Teachers’ use of approval and disapproval in the classroom

Since the 1960s, researchers have been demonstrating the power of teacher behaviour on the behaviour of both individual students and whole classes. Behavioural research and demonstration studies, carried out over the past 30 years or so, have consistently shown that teacher behaviour may be a powerful influence on the behaviour of both individual students and whole classes (see, for example, the classic studies by Becker et al. (1967); Madsen et al. (1968), and Thomas et al.1968).Although such research was initially pioneered by behaviour analysts working in special education contexts, it has subsequently been clearly and unequivocally demonstrated, in a variety of educational contexts and settings, that such key teacher behaviours as contingent approval and disapproval may be systematically employed by teachers so as to increase both academic and appropriate social behaviours and to decrease inappropriate behaviours. (See, for example, Merrett (1981), Merrett and Wheldall (1987a, 1990), Wheldall and Merrett (1984, 1989), and Wheldall and Glynn (1989), for reviews of such studies.) Consequently, it has become somewhat of a truism to advise teachers experiencing troublesome or inappropriate classroom behaviour to employ contingent praise strategies in order to encourage more appropriate behaviour (Merrett and Wheldall 1990; Wheldall and Merrett 1989). Moreover, the adoption of the principles of reinforcement originally developed by behaviour analysts in special education settings into the ‘canon of teaching’ leads many teachers to assert, when instructed on effective deployment of teacher approval and disapproval, ‘But we do that already’.But how far is this, in fact, the case? Do teachers really selectively employ contingent approval or praise in order to reinforce desired classroom social behaviours? Or, when praise is given, is it employed in a non-contingent, unsystematic way? Do teachers even use more praise than reprimand?.