Teaching Self-Confidence and Self Esteem

The following information is from Unit 14 of the book Teaching: A Course in Psychology by Wesley C. Becker, Siegfried Engelmann, and Don R. Thomas. 

Note: Science Research Associates published the book in 1971. I am unsure if the publishers reprinted the book or if it is available to buy. I found it through a university inter-library loan program. I suspect that Becker or Engelmann use the book or some form of it in their special education teaching classes at the University of Oregon.

• A student with self-confidence will stay with tasks and new learning situations
• He has self-confidence because he has been reinforced for what he already has learned
• And for working on previous tasks
• But you can’t teach self-confidence or self-esteem by itself
• You teach them in context of good teaching of learning tasks

• Definition of attitude: subjective idea referring to how someone feels about a class of stimulus events
• Subjective because an observer cannot SEE another’s feelings but you can infer
• You can infer a positive attitude from smiling, supportive words, or approaching
• You can infer a negative attitude from avoidance or defensive behavior, facial grimaces, and words that indicate dislike
• You can train students to talk and approach positively toward a class of stimuli and thus have positive attitudes towards it
• Likewise you can train the students to do the opposite
• “Attitudes are unseen products or results of learning encounters with reinforcers and punishers”

• Self-confidence and self-esteem are created through attitudes towards one’s own capabilities and one’s self as a person
• Taught through instances that make you appear capable
• It is unlikely that anything could be taught to a child without also teaching him attitudes toward himself or the task
• Attitudes can be taught directly or accidentally
• When taught accidentally, teachers often intend to encourage a student to work well, but instead she scolds him and gives him attention for not working
• When the student works, she acts as if she expects the behavior
• The student learns there is no payoff for doing the work
• The teacher infers he has a poor attitude or low self-esteem
• If a child is taught failure numerous times, he will develop an avoidance of the learning situation

• Procedures to teach self-confidence and self-esteem
• Give praise and demonstrate that the students are capable and successful
• The teacher must model how to be capable and successful as well
• Use an academic program appropriate for the students
• Where they can learn and have low error rates
• It must provide frequent demonstrations that the students are capable and successful
• It should provide skills for living successfully outside of school

• Teach persistence
• The student needs to stay with a task long enough to make the correct response OR make an error and learn from it to make the right response
• The student needs to know that persistence (staying with the task) will lead to success
• Otherwise he will quit and be reinforced for doing so (escape the task)
• Thus the teacher needs to reinforce success trials after error trials on new tasks
• The teacher also needs to teach the student to use persistence on ANY new tasks
• The procedures
• When a student has trouble on a new task, reinforce the student for persistence
• Example: “I know you can figure it out!”
• Early on use tasks that student can succeed at before harder tasks
• This is too avoid early failure and early quitting before success
• As the student succeeds, increase the requirements
• Early on also give frequent praise and attention
• Fade the praise and attention just as any other situation over time
• When a student shows mastery of a skill, the teacher relates his performance to the rule
• Example: “You figured it out because you stuck with it!”
• Indicate to the other students this is an example of the rule of persistence
• For some students a tangible reinforcer may be needed
• Tangibles help students who have not had success in the past
• When the student knows he can succeed, the teacher can teach the student to be confident about his responses

• Teach self-confidence
• Use a “fooler” game to get the students’ attention
• Example: “I’m going try to catch you. See if what I say makes sense. I’m going to name things that are animals. Tiger, elephant, dog, table, horse… I tricked you! You thought a table is an animal. However, Johnny knew that a table is not an animal. I couldn’t catch him.”
• Use the “fooler” games with tasks that are familiar to the students
• Do not use the games with new tasks or the students won’t know how to act in new situations
• Example: the students can add one-digit numbers
• The teacher writes on the board 6+2=9 and sees if she can catch the students
• If they catch her mistake, she tells them they were too attentive to be caught
• You can use the games for paying attention as well
• The students need to pay attention or they get caught!
• When the students have gotten used to the”fooler” games, the teacher tells the students they’re going to do something that might be hard
• When the students get it, she acts surprised and happy
• “Fooler” tasks must be carefully sequenced  so that the students can be successful and become confident

