The application of operant conditioning techniques in a secondary school classroom.

One high-school English teacher ran a no-frills experiment. She praised kids when they talked about the lesson and frowned when they talked off-topic or turned around.

She tracked three behaviors: disruptive talking, turning in seat, and appropriate hand-raising. The design was multiple baseline across behaviors.

Praise plus mild disapproval slashed disruption. Off-topic talking dropped to near zero. Turning around almost stopped. Hand-raising shot up.

The control class next door showed no change, so the swing was not just kids maturing that week.

Slane et al. (2021) reviewed 20 later studies and found the same thing: when teachers get brief behavioral skills training, they deliver praise and corrections with high fidelity and kids behave better. The 1969 demo is one of the single-case bricks in that wall.

Agiovlasitis et al. (2025) used the same high-school, multiple-baseline recipe but swapped praise for Pivotal Response Treatment. Their students with autism asked more questions, showing the design still works 56 years later.

Kong et al. (2022) kept the multiple-baseline-across-behaviors design but moved it to college study skills. Checklists plus feedback raised quiz scores, proving the method travels beyond disruption.

You do not need tokens, clickers, or an app. A clear rule—praise the good, correct the bad—can flip a noisy class in days. Try it during one period tomorrow: catch two on-task behaviors with specific praise and give a quiet correction for each blurting. Track for ten minutes. If the line moves, you have a 1969-approved intervention ready to scale.