A Group Contingency Plus Self-Management Intervention Targeting At-Risk Secondary Students' Class-work and Active Responding

Abstract

Incomplete written work and lack of active classroom responding are reported to be obstacles to secondary students' learning. Effective interventions found in meta-analytic reviews of the current research literature include: differential reinforcement of desired behaviors through group contingencies and self-management strategies (Hoagwood et al., 2007; Prout & Prout, 198; Stage & Quiroz, 1997). However, the current studies have mostly focused on elementary school settings. The purpose of the present study is to show that an independent group contingency combined with self-management strategies and randomized-reinforcer components can increase the amount of written work and active classroom responding in high school students. Three remedial reading classes with a total of 15 students participated in this study. Students used self-management strategies during independent reading time to increase the amount of writing in their reading logs. They used self-monitoring strategies to record whether or not they performed expected behaviors in class. A token economy was used to provide positive reinforcement for target responses. The results were analyzed through visual inspection of graphs and effect size computations and showed that the intervention increased the total amount of written words in the students' reading logs and overall classroom academic responding.