• Case study of a student with low self-esteem who was taught to like himself, school, and reading
• He was a six year old student with many attention issues while in the classroom
• Baseline showed he was off-task 87% of the time
• He was constantly moving, talking off-topic, and day-dreaming
• He also was tested to have a slightly lower IQ than the other students (learned slightly slower)
• The behaviorists taught the teacher to use praise and reinforcers and to ignore the disruptions
• The student’s off-task behavior changed to 51%
• A special tutoring program in reading was provided to the student for six weeks
• 21 hours of tutoring for 30 sessions
• It was based on the Ginn reading program and built up his word knowledge with slow presentation of new words and stories made of words he could read
• He also did comprehension activities and workbook assignments at home
• He was given points for doing well on his work, doing all of his work, and wearing his glasses
• With the points he was given praise
• The points were marked on cards divided into 50 squares
• 50 points equaled small prizes while bigger point amounts equaled bigger prizes
• His off-task behavior changed to 20% of the time
• His reading ability improved!
• He gained 6 months of skills in 6 weeks!
• He was taught competence and success
• He liked reading and going to school
• He liked going to school so much that when he was signed up for two hours a day for summer school, he cried that he had to go home
• So his mother decided to let him stay as long as the other students

Strategies for General Classroom Management (Part II)

The following information is from Unit 13 of the book Teaching: A Course in Psychology by Wesley C. Becker, Siegfried Engelmann, and Don R. Thomas. 

Note: Science Research Associates published the book in 1971. I am unsure if the publishers reprinted the book or if it is available to buy. I found it through a university inter-library loan program. I suspect that Becker or Engelmann use the book or some form of it in their special education teaching classes at the University of Oregon.

• How to set up the classroom
• The physical layout of the class affects behavior
• Think of what activities you want in your classroom and structure it to support them
• Examples: small group instruction, individualized instruction, independent work, technology
• Do not assume you need the standard lecture layout with rows of students chairs
• What other things do you need to structure the classroom?
• Examples: rugs, work tables, screens, equipment carts
• Be able to move around the room to help the students learn

• Organize the day
• Plan that all students do not finish tasks in the same time
• Plan a cushion activity that is also reinforcing
• All students will do it
• Plan a secondary activity that some students can do
• Provide systematic prompts or reminders to let students know what to do
• Clear cues save time
• Examples: color-coded names, signs, lists, verbal reminders, individual folders, check-out stations, and turn-in boxes
• Provide consistent routines
• Motivate students to finish one activity with the reward of the next activity
• Example: “when you finish the worksheets, you can play a game”
• Provide changes in pace
• Examples: quiet work and then singing or talking, serious work and then a game, sitting and working and then moving around for a few minutes

• The first day of class
• A teacher will behavior management principles does something else rather than act tough to be easy later or act too nice and have problems
• The first day objectives
• Show the students you know how to reinforce them and you like to
• Make yourself important so the students will want to behave
• Show the students your class makes learning fun
• Show the students that you expect everyone to be good workers
• Begin with a group activity involved in some subject to be covered
• Payoffs for working
• With younger students show what fun things can happen with learning, like racing the teacher at something or use letter sounds for bingo (short term payoff)
• With older students discuss what the subject area can do to help the students with jobs or hobbies (the long-term payoff)
• Plan a short teaching lesson with the whole group and make it fun
• Then use what you teach to play a group game
• Then give a short assignment that can be done independently
• Praise example of good work (reinforce rules for good working)
• Then you can do activities on acquainting the students
• Give out name tags if needed
• Introductions can be done

• Students get excited before fun things of going to recess, lunch, and home
• Do not dismiss a rowdy class
• The students have to be quiet and orderly
• Otherwise you reinforce the misbehavior to get out of the room
• If students do not follow the rules:
• Partial loss of recess
• Delay in lunch
• Delay in going home
• Give specific and matter of fact instructions
• Example: “when all of us sit in our seats, with desks cleared, and our arms on the desks, I will call one row at a time to line up. Johnny’s row was ready first, so they may line up first.”
• Be overly specific if you need to keep student attention and possibly motivate them (seem like a game)
• Example: “stand on the white tiles”

