Andijon davlat chet tillari instituti ingliz tili nazariy aspektlari kafedrasi chet tillarni o

Decreasing inappropriate behavior in the classroom 
It is unfortunate but true: Many teachers — perhaps most — misuse punishment to eliminate inappropriate 
behavior in the classroom when being punitive is not even necessary.
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 A common classroom scenario is when 
a teacher sees some students behaving appropriately and, at the same time, observes others engaged in 
inappropriate, rule-breaking behavior. Instead of “catching” the students behaving appropriately and 
reinforcing them for following the class rules and doing assigned work, the teacher scolds the misbehaving 
students and warns that they will be punished with serious measures if they continue. Informed, effective 
teachers know that punishment is not the first intervention needed to decrease inappropriate behavior in the 
classroom, and this section describes some of the most effective, research-proven inappropriate-behavior-
reduction techniques available to all educators. 
Differential reinforcement techniques 
Instead of immediately using punishment, the first interventions to try when a teacher observes inappropriate 
student behavior consistently occurring in a classroom are the differential reinforcement techniques. These 
include 
differential reinforcement of low rates of behavior
(DRL), 
differential reinforcement of other behavior
(DRO), and 
differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior
(DRI).
DRL 

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This procedure involves reduction of an inappropriate student behavior that occurs far too frequently, and 
the goal is to reduce it to a level that is typical of most others in the classroom who behave appropriately 
most of the time. Talking without teacher permission, for example, is often used along with DRL. A 
student can talk without teacher permission once or twice a period, but to do so twenty-five times a period 
is unacceptable. The intent of using DRL in this specific situation, therefore, would be to lower the average 
number of times a student talks without teacher permission to an average of once or twice a period. 
The teacher discusses with the student that she or he is talking too much without raising his or her hand 
for permission, and shows the student the measurement chart that the teacher used to keep track of the 
naturally occurring state of the student talk-outs (i.e., an average of twenty-five times in an hour). The 
teacher says to the student, “If you talk out without raising your hand less than twenty times in the next 
one hour, you can have something out of the surprise box at the end of the period.” If the student stays 
within the limit for talk-outs, he or she is reinforced with the surprise box item. If this level is successful, 
the next week it is lowered to fifteen times per hour (with the same reinforcement, of course), then ten for 
the subsequent week, then five, and finally no more than two per period in a week-by-week fashion. This 
simple, positive intervention is so much better than using punishment for the mildly inappropriate 
behavior of talking out without teacher permission and similar classroom behaviors. 
DRO 
Differential reinforcement of other behavior is very similar to DRL except that the teacher reinforces only 
the student’s complete absence of the target inappropriate behavior (or zero demonstrations). The teacher 
would explain the DRO system to the student in the same way as DRL, but make clear that in order to 
receive the reinforcement at the end of the period she or he would have to completely refrain from talking 
out (or, again, zero demonstrations of the target behavior that the teacher is attempting to decrease). Only 
if the student did not talk out at all during a period would he or she receive the reinforcement. To start the 
process, the teacher would tell the student that he could not talk out for five minutes in order to receive 
the reinforcement. After success at the five-minute level, the teacher would then increase the time period 
to ten minutes, then fifteen minutes, and so on over time, so that eventually the student would need to stay 
silent for an entire period without talking out. 
DRI 
With differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior, the teacher reinforces the student for engaging 
in behavior that is physically incompatible with the target behavior to be decreased or completely 
eliminated. If the teacher wants the student to decrease time spent out of seat, he or she would reinforce 
the student for longer and longer periods of time spent seated; in-seat behavior is obviously physically 
incompatible with out-of-seat behavior. To eliminate talking out without permission, the teacher would 
reinforce longer and longer periods of time when the student is silent because silence is incompatible with 
talking out. An important aspect in the implementation of this treatment is to make sure that the 
incompatible behavior that the teacher is reinforcing is indeed an appropriate replacement behavior. 
Staying in one’s seat would have to be performed silently, without annoying anyone in the vicinity, with 
the student sitting properly at his or her desk and not leaning back in the chair or tapping on the desktop 
with a pencil. Appropriate compliance in every way, in other words, is what should be reinforced as an 
appropriate incompatible behavior.