.
5. Students must be internally motivated to really learn.
6. Building students' self-esteem is a teacher's primary goal.
7. Teaching students with disabilities requires unending patience.
8. Every child learns differently.
9. Eclecticism is good.
10. A good teacher is a creative teacher.

Ten Faulty Notions About Teaching and Learning That Hinder the Effectiveness of Special Education
THE JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION VOL. 36/NO. 4/2003/PP. 186-205

For what it's worth, and without having actually read the article (!), I agree strongly with Heward that numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 9 are myths.

I may agree strongly with numbers 5, 6, 7, and 10, too, once I know how Seward defines terms like "motivation" and "creative."

btw, one of my favorite books about education is Vicky Snyder's Myths and Misconceptions about Teaching: What Really Happens in the Classroom.

palisadesk explains the dead man's test

palisadesk writes:

Where I found the "Dead Man Test" useful was in goal-setting and problem solving. For instance at school support team meetings, we might be considering a 2nd grader who is always out of seat, interrupting others, fooling around. When we try to focus on specific plans of action, with measurable steps and goals, it is not unusual for for goals like "stops shouting out" to make the list.

Enter the Dead Man Test. I'm usually taking the notes, so I lead off with, What do you want to see Student X DO?

I may get another answer that describes what we DON'T want. Then I point out, '"Don't interrupt" fails the Dead Man Test. If a dead person can do it, it's not a behavior. " After some laughter we can refocus on what it will look like if the student behaves the way we want:

--stays on task for 3 minutes
--raises hand before speaking
--puts completed assignment in basket...

...and so forth. It's a matter of looking at things in terms of what you WANT to see (usually, in increments, so that you can develop the habits or skills) instead of what you DON'T WANT.

A maxim I remember from long ago is, You get more of what you pay attention to. The Morningside people make a great deal of observing and reinforcing the appropriate behaviors and study habits -- real behaviors, not "dead man" non-behaviors.

the dead man's test

For years I have puzzled over the weirdness of diets and dieting.

When you're on a diet -- when I'm on a diet -- I'm trying to not do something. Not eat ice cream, or not eat potato chips, or not take 2nd, 3rd, or 4th helpings, or not consume any one of a gazillion different things a person would happily wolf down if calories were not an issue. Conceivably, the list of things I'm trying not to eat is infinite.

This has always confounded me. Infinite notness: does that even make sense? I mean, sure, the universe is infinite and all, but does infinite notness make sense as a plan?

Say you're a human being confronting a challenge or pursuing a goal: don't you usually make a plan to actually do something?

Take a concrete step or two?

Formulate a plan of action?

Assuming the answer is generally speaking 'yes,' where do diets fit in? With a diet, the basic idea is to spend 16 hours a day not doing something, so is not doing something the plan?

Not eating junk 16 hours a day every day from now on?

Is not doing something doing something?

I find the whole thing mystifying, and I always have.

The best answer I've come up with is that not doing something isn't doing something, not really. And, as a corollary, not doing something when it comes to food is harder than doing something.

My foray into quasi-veganism seems to support my hunch, but until yesterday I had no idea what research had to say on the subject if anything.

Turns out the precision teaching folk figured it out long ago:

The Dead Man Test

The dead man test was devised by Ogden Lindsley in 1965 as a rule of thumb for deciding if something is a behavior. The need for such a test stems from the importance of focusing on what an organism actually does when attempting to understand or modify its behavior. It serves as a guideline for the identification of whether the "behavior" of interest could be performed or measurably demonstrated by a "dead man."

The question posed by the dead man's test is this: Can a dead man do it? If the answer is yes, it doesn't pass the dead man's test and it isn't a fair pair -– for example "behave appropriately 80% of lunch hour" -– then it is not a well written goal. If the answer is no, you have a fair pair. For example:

Suppose that you wanted a fair pair target behavior for "swears at peers." Let's say that you came up with the target behavior "does not swear at peers." Does this pass the dead man's test? No. A dead man could refrain from swearing at peers. What would be better? How about "speaks to peers without swearing"? This passes the dead man's test because a dead man does not have the power to speak.

Don't eat ice cream is definitely something a dead man can do.

On the other hand, Stop eating ice cream is not something a dead man can do.

sigh

I'm going to eat an apple tomorrow.

