| Abstract: | The incidence of appropriate and inappropriate classroom behaviour was observed in ten children classified by their teacher as the worst behaved (WB) in the class and 10 children classified as the best behaved (BB). Teacher positive and negative responses to the WB and BB groups were also observed. The main finding was that the teacher responded at a higher rate to the inappropriate behaviour of the WB group than the BB group. This is not at variance with the notion that teacher attention serves to maintain high rates of inappropriate classroom behaviour. Unexpectedly, the teacher did not respond with positive attention at a higher rate to the appropriate behaviour of the BB than the WB group. That is, contrary to the theory that teacher attention is a major controller of classroom behaviour, there was no evidence in this study that high rates of appropriate behaviour are maintained by teacher attention. |
