School & Classroom

Using Self-Monitoring to Increase Behavior Specific Praise in Elementary Classrooms

Justus et al. (2023) · Behavior Analysis in Practice 2023
★ The Verdict

A $3 hand counter plus self-monitoring lets teachers double their behavior-specific praise rate without extra training.

✓ Read this if BCBAs consulting in elementary schools or training teachers in praise strategies.
✗ Skip if Skip if you work in non-school or secondary settings where self-monitoring is already mature.
Free CEUs

Want CEUs on This Topic?

The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.

Join Free →
→ Action — try this Monday

Hand each teacher a tally counter and tell them to click every time they give BSP during first period—graph clicks nightly.

02At a glance

Intervention
self management
Design
multiple baseline across participants
Population
not specified
Finding
positive
Magnitude
medium

03Original abstract

Teachers need simple, easy to implement, evidence-based interventions to use in their classrooms. A single-case multiple baseline across participants design was used to determine if the use of self-monitoring in isolation would increase educators’ use of behavior-specific praise (BSP). Participants tracked their use of BSP using a hand counter when they taught content area classes (i.e., science, social studies) and during a time of transition during the generalization phase. An increase in educators’ rate of BSP was seen when self-monitoring was used. Data revealed that the rate of BSP per minute was higher during the generalization phase than the intervention phase. • Cost and time efficient way to: - Teach self-monitoring - Increase staff use of BSP - Generalize use of BSP

Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2023 · doi:10.1007/s40617-023-00810-3