"practice each skill in isolation"

How to Survive Your College Math Class:

There is an overall pattern to learning mathematics. It applies to the structure of entire courses and it applies as well to your mastery of each of the skills you learn. You will recognize it as well if you have ever learned to play a sport or a musical instrument.

1. Practice each individual skill in isolation, under controlled circumstances, until you can do it easily and with con fidence.

2. Integrate the individual skills into sequences. Practice until you can chain skills together with di fferent variations, easily and with con fidence.

3. Practice in a realistic context, until you can deal with complete real world problems easily and with confi dence.

4. Go forth and solve real problems.

If you apply the suggestions here and make e ective use of the resources available to you (books, instructor, classmates), you are likely to suddenly find yourself doing mathematics, and maybe even liking it.

How to Survive Your College Math Class
(and Take Home Something of Value)
Matthew Saltzman and Marie Coffin
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Clemson University
Draft: August 25, 1998

There are few practices more frowned upon in public schools these days than teaching skills "in isolation." Hence: project based learning. Ed says if it were up to the schools, we wouldn't have subjects. We'd just have Subject.

Don't laugh.

They already tried it in Holland.

The end of an era for unstructured, child-centered autism therapy?

Reading about the death of Dr. Stanley Greenspan in last week's New York Times, I wondered about the future of Floor Time. This was the approach that Greenspan, a well-known child psychologist, championed as the most effective therapeutic intervention for autism--an approach I've critiqued first here and later in Raising a Left-Brain Child.

Some of Floor Time seems reasonable but obvious: a wheel re-invented time and again by those who work with autistic children--parents and professionals alike--whether or not they've ever heard of Greenspan. What do you do with a child who pays you no attention; who remains immersed in a world of his or her own? Jump into this world and follow the child's lead. Much easier said than done, of course, and therein lies the devil. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone would do what Floor Time devotees have yet to do:  start publishing lists of specific strategies that those who work directly with autistic children have come up with and found helpful?

Far more problematic are Floor Time's not-so-obvious recommendations: avoiding teacher- or therapist-centered instruction; avoiding formal structure; using a social- and emotion-based mode for interaction, language acquisition, and concept-development that flies in the face of the specific strengths and weaknesses of children with autism--depending, for example, on an ability to read facial expressions and tone of voice.

The curious thing about Floor Time is that, in both its child-centered approach, and in its emphasis on social and emotion-based learning, it strongly resembles the "whole child" Constructivist classrooms in which all too many children (neurotypical as well as autistic) are languishing.

Floor Time's biggest competitor is a behaviorist approach called ABA. It has its own problems (which I've also critiqued first here and later in Raising a Left-Brain Child), but it at least has been subjected to fairly rigorous empirical studies, has something of a proven track record, and provides the structure and direct instruction that children with autism depend on.

Who is winning this competition? In light of current trends in education, you'd think it would be Floor Time. But autism is a pretty powerful condition, and the reality of autism tends to favor ABA.

Two days ago I finally watched Temple Grandin, the movie, which concludes with a scene at the 1984(?) Autism Society of America Conference. Here an aged, bearded, unnamed psychotherapist stands at a podium, holding forth on an outdated emotional attachment theory of autism (one that could easily be the philosophical father of Floor Time). The Temple Grandin character, sitting in the audience with her mother, rises and starts talking about her own experience: all about structure, drills, being pushed by her mother and others out of her world and into the worlds of science and engineering. All heads turn towards her, and she ends up literally upstaging the bearded sage on the stage.

I thought of Stanley Greenspan then, and then I read his obituary.

(cross-posted, in a slightly different version, at Out In Left Field)

Paul Chance at Amazon dot com

Have I mentioned that I collect Listmanias?

Well, I do.

Paul Chance's list of "Reviews Written by Paul Chance" is so good I may have to start collecting reader review lists, too.^*

Here he is on Fred Jones Tools for Teaching:

The discussion of incentives is very good, but while incentives are important, I think B. F. Skinner's comment is worth remembering: Skinner said that we have to get the student to the point where he does things because of the satisfaction gained from doing them because the teacher is not going to follow the student around forever handing out smily faces. (I'm paraphrasing Skinner, but that's the idea. See his The Technology of Teaching for the exact quote.) I think part of the solution is to see to it that the student's efforts are successful most of the time. (As I say in my own book, success is the great motivator.)

