Teachers and students: Reflections on social control and future performance.
Shift control from your praise to the subject itself—plan the fade or students stay hooked on adult approval.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Baer et al. (1984) wrote a think-piece, not an experiment.
They asked: how do we move kids from working to please the teacher to working because the subject itself matters?
The paper maps a planned path: start with social praise, fade to the built-in payoff of correct answers.
What they found
The authors found nothing new in data—they built a roadmap.
Their core claim: unless you shift control from teacher attention to math facts, book plots, or lab results, students stay dependent on adult approval.
How this fits with other research
Macdonald et al. (1973) and Scull et al. (1973) ran early classrooms that proved the idea works. L showed self-monitoring keeps kids on-task after stickers stop. J showed letting children set their own goals beats teacher-only rules.
Latimier et al. (2019) extended the roadmap to kids with ASD. Their nine-stage pairing and fading sequence is the 1984 plan in action: move from adult-led play to full DTI while problem behavior stays low.
Manabe (1990) counts how much teacher praise is actually tied to on-task behavior. That metric helps you see when social contingencies are still in charge and when the worksheet itself has taken over.
Why it matters
You already fade prompts—now fade the reason for responding. Start with “Great job!” but quickly tie praise to accurate answers. Then let the score, the story, or the finished equation become the reinforcer. Your data sheet can track who is working for you and who is working for the task.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
To instruct consists of arranging controls between teacher, student, and subject matter. Initial controls must emanate from the teacher since those of the subject matter are minimal, crude, or missing. Teachers mand students to behave in certain ways with respect to a given subject matter. Eventually, however, the teacher must transfer the teacher mediated and managed control of the student to natural controls functioning directly through student interaction with the subject matter. Difficulty in doing this occurs due to the reinforcers for both student and teacher derived from social contact. Nevertheless, the student eventually must be taught to interact with the subject matter independent of teacher involvement if the student is to maintain effective contact with the subject matter beyond the period of formal instruction.
The Behavior analyst, 1984 · doi:10.1007/BF03391896