• Behavior outside of the class
• The bathroom
• With young students a teacher or aide can supervise near the bathroom
• For older students you can assign a group leader
• You can give points for good bathroom behavior
• But only do this with behaviors you really need to work on
• Going in and out of the school
• In unit 5 there was discussion of giving tickets to students with good behavior to earn a prize for the class
• The principal can also praise students for coming and going
• The playground
• Sometimes the students fight on the playgroup and it is hard to reinforce cooperative behavior
• One possible reinforcement: tokens or points for good behavior
• Points are lost when fighting occurs
• Points must be valuable or they will not matter to the students
• Punishment might be required
• Example: loss of recess for a certain amount of time

• How to get the students to ignore misbehavior
• The reinforcement system only provides a payoff to those students who help you
• Example: a hyperactive student earned points for the whole class for staying on-task 10 seconds at a time
• To motivate the students to leave him alone, they earned candy for his staying on-task
• Students can help you with distractions, show-offs, and clowns

• How to use other school staff to improve behavior
• Do not send students to someone who is nice to him (or gives him the attention he craves) when he misbehaves
• Special service staff should not reinforce disruptive behavior
• Work out a set of daily or weekly objectives for class behavior improvement to be met by the student
• THEN he can get to spend time with the particular staff member

• Special events and holidays
• Use holidays for reinforcements (activities, plays, and parties related to the holidays) for good behavior
• Requirements are that the students earn the privileges with good behavior
• Few students should be excluded if you are consistent
• A student will only be left out because he does not believe the teacher will enforce the requirements

• Kindergarten example of individualized instruction
• The teacher divided the students into four groups with color names (red, green, blue, and purple)
• She divided the classroom into four study area with tables for six students
• Next to each area were materials and fun activities
• Fun activities were things like clay, games, record player with headsets, paint supplies, coloring books, glue, and puzzles
• She also had a rug for a music area for everyone and an area by the blackboard for everyone to work in whole group instruction
• The routine to acclimate the students to the groupings
• She put color coded name tags on the appropriate tables for the students
• When groups shifted the teacher shifted the colored name tags and students knew where to go right away
• In the beginning the first tasks for everyone were coloring and cutting and gluing
• When the students were used to the routines of these activities, the teacher gave them an additional task
• She let them work with the fun activities in their group areas
• She told the students they could move to a new activity area each week so they could play with everything
• Then she introduced reading or math before the fun activities
• The students were already able to two tasks independently so the teacher started to teach small groups for an hour and a half a day
• The students stayed on task due to motivation by the things and the teacher  praise
• To let students know to clean up, she put on a record
• The first student who cleaned up could sit in a group leader’s chair in the music area
• As the other students finished they sat in front of the group leader who led them in imitation games
• The students had five minutes to clean up and did their routines smoothly
• Individualization of work
• Folders were prepared with materials and instructions for the students
• There was a place to pick them up and turn them in
• To get help
• The students put up red tents for “help” rather than hand raising

• Summary
• Make teaching fun
• Use good material (fun or exciting)
• Use attention-getting style
• Be interesting
• Vary pacing, rhythm, loudness, pauses
• Have surprises
• Turn drills into games
• Deliberately make mistakes for students to fix
• Be a good reinforcer
• Praise behavior not the person
• Set up class to reinforce students for things you want them to learn
• Strengthen reinforcers if social reinforcement and activities in the class are not enough to motivate a student or students
• Try a token system
• Reinforce often in the beginning
• Gradually reinforce less
• Reinforce at the same time as giving tokens
• When you punish
• Do it immediately
• Rely on taking away reinforcers
• Provide clear rules to get them back
• Use a warning signal
• Carry the punishment out calmly
• Give reinforcement for behavior incompatible with the problem behavior
• Be consistent
• Avoid reinforcing the misbehavior