The idea of building motivation through reinforcement makes sense to me.

The idea of putting kids in groups, handing them an open-ended project to do, and assuming they are now motivated because they're active learners not passive vessels makes no sense at all.


^* He has a Listmania, too!

incentivizing, charting & kids in differentiated instruction classrooms

re: Allison's post "How to Incentivize Them," I'm digging out from under & have just come across a study of coaches using self-charting to incentivize a swim team. The kids on the team were ages 16 to 19.

The present study was composed of two experiments aimed at solving the problems of competitive swimming coaches who described their team's attendance and work rates as poor and irregular. ...All behavioral applications were conducted in the on-going environment by the coaches themselves.

Attendance at training was poor and irregular. Apart from not attending, swimmers sometimes arrived late and left early and in some instances did not enter the water. ...The coaches had attempted to enforce rules of attendance and participation in training. These were implemented by simply stating the rule conditions. ...These attempts failed to improve swim-practice attendance.

The coaches were also concerned with the effect and amount of swimming being done in practices where traditional coaching methods were employed. For the most part, swimmers followed identical programs of work and were directed and encouraged in their efforts by the verbal commands of the coaches. Quite often, swimmers were subjected to arbitrary delays while they waited for further direction. These delays severely reduced the swimmers' work loads and gave them time to behave inappropriately by leaving the water, interfering with others, etc. These behaviors further reduced the productivity of the training session.

The traditional coaching procedures also seemed to reduce the effectiveness of the coaches. They were required to function as directors and supervisors who regulated the swimmers' pool usage. Attempts were made to control inappropriate behaviors. As a result, the coaches were forced to spend less time in more suitable roles, such as improving stroke techniques and attending to individual demands.

Self-administered reinforcing systems appear to possess behavior maintenance possibilities (Glynn, 1970; Malott, 1971). Self-recording techniques modified classroom studying and talking-out behaviors (Broden, Hall, and Mitts, 1971) and academic achievement (Glynn, 1970). In normal subject applications, self-reinforcement procedures have generally been shown to be as effective as experimenter-determined contingencies (Bandura and Perloff, 1967; Kanfer and Duerfeldt, 1967; Marston, 1967). Two studies appear to have direct bearing on the problems involved in this investigation. Hall, Christler, Cranston, and Tucker (1970) demonstrated that being on time for class contingent upon the posting of names on the classroom bulletin board effectively reduced the number of late arrivals in a required classroom situation to almost zero. Rushall and Pettinger (1969) reported that self-recording on "program boards" increased the work output of competitive swimmers in training as much as did deliberate coaching procedures aimed at inspiring greater productivity.

Santogrossi, O'Leary, Romanczyk, and Kaufman (1973) reported that self-evaluation procedures failed to reduce disruptive behaviors in adolescent boys from a psychiatric hospital school. They indicated that the supportive studies for the value of self-reinforcing contingencies generally have used normal subjects and have been conducted only over brief periods of time. Their investigation was undertaken over a longer period than the above referenced studies, and they cautioned about generalizing the evidenced short-term effects of self-reinforcement to longer-term situations. Since the present study attempted to provide permanent solutions to two behavior problems, this caution could be clarified by the evidenced outcomes.

[snip]

This study involved the use of publicly self-recording attendance to reduce attendance problems in a competitive swimming team.

[snip]

The members of the Shannon Heights Sharks competitive swimming team from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada served as subjects. The team, composed of 16 boys and 16 girls, whose ages ranged between 9 and 16 yr, practised eight times per week in a 25-yard pool.

[snip]

A large waterproof display board was constructed, on which each swimmer could indicate his/her cumulative attendance at practice. Spaces were also provided for the recording of each swimmer's present and best attendance records. Prominent spaces were reserved for the posting of the names of those who had the best records. During the experimental conditions, each swimmer indicated attendance at practice by entering a check-mark in the appropriate space. A swimmer who did not satisfy the conditions for attendance had his/her total accumulated checkmarks removed.

[snip]

The measurements were the number of absentees, number of late arrivals, and the number of swimmers leaving early. All interobserver reliabilities were 100%.

