ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, researchers have been demonstrating the power of teacher behaviour on the behaviour of both individual students and whole classes. Behavioural research and demonstration studies, carried out over the past 30 years or so, have consistently shown that teacher behaviour may be a powerful influence on the behaviour of both individual students and whole classes (see, for example, the classic studies by Becker et al. (1967); Madsen et al. (1968), and Thomas et al. 1968). Although such research was initially pioneered by behaviour analysts working in special education contexts, it has subsequently been clearly and unequivocally demonstrated, in a variety of educational contexts and settings, that such key teacher behaviours as contingent approval and disapproval may be systematically employed by teachers so as to increase both academic and appropriate social behaviours and to decrease inappropriate behaviours. (See, for example, Merrett (1981), Merrett and Wheldall (1987a, 1990), Wheldall and Merrett (1984, 1989), and Wheldall and Glynn (1989), for reviews of such studies.)
