When teachers use more praise and fewer reprimands in the classroom, it seems to help students stay on-task and behave better, according to a new study.
“The higher the teachers’ [praise to reprimand ratio], the higher the students’ on-task behavior percentage,” Paul Caldarella, a professor of counseling psychology and special education at Brigham Young University, wrote in a report published last week in the journal Educational Psychology.
In a randomized experiment, Caldarella and his team spent three years observing teachers and students in 151 K-6 classrooms in Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah. Half the teachers were asked to do what they normally do; the other half used a classroom management system that reinforces social skills with praise, as their main management tool.