[snip]

Under attendance board conditions, the number of absentees was reduced by 45%,. Late arrivals were reduced by 63%, and early departures were completely suppressed. Post checks indicated that the attendance board remained effective in controlling the problems of attendance.

[snip]

DISCUSSION

The attendance board conditions were effective in the overall reduction of the problem behaviors associated with attending swimming training. The group as a whole was enthusiastic about the use of the boards. Many swimmers who had valid excuses for being absent attempted to arrange substitute practices on Sundays and early mornings. After 11 months of use, the record number of consecutive attendances was in excess of 130.

[snip]

The swimmers recorded their own attendance. Two senior squad members supervised the board and its use. Apart from the initial introduction of each experimental condition, the coaches were required to do little in the experiment. Occasionally, after practice they remarked on the progress of individuals. They were relieved of the bothersome task of checking attendance. The procedures demanded that the swimmer focus his/her attention on the task of self-recording. This served as a form of knowledge of progress as the number of consecutive attendances accumulated. The recording procedure was always undertaken with the team in close proximity. The possibility for vicarious reinforcement existed. The various performances of individuals drew a number of reactions from the gathered members. Peer and coach reactions were primarily positive approval and recognition. It was not possible to locate one single event as the reinforcer in this situation.

[snip]

EXPERIMENT II

This study involved the use of publicly self recording training-unit completion to increase work output in a competitive swimming team.

[snip]

A number of reactions to the program boards were gathered. Most of the swimmers in the club appeared to prefer the use of the program boards to the previous coach-directed form of control. One girl, however, stated: "I don't like them. They make me work too hard." A striking incident demonstrated another girl's preference for using the boards. During the reversal procedure, when the board had been removed from her pool lane, she demanded to swim where there was one. When this request was refused, she left practice and did not return for two days.

[snip]

After 12 months, the contingencies were still in effect and the behaviors generated in the study still evident. It would seem that the characteristics of publicly self-recording performance progress in both work output and attendance is a durable reinforcing process.

EFFECTS OF SELF-RECORDING ON ATTENDANCE AND PERFORMANCE IN A COMPETITIVE SWIMMING TRAINING ENVIRONMENT
THOMAS L. MCKENZIE AND BRENT S. RUSHALL1
JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS
1974, 73,199-206 NUMBER 2 (SUMMER 1974)

The little girl who went on strike because they took away the charts raises a question for me.

Do kids in differentiated instruction classrooms get enough feedback / positive reinforcement?


applications of behavior analysis to human performance in various sports

case study

The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of "Writer's Block" (pdf file)
Dennis Upper
Veterans Administration Hospital, Brockton, Massachusetts
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1974, 7, 497 NUMBER 3 (FALL 1974)

Gilbert Highet on competition

Amy P pointed me to Gilbert Highet's The Art of Teaching, which has a number of passages on Jesuit education:

The Jesuits, who worked out in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one of the most successful educational techniques the Western world has seen, used the spirit of competition very strongly and variously. They treated it not as a method of making the boys learn, but as a way of helping them to learn by bringing out their own hidden energies. As well as pitting the best individual pupils against each other, they used the technique familiar to modern leaders of mass meetings, and balanced groups against groups, half the class against the other half, teams of six against each other, and finally the whole class against another class slightly more or less advanced. They got the best boys to challenge each other to feats of brainwork which would astonish us nowadays. A top-notch pupil would volunteer to repeat a page of poetry after reading it only once; another would offer to repeat two pages. (The Jesuit teachers paid the greatest attention to the development of memory. Even their punishments were often designed to strengthen the memorizing powers, making a late or lazy pupil learn a hundred lines of poetry by heart, and the like.) A group of specially gifted boys would challenge another—always under the smiling, flexible, encouraging, but canny Jesuit supervision—to meet them in debate on a series of important problems, and would spend weeks preparing the logic, the phrases, and the delivery of their speeches. Perhaps the fathers overdid it, although we do not seem to hear of nervous breakdowns among their pupils. Certainly they made more of the spirit of competition than we could possibly do nowadays. Yet that was part of the technique which produced Corneille and Moliere, Descartes and Voltaire, Bourdaloue and Tasso. No bad educational system ever produced geniuses.

