ABSTRACT
In the school context, Home-based reinforcement (H-BR) programmes are essentially frequent, teacher-completed ratings of children's behaviour in class which are subsequently paired with parent-controlled differential reinforcement at home. A growing number of experimental studies have shown them to be effective and cost-efficient in a variety of educational settings and across a variety of pupil behaviours. H-BR is suitable for a wide range of typical classroom learning and behaviour difficulties. Several conditions are essential for their success: the teacher's ability to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate behaviours; the availability of relevant reinforces in the home; the teacher's compliance with the rules for administering the report card; the parent's compliance with the rules for delivering contingent reinforcement. A potential cost-saving feature of H-BR programmes was investigated by David Leach and Byrne. Some studies have suggested that H-BR programmes can act to supersede the deleterious effects of teacher behaviour, such as contingent attention for inappropriate pupil behaviour.
