Chapters 4-6

Question 1

Operational Definitions, Behavioural Objectives, and Behavioural Evaluations

Answer 1

 First, pinpoint the target behaviour from anecdotal reports.
 Second, operational definitions describe the target behaviour in observable and measurable terms.
 Third, the behavioural objective states (a) their intention to change the target behaviour; (b) the criteria they will use to judge whether the behaviour change intervention was successful.
 Fourth, behaviour evaluations are judgements about whether the behaviour change strategy was effective. Data is collected to make these judgements. There are two requirements of a behavioural evaluation: (a) observation of students’ current functioning, it should reflect the conditions stated in the behavioural objective (e.g., if the behavioural objective stated that students should solve 25 long-division problems in 30 minutes requires that the teacher determine how many long-division problems the students can already solve in 30 minutes; and (b) must be an ongoing process in which students behaviour is systematically measured over time, to provide information to help teachers adapt their teaching practices to support student learning and avoid making false/inaccurate assumptions about their progress.