It is, then, the teacher’s duty to use the competitive spirit as variously as possible to bring out the energies of his pupils. The simple carrot-and-stick principle does not work, except for donkeys. Really interesting challenges are required to elicit the hidden strengths of really complex mind. They are sometimes difficult to devise. But when established, they are invaluable. It is sad, sometimes, to see a potentially brilliant pupil slouching through his work, sulky and willful, wasting his time and thought on trifles, because he has no real equals in his own class; and it is heartening to see how quickly, when a rival is transferred from another section or enters from another school, the first boy will find a fierce joy in learning and a real purpose in life. In this situation—and in all situations involving keen emulation—the teacher must watch carefully for the time when competition becomes obsessive and the legitimate wish to excel turns into self-torture and hatred. Long before that, the competition must be resolved into a kindlier co-operation.

The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet
p. 131-132

This reminds me of something I once read about race horses.

are we having fun yet? discipline in a constructivist classroom

Mary Damer & Elaine McEwan on the other problem with constructivism:

Research supports the underlying thesis of our problem-solving process: the heart of successful behavior management is good instruction. Effective teaching becomes an even more essential variable for managing student behavior when one or more of the following conditions is present: (a) a student has a particularly chaotic home environment, (b) a student’s learning problems are extensive and complex, or (c) a student’s behavior is especially impulsive.

If Carla, the fourth grader who was constantly in your office last year poses no problem in fifth grade, chances are that her teacher this year is more skillful. If you observe Carla, you are likely to see her current teacher employing teaching methods that reflect the most valid research practices. Whenever you have a teacher on your staff who is complaining that a student who posed no problems last year is now a noncompliant rule-breaker, take a close look at that teacher’s instructional methods. You may find important clues to the student’s sudden misbehavior in the quality of the teacher’s instruction.

Instructional practices derived from specific curriculum designs can also directly affect student behavior. Many of the constructivist curricular innovations of the past 10 years that were created to develop hands-on cooperative learning, and student-centered environments often produced unintended results for children who are distractible, impulsive, or less motivated toward school.

Consider the following observation notes based on a classroom observation of two sixth graders in a math class. [NOTE: the two 6th graders she mentions here are the two children having behavior problems, and for whom the behaviorists have been called in]

The students are seated five to a table. They are manipulating small blocks into patterns in order to invent a method of multiplying fractions. Only two students in the class appear to have understood the concept. Other students in the class seem confused and frustrated. The teacher is unable to assist the students who are having difficulty and still monitor the other students. The instant she pauses to provide assistance to one table of students, a craps game begins on the other side of the room with several students exchanging pennies for the blocks they are now flicking across a finish line. One of the two referred students is walking around the classroom, seemingly to avoid the assigned task; the other unmanageable student has lined up his blocks like a train.

The frustration and lack of structure engendered by this activity have created multiple, predictable triggers to unmanageable behavior. No behavior intervention plan will succeed in a classroom where the assigned task is as frustrating as this one is, and the activities are as unstructured as these activities are.

Managing Unmanageable Students: Practical Solutions for Administrators
by Elaine K. McEwan & Mary Damer
p 13-14

note: "the last 10 years"

The book was published in 2000.

Twenty years of hands-on collaborative group learning.

A friend of mine was saying the other day that the hottest major in the college where she teaches is Communications.

I wonder if those two facts are related in any way.


CNN: 10 most popular majors
Niki Hayes on classroom discipline

meet the parents, part 2: classroom discipline

Robert Pondiscio has a post up about James Rogers' tantrum on the subject of parents & kids.

What, then, has made the Nevada education system go from good to average to less than average since the 1960s when Nevada's high schools won multiple awards for being the best in the nation....The state of K-12 education in the state of Nevada is where the public - that is you out there - has allowed it to sink. Your only relationship with the education system is to ship your unprepared kids to school not with the expectation of success, but with the demand that an education system, inadequately funded, develop and/or repair children that you as a parent did not prepare for school or support while your children attended school.

And so on.

Teacher Anne's response caught my attention:

I have been a teacher for 35 years. When I started teaching, the children I taught were eager to learn, respected me, and other adults, had manners, and worked hard. Now, I have children who do not do homework, who have no bedtimes, who talk back, who have little or no desire to actually get an education, and who do not understand the values of hard work or accountability.

I've been thinking about classroom discipline lately.

It seems to me that all students should be entitled to attend cheerful, orderly schools.

