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Strategies and Techniques for Improving On-Task Behaviors in Secondary Classrooms

Jacob Johnston

330 Howard Johnston Road

Hazlehurst, GA 31539

An Annotated Bibliography Submitted to:

Dr. D. A. Battle of Georgia Southern University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
FRLT 7130 Y01

Monday, June 29, 2009

Statesboro, Georgia

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Strategies and Techniques for Improving On-Task Behaviors in Secondary Classrooms

As a classroom teacher, one of the most difficult parts of my job,

especially with my lower-level classes, is maintaining my students’ attention

and keeping them on-task. After all, I can know the content inside and out

and present the content in an organized and clear manner, but if the

students are not paying attention and practicing, I have wasted my time.

After all, both attention and rehearsal are key components of learning.

Because of this, I have chosen to examine research in this area, especially

that focusing on secondary education, the level at which I teach.

At this point in my research process, I have used EBSCOhost through Galileo to find

peer-reviewed journal articles. I plan to use other databases in order to fill out the rest of my

annotated bibliography for the final due date.

Navarro, J., Marchena, E., Alcalde, C., Ruiz, G., Llorens, I., & Aguilar, M. (2003, December).

Improving attention behaviour in primary and secondary school children with a

Computer Assisted Instruction procedure. International Journal of Psychology, 38(6),

359-365. Retrieved June 29, 2009, from Academic Search Complete database.

This study looked at how computer assisted instruction affected attention behavior, which is a

part of being on-task. The study compared students who used a computer program as part of their

instruction to students who either just played a video game or students who remained in a

traditional classroom setting. The study found that the experimental group, the group who

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worked with the special instructional program, actually showed significant improvements in

attention behavior.

Morgan, P. (2006, May). Increasing Task Engagement Using Preference or Choice-Making:

Some Behavioral and Methodological Factors Affecting Their Efficacy as Classroom

Interventions. Remedial & Special Education, 27(3), 176-187. Retrieved June 29, 2009,

from Academic Search Complete database.

This article is look at other research relevant to classroom behavior, including on-task behavior.

The authors claim that this is the first literature review to look at the differential effects of both

choice and preference by focusing on the experimental methodologies. The review only looked

at research that involved students in K-12 and only when students were involved in academic

work. After looking at 15 other papers, the authors found that both choice-making and preference

increased productivity and decreased problem behaviors, but that choice-making seemed to

provide less consistent results depending on the type of problem behaviors. Also, several studies

that controlled for preference had trouble finding any benefit of choice-making at all.

Swinson, J., & Knight, R. (2007, September). Teacher Verbal Feedback Directed Towards

Secondary Pupils with Challenging Behaviour and its Relationship to their Behaviour.

Educational Psychology in Practice, 23(3), 241-255. Retrieved June 29, 2009,

doi:10.1080/02667360701507327.

This study looks at the effect of positive verbal feedback from teachers on on-task behavior in

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problem students. Students that teachers identified as being more difficult to teach were observed

in classrooms. The study found that these problem students tended to receive more positive

feedback on their work than classmates, but also received more negative feedback on their

behavior than their classmates. The study found a positive correlation between the amount of

positive feedback a student received and their on-task behavior.