Teaching: Positive vs Negative Reinforcement

We have a guest post from our friends at Core Essentials about effective teaching strategies!

Reinforcement has been used to help strengthen and increase the probability of a specific response for decades. The use of reinforcement procedures can be used with both typical and atypical developing children as well as students with different psychological disorders. There are two types of reinforcement: positive and negative. However, many teachers find it difficult to distinguish between the two. When it comes to teaching a class full of students, you will find that a combination between positive and negative reinforcement will work best. 

 Positive Reinforcement

 Positive reinforcement is a very powerful and effective tool to help mold and change behavior. It works by praising and rewarding desired behavior, which then makes the behavior more likely to happen in the future. The following are some ways to make positive reinforcement work best in a teaching environment.

• Targeted praise: Students and children in general respond more positively to praise, more specifically targeted praise. For example, saying “April, you did a great job on your essay” will be more effective than saying “good job class.”
• Specific timing: In addition to making the positive reinforcement more specific, timing is also important. For instance, if a student only answers a question partially then total positive reinforcement isn’t necessary. Only after the student has done the desired behavior should heaping praise be given.
• Reward irregularly: Rewards are much more effective when they are used sparingly. This will also help improve overall student behavior, because rewards could be given at any moment and not just on certain days at a certain time.

 Negative Reinforcement

For most people, the term “negative reinforcement” gets easily mistaken for punishment, which is not the case. With negative reinforcement, you are increasing a behavior, whereas with punishment, you are decreasing a behavior. Negative reinforcement can also be thought of as when a negative or unwanted behavior is stopped or avoided due to removal of a certain stimulus/item after the behavior is exhibited. That way the likelihood of the positive behavior occurring again will be increased and coupled with a positive direction.

 For example, if you have a student that forgets to turn in homework, then they will receive negative reinforcement by getting a bad grade; therefore that behavior turns into an unwanted behavior for the student. If the student turns homework in and is met with a positive reaction, then that is negative reinforcement and the student will be likely to turn homework in because of the positive response.

 The use of positive and negative reinforcement is a continual balancing act that is never quite perfect. However, as a teacher, it is your responsibility to continue working towards achieving a balanced discipline and reward plan that works best for you and your students.

 This article was written by Core Essentials, a values education program, designed for grades K-5, that provides affordable, simple, and downloadable tools allowing schools to quickly incorporate values education into their curriculum. Our program encourages individual classrooms, the entire school, and every family to emphasize the values they learn each month.