Period.

A cheerful, orderly school should be the bare minimum.

So, assuming that kids today really are more difficult to deal with (I don't doubt it), schools have to adapt. It's that simple. Teach the kids you have.

Someone else may have a better idea, but my thinking is that schools need to hire behaviorists to perform functional assessments of student behavior, create positive behavior plans for students who need them (regardless of whether those students are or are not "classified"), then teach teachers how to use the plan -- and support teachers while they're learning.

Since Palisadesk has told us that ed schools no longer teach classroom management (which seems to be the case), it falls to public schools to provide this training, which mean teachers must have real "professional development" when it comes to classroom management. By "real" I mean a person like Mary Damer who comes into the classroom, directly instructs teachers in how to keep a group of kids on task & well mannered, and supports the teacher while he or she is mastering the skills involved.

The behaviorist should also help administrators develop a school-wide plan for hallway, restroom, and playground calm, as well as for orderly and efficient trips to the principal's office.

Basically, I think schools should forget about hiring "school psychologists" and get into the business of hiring school behaviorists. We'd all be a lot better off.

Last but not least, students whose difficulties can't be managed by one teacher heading one classroom without help should be taught in smaller classes elsewhere in the building. That classroom, too, should be cheerful and orderly -- and this I know schools can do because my two autistic children have been taught in cheerful orderly classrooms by teachers who know what they're about.

Of course, that's not what's happening. I've heard from teachers who have worked in urban schools where children with severe behavior problems were kept in classrooms on the orders of central administration. Neither the teacher nor the building principal had the authority to remove these children, who in some cases were so violent and erratic that all learning stopped and classmates lived in a chronic state of stress and fear.

Such policies -- the teacher called them "radical inclusion" -- are unethical.

Students should be entited to attend school in a cheerful and orderly environment, and the people who are responsible for creating and sustaining that cheerful and orderly environment are the grownups in charge.


the parents

Which brings me to the parents.

Yes, in the best of all possible worlds children would have two-parent families in which Mom and Dad see eye to eye and the kids go to bed on time at night.

But we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, and there are limits to what a parent can do from home to control his child's behavior at school.

Special ed parents are always dealing with this. I remember talking to a mom who was working as an aide in her developmentally disabled daughter's special needs school. The daughter had all kinds of behavior problems in addition to delays (ditto that), and every time the child acted up in school the teacher would pick up the phone and telephone the mom, who was in another part of the school dealing with another child in another classroom. She'd get these calls all day long! Finally she finally told the teacher, "I am here, I'm not there. I can't do anything about my daughter's behavior over the telephone."

Of course schools should be pow-wowing with parents and working together with them on behavior issues if possible. But even when you have competent parents who are doing their best, the fact is that nobody trains parents, either, and because we parents are our own bosses, it can sometimes take a while to realize we're on the wrong track. At least, that has happened to me at times. "The bad gets normal," as Temple says: when problems develop gradually, you don't notice them. Instead, the new bad situation becomes the new normal. The parent may not even realize there is a problem.

That can happen with kids and families, and I know it's happened to me.

The point is: the school has to be responsible for student behavior while students are at school.

Whatever it takes.

The 80% Commandment

The relationship between students’ accuracy with schoolwork and their subsequent behavior is described by the 80% Commandment: “Thou shall not expect a student to do a learning task when he or she does not have the skills to complete the task with 80% success. Otherwise, that student will either act out or tune out.” Today’s frustrated students who lack basic skills most often respond by acting out.

Managing Unmanageable Students
Elaine McEwan-Adkins & Mary Damer

Tattoo that to your forehead.


constructivism as masked aggression
the 80% rule

help for the afflicted, part 2

I've launched my anti-procrastination project this summer, and have just this afternoon made a major discovery: Scrivener has a progress bar! (source: Wine on the Keyboard)

This isn't a great photo of it, meaning you may not be able to see, from this image, how reinforcing this thing is.

I'm trying to get a revision of my book proposal started, which means I'm in Writer Hell, so I set 500 words as my "Session target" (a reasonable goal) which meant that I could see progress at once.

The reason I haven't posted a Screen Grab of my own highly reinforcing "Project Target" icon is that it disappears the minute I open Screen Grab.

