Do adolescent girls with emotional and behavioural difficulties respond to a token reward system in mathematics classes?

Do adolescent girls with emotional and behavioural difficulties respond to a token reward system in mathematics classes?

• Ng, Priscilla Kam Ying
• Westwood, Peter Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong

Hong Kong Special Education Forum, 2(2), 17-27, 1999

Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.

1999

• B Human Behaviour
  • BE Behavioural Problems, Unruly & Criminal Behaviours, Juvenile Delinquency, Children & Youth at Risk, Triad Society
• G Curriculum, Teaching & Learning: Specific Disciplines
  • GC Mathematics & Statistics
• Q Philosophy of Education, Educational System & School At Different Levels
  • QJ Educational Institutes, Colleges, Research Institutes, Various Universities

• Hong Kong

• 1990-1997.6
• 1997.7 onwards

• Unknown or Unspecified

• View Full Text 全文連結

This study involved 34 female adolescent students attending mathematics classes in a girls' hostel in Hong Kong. The subjects' ages ranged from 12 to 18 years. All students exhibited varying degrees of emotional and behavioural problems, and all experienced learning difficulties in mathematics. The study aimed to discover whether the use of a simple token reward system would increase the students' work output, participation rate, accuracy, and neatness of bookwork during mathematics lessons, and whether the system would also have a positive influence on the girls' attitude toward mathematics. The four-week intervention programme involved the provision of token rewards during lesson time to every girl who showed any improvement in any of the four aspects of learning. Baseline measures were taken over a two-week period before the intervention commenced, and regular measurements were taken during and immediately after the programme. The same measures were taken again four weeks after the reinforcement programme had ended to check for maintenance. The results showed that the use of tokens did lead to significant improvements (in most cases p <.01 or better) in work output, participation rate, accuracy and neatness while the programme was in operation. Performance declined, however, in all but neatness once the tokens were no longer in use. The decline in scores did not regress to the baseline level, but most differences were no longer statistically significant. Very minor attitudinal changes in a positive direction were noted; but only in one case did these reach statistical significance.
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• English

Journal Articles

• 15627861

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/en/bibs/665f750e

2019-01-03