People tend to repeat those behaviors for which they are reinforced or rewarded. A student who receives a smile from the teacher or looks of admiration from classmates for a particularly perceptive answer in class will probably strive to continue giving good answers. Conversely, people often avoid engaging in behaviors for which they are not reinforced. For example, a student whose classmates reject him because he calls people names or who loses recess as a result of clowning around in class will probably refrain from repeating that behavior in the future. In some instances however, a student is reinforced for inappropriate behavior. When classmates laugh at a student’s antics, or a lesson is delayed because of misbehavior, the student is inadvertently rewarded for misbehavior and, consequently, disruptions can increase. A teacher who is knowledgeable about reinforcement and who delivers it appropriately has effective options available with which to encourage positive behavior. Similar options can be used to decrease or eliminate negative behaviors. The rest of this module discusses a behavioral intervention called differential reinforcement and how it can be used effectively in the classroom. 
When differential reinforcement is used consistently, student behaviors that are reinforced will increase, and student behaviors that are not reinforced will decrease or be eliminated entirely. A teacher who guides a student to engage in a behavior (e.g., joking) only in the presence of a particular stimulus (e.g., with peers during free time) is one who has established stimulus control.
x stimulus control The act of reinforcing a desired response in the presence of a specific stimuli, while not reinforcing undesired responses in the presence of other stimuli. Many school districts employ behavior specialists to assist teachers dealing with disruptive or non-compliant student behaviors. Because behavior specialists often use terminology and abbreviations to describe various types of differential reinforcement, we have included those terms and abbreviations in this module to help you to familiarize yourself with them. Listen now as Joe Wehby explains more about differential reinforcement and how it might be used to control classroom behavior (time: 1:23).
Transcript: Joe Wehby, PhD There are many ways that teachers can control and manage the behavior of students in his or her classroom. One unique strategy is something called differential reinforcement. In a nutshell, differential reinforcement is a strategy in which the teacher provides positive feedback for those behaviors that he or she would like to see in the classroom, and does not provide feedback or ignores those behaviors that she does not want to see. There are three basic types of differential reinforcement that we might see in classrooms:
Those are three different strategies or three ways to implement differential reinforcement procedures to manage behavior. The nice thing about differential reinforcement in general is that it provides a strategy for teachers to attend to those appropriate behaviors and systematically allows he or she to ignore problem behavior that they may have been attending to previously. As was mentioned in the interview, there are three types of differential reinforcement:
The differences among the three types of differential reinforcement can be somewhat subtle. The most important thing to remember is to focus on the overall process of how differential reinforcement works. Collecting Baseline DataIf you wish to decrease an unwanted behavior, it is important to know how often that particular behavior is occurring; that way, a teacher can verify whether any behavioral intervention is, in fact, having an effect. For example, Ms. Rollison can’t be sure that Patrick’s outbursts have decreased unless she actually counts how many outbursts he had per day before she started her intervention, and then compares that to the number of outbursts that he has per day after she implements her intervention. Ms. Thibodeaux suggests collecting baseline data on some of Patrick’s behaviors. Click to hear what Ms. Rollison discovered (time: 2:09).
Transcript: Collecting Baseline Data Ms. Rollison: The three behaviors that were bothering me the most were Patrick’s rude comments, out-of-seat behavior, and his refusal to work. So those are the behaviors I collected baseline data for. Ms. Thibodeaux: Good. Let’s see what you’ve got. Ms. Rollison: The rude comment behavior is definitely the most frequent. He doesn’t go more than two or three minutes without making some sort of comment. The out-of-seat behavior occurs about every six or seven minutes. But here’s the real surprise: Patrick’s work refusals. I thought this was happening constantly, but when I actually started keeping track…look at the data! He doesn’t do it that often, maybe once or twice during the entire day! Why did I think it was such a problem? Ms. Thibodeaux: Could be a lot of things: the way he expresses his refusal could be particularly rude, or it bothers you a lot more than other behaviors because it’s directed towards you. Or you consider it a direct defiance of your authority. It’s not uncommon to find that a behavior that’s really bugging you happens less frequently than you thought. Do you still want to focus on decreasing his work refusal behaviors? Ms. Rollison: No, I’d rather focus on the rude comments and out-of-seat behavior. Besides, I realized something else while I was collecting data. Ms. Thibodeaux: What? Ms. Rollison: There’s a hand-raising or calling-out behavior that I think I need to address. When we’re doing a whole-class activity, Patrick raises his hand or calls out at least 20 times per period. Look at the data – his lowest rate was 20, his highest rate was 36 times…that was in science. I’ve not really paid attention to it, because I figured that he was at least engaged in the class, but one of the kids remarked on it yesterday. When I started counting, I was really surprised at how often it occurs. Ms. Thibodeaux: Hand-raising is a positive behavior, one that you don’t want to extinguish entirely. But 36 times during one period is extreme. We can reduce that considerably. So which behavior do you want to focus on first? Ms. Rollison: The rude comments. Those are disruptive to the class, and they hurt other students’ feelings. Now let’s take a look at when and how to use each of the three differential reinforcement strategies.
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The best way to determine whether something is reinforcing to a student is to use
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