Also in the category of riveting computer problems: I can't log onto flickr anymore, although I can still upload photos from my Desktop for some unknown reason.

These are the kinds of distractions the "Project Targets" progress bar was designed to defeat.

I love Scrivener. Love it, love it, love it. I wrote all of Temple's (2nd) book on it, and I have everything in ONE Scrivener Project: all the drafts, all the research, all the interviews --- plus all my ktm stuff, which is a whole lot of stuff.

I love Scrivener so much I'm going to try to see if I can get C. to use it. Thus far, he's been resistant.

Oh, well. He may have to wait until school life gets a whole lot more painful to see the beauty of this thing.


bonus points

I just noticed this comment under the "writer's paradise" post:

For longer blog articles scrivener is a god send. It tends to be a little overkill for shorter ones.

(off topic, you write about apple and just now found out about scrivener? What next, iPhoto?)

Scrivener
Scrivener - A Writer's Paradise
help for the afflicted, part 1
procrastinating chickens (the perils of long-duration behavior)
Piers Steel's meta-theory of procrastination
"Structured Procrastination" by John Perry

U = E x V / I x D

Steel developed the equation U = E x V / I x D, where U is the desire to complete the task; E, the expectation of success; V, the value of completion; I, the immediacy of task; and D, the personal sensitivity to delay, as a way of mathematically mapping a given individual's procrastination response. So, for example, my desire to finish this article is influenced by my relative confidence in writing it well and the prospect of a paycheck as well as a looming deadline and my inherent desire to go home at the end of the day. "You're more likely to put something off if you're a very impulsive individual," Steel says. But, "if you only work at the last minute, time on task tells."

Of course, this does not explain why humans would procrastinate in the first place, but it is certainly not a new problem. The Greek poet Hesiod, writing in 800 B.C., averred "a man who puts off work is always at handgrips with ruin" and the divine incarnation Krishna singled out procrastinators for special scorn in the Bhagavad Gita. Nor does it explain why procrastination seems to be on the rise--afflicting as many as 95 percent of students and at least 15 percent of adults, according to two recent surveys.

Why Do Today What You Can Put Off Until Tomorrow
by David Biello
Scientific American
January 15, 2007

Hah!

I can tell you exactly why procrastination is on the rise.

projects

Projects are long-duration behavior. Everyone procrastinates long-duration behavior, even chickens. Maybe especially chickens; who knows? Turn K-12 into 13 years of project-based, collaborative learning, et voilà! Epidemic levels of procrastination! This generation will emerge from high school suffering the customary math phobia, and on top of that they'll have writer's block and chronic problems with procrastination and time-management.

Once they're all settled into lifelong therapy and/or AA, we'll need a whole new slew of child-centered reforms to fix the schools.


Procrastination Central

Zig and Don Crawford on motivation, Rule 1

Rule 1: Always assume that there is a basis in evidence for the conception the students have about schoolwork and specific actions. If students behave as if the word-attack part of the lesson is aversive, there is a basis in fact for their belief. The word-attack portion of the lesson has become aversive to them. The solution is to find out why and correct it.

Fixing Motivation Problems
by Zig Engelmann & Don Crawford
Direct Instruction News Fall 2007

angry wife of administrator

from palisadesk

angry teacher

I think we should invite this man to join our Karen Pryor club.


see also:
yelling doesn't work

Thank You, Karen Pryor

After hearing Catherine talk about Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, I decided it was time to give it a go. (I gotta say, Catherine, your recommendations are usually spot on.)

My local library didn't have it, but I was able to track it down via state-wide interlibrary loan. This is actually a good thing -- normally, I can buy a book or get it from the library, and then I put it off and never really get to it. But -- interlibrary loan! No renewals! Get cracking!

I started it this morning during my warmup on the treadmill, and only got about 10 pages in before I started running and it got too bouncy to read. Finished up, checked in with the family, wasn't thinking about it, then went to go take a shower.

Once in the shower -- BAM!

I got it.

When I'm depressed, I engage in "retail therapy," and I'm training myself to be depressed. When I'm nervous, I eat treats, and I'm training myself to be nervous.

What am I training my kids to do? What am I training my husband to do?

Catherine -- if you set up a discussion group, I am so in.


(This, admittedly, may seem a bit simplistic. But it was quite the "aha!" there in the shower.)