Increasing Induction-Level Teachers’ Positive-to-Negative Communication Ratio and Use of Behavior-Specific Praise Through E-Mailed Performance Feedback and Its Effect on Students’ Task Engagement

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of e-mailed specific performance feedback that included progress monitoring graphs on induction-level teachers’ ratios of positive-to-negative communication behaviors and their use of behavior-specific praise in classrooms for students with emotional and behavioral disorders, mild intellectual disabilities, and learning disabilities. We also examined the effects of teachers’ communication behavior on students’ academic task engagement. Results indicate that the e-mailed performance-feedback intervention increased teachers’ use of positive communication behaviors and decreased their use of negative communication behaviors. These effects resulted in higher positive-to-negative ratios. Furthermore, the teacher praise became more behavior-specific for academic and social behaviors, and students’ level of task engagement improved and became more stable.

Reliability Assessment of an Observation Tool to Measure Praise Characteristics

“…For example, “great job paying attention” and “awesome job paying attention” counted as two praise variety statements. Some researchers have investigated the effects of praise on academic behaviors (e.g., Kirby & Shields, 1972); however, a majority of student outcome measures center on increasing appropriate behaviors (e.g., Rathel et al, 2014). It seems appropriate that on-task behaviors are targeted for improvement, given the challenges teachers report managing student behavior (Reinke et al, 2011) and the salience of teacher praise to affect student outcomes (Gage & MacSuga-Gage, 2017).…”

The Impact of Coaching on Teacher-Delivered Behavior-Specific Praise in Pre-K–12 Settings: A Systematic Review

“…All three studies in Barton et al (2013), for example, monitored 100% of coaching emails sent as well as reporting the percentage of emails to which each teacher responded. Rathel, Drasgow, Brown, and Marshall (2014) assessed 97.29% of feedback sessions with a checklist, and a research assistant also completed the checklist for 31% to 55% of each teacher's sessions to assess IOA of feedback session fidelity. 6.0: Internal validity.…”

Professional development to increase teacher behavior‐specific praise: A single‐case design replication

“…Results of this study provide further support for using performance feedback to increase teachers' use of classroom management skills (Fallon et al, 2015) and additional support for providing that feedback via email (e.g., Gage et al, 2017b;Rathel et al, 2014). Feedback can be delivered by outside consultants, such as university-based research partners, or by internal coaches, including school psychologists, administrators, or lead teachers.…”

“…The teachers all increased their frequency of BSP, although one teacher required additional goal‐setting along with the verbatim recommendations and graphic displays accompanying all other teacher's emailed feedback. Rathel, Drasgow, Brown, and Marshall () used VPF delivered via email to increase BSP and general praise for four induction‐year special educators. All four teachers increased their BSP and maintained the increases during maintenance phases.…”