What Happens When Schools Rely on Behaviorism Without Consequences?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how schools that adopt behavioral frameworks but strip out consequences end up with the worst of both worlds.
Key Takeaways
- Behaviorism without consequences is empty - Reward-only systems fail because they lack the accountability mechanism that makes behavior change stick
- 1:1 approaches don't scale - Individualized behavior plans for every struggling student require resources that schools don't have
- Consequences are the missing ingredient - Adding clear, consistent consequences to any behavioral framework dramatically improves its effectiveness
Transcript
Behaviorism is secretly what's behind a lot of what's going wrong with school discipline, and it's coming from kind of an unexpected source.
We've been hearing a lot more from specialists, from therapists who work with individual students, and I think that work is very valuable and very much needed, but I think it would be a mistake to take too much of psychology and research that's based on work with individual students and use that as a school-wide approach to behavior management.
And if you've heard terms like understanding the function of the behavior or all behavior is communication, you're probably hearing that from therapists and people who work one-on-one with students.
And a lot of people have cited authors or told me about books that they've read that really are about helping the individual student understand their behavior and improve their behavior.
But I think it would be a huge mistake to do precisely what a lot of schools are doing now, which is make that their school-wide approach, because those approaches are extremely behaviorist in nature and in origin.
And if I were to say, hey, pay me a whole bunch of money to come to your school district, and teach you how to implement behaviorism at scale, you would probably say, no way, go away.
That sounds like a terrible idea.
And it is a terrible idea, right?
Behaviorism is very useful for changing individual behavior, but it's no way to run a classroom and it's no way to run a school.
And paradoxically, what we've got going on right now is a huge increase in behaviorist approaches without consequences.
One of the manifestations of that that you're probably seeing is that there are no consequences for violence in a lot of schools, and there are rewards for violence.
Like a kid does something terrible, they tear up the classroom, they get sent to the office, they get a snack, and they get sent right back to class.
Is that rewarding according to behaviorist principles?
I would say yes.
And behaviorism also specifies some ways that we could maybe extinguish that behavior, discourage that behavior.
at least not incentivize that behavior, but we're getting it completely wrong because behaviorism is now everywhere, but without consequences.
So again, I think we have to be really careful about taking advice about how to run a classroom or how to run a school from people whose real expertise is working one-on-one with students and not to undercut that expertise at all or downplay that expertise, but we need to keep it focused on where it's actually helpful and where it's accurate.
And I think we need to especially be aware of when we're operating on behaviorist principles without meaning to, because behaviorism has become unpopular in education, and rightly so.
We don't want students to depend on rewards and punishments for everything.
That's not a good way to run education.
We want to develop self-control and intrinsic motivation.
And behaviorism is all about controlling student behavior through the environment.
That's not going to transfer.
That's not going to go with students.
So we really need to develop their self-control, their self-discipline, their internal locus of control.
Let me know what you think.