Decreasing Inappropriate Use of Mobile Devices in Urban High School Classrooms: Comparing an Antecedent Intervention With and Without the Good Behavior Game.
Adding the Good Behavior Game to a phone-drop box keeps high-schoolers off their screens and on task.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Teachers in an urban high school tried two ways to stop phone use.
One way was a clear box where students placed phones at the start of class.
The other way added the Good Behavior Game: teams earn points for ignoring phones.
The study flipped between the two ways each day to see which worked better.
All students were general-education ninth-graders with no diagnoses.
What they found
Clear box plus Good Behavior Game won.
Kids looked at their phones less and paid attention more.
The plain clear box helped a little, but the game made the big change.
How this fits with other research
Marini et al. (2014) already showed GBG cuts off-task behavior in high-school special-ed math.
The new study moves the same idea to general-ed classes and targets phones instead of talking-out.
Jones et al. (2019) used a different group contingency and also slashed phone use.
Both papers give the same message: group rewards beat solo rules for teens and devices.
Joslyn et al. (2019) narrative review says GBG keeps working when you tweak it; this tweak is one more proof.
Why it matters
If you run high-school sessions, layer a quick team game on top of any phone-collect routine.
Two minutes of points and praise beats nagging.
Try it Monday: box in, teams set, reward = five extra minutes at break.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
As the capabilities of portable technology continue to advance and become more accessible, educators express concern about the impact of the inappropriate use of mobile devices on academic engagement and learning. An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of an antecedent (Clear Box) intervention and an interdependent group contingency (Clear Box + Good Behavior Game [GBG]) intervention to typical classroom management techniques (Control) in increasing the academic engagement and decreasing mobile device use of high school students during instruction. The results indicate an increase in academic engagement and a decrease in the inappropriate presence of mobile devices in both classrooms with the implementation of the Clear Box + GBG, as compared with the Clear Box and Control conditions. In addition, teacher and student social validity data suggested that teachers and students viewed the Clear Box + GBG intervention favorably. Discussion focuses on contributions to the current literature, implications for practice, and suggestions for future areas of research.
Behavior modification, 2019 · doi:10.1177/0145445518764343