Educators and clinicians are burning out left and right. The “traditional” methods of reducing disruptive behavior to gain attention are all too often the very thing that makes it worse! Teachers rely on repeated correction for temporary relief only to find themselves repeating the same corrections day after day.
• Raise your hand.
• Stop calling out.
• Stay in your seat.
• Wait quietly.
But what if there is a better way, and what if many of the behaviors we label as “attention-seeking” are failed attempts to access something deeply human: connection, feedback, reassurance, and acknowledgment?
And what if the missing piece isn’t more correction, but explicit instruction in how to appropriately recruit positive attention? This is exactly what the research calls for A review by Alber and Heward, Teaching Students to Recruit Positive Attention: A Review and Recommendations, examined multiple studies on teaching students to appropriately seek teacher feedback, praise, and interaction. What they found was remarkably consistent: when students were explicitly taught recruitment skills, positive teacher attention increased, academic engagement improved, and disruptive behavior often decreased.
This matters more than many people realize, because this is not just a quick in-the-moment fix, it’s a way to create lasting change!
1. Quiet students fade into the background.
In busy classrooms, teacher attention naturally gravitates toward urgency.
• Students who are disruptive get attention.
• Students in crisis get attention.
• Students who demand interaction often receive it quickly.
Furthermore, the research highlighted that students with disabilities, may receive disproportionately low levels of positive teacher interaction during the school day unless explicit systems are in place to support engagement and communication. So, if the child has limited language and little “behavior,” they are seldom the last to receive attention, feedback, and support. This often results in student withdrawal.
2. Gaining attention appropriately is a teachable skill!
The good news is that recruiting positive attention is not a skill you have to be born with, so it can be taught, and many students require direct instruction to learn:
• when to ask for help
• how to ask for feedback
• how to gain teacher attention appropriately
• how to request acknowledgment without disrupting instruction
The studies reviewed by Alber and Heward found students successfully learned strategies such as:
• “Can you check this?”
• “I need help with this part.”
• “Did I do this correctly?”
• Raising a hand while continuing to work
• Using classroom help signals or systems
We often take such skills for granted so it can be hard to wrap our heads around the need to teach something so “simple.” However, the reality is, if a student doesn’t have these skills yet, the chances that they will acquire them without explicit instruction are slim to none. So that means more unsuccessful corrections in your future.
3. “But that is not what it looks like in real life…”
Broken down skills rarely do, but it is how we learn everything in life! The same could be said about sounding out words letter by letter while learning to read. Complex skills require scaffolding, modeling, practice, feedback, and repetition.
So yes, teaching recruitment skills may initially involve:
• prompting
• scripts
• visual supports
• modeling
• repeated practice
That does not mean the end goal is dependence. It’s muscle memory. When the skill becomes automatic, the supports are faded and the student becomes more efficient and independent in accessing feedback, support, and interaction, much like going from sounding out letters to reading chapter books!
Reference
Alber, S. R., & Heward, W. L. (2000). Teaching students to recruit positive attention: A review and recommendations .Journal of Behavioral Education, 10(3), 177–204.