- A contingency contract is a procedure used to: o Teach or train new behaviors o To maintain behaviors that the students already display o To decrease or extinguish undesirable behaviors o Provide enrichment or independent study opportunities for individual students or groups
Who can a Contingency Contract Be Used For?
- A contingency contract can be used for: o Students in regular classrooms (Downing, 1990) o In all areas of special education from mild-severely handicapped (Downing, 1990) o Junior or Senior high school students (Allen, 1993)
Guidelines for Implementing a Contingency Contract (Downing, 1990)
- Teachers, parents, and the student (when appropriate) discuss and prioritize …show more content…
For example, will it be used throughout the entire school day or only in science class?
- Determine the types of reinforcement that will be allowed. o Incorporating the student in the selection of the reinforcers may increase the success of the intervention.
- Change reinforcers often (each time a new contract is written), and keep reinforcers easy to manage and small.
- Determine whether negative consequences will be used for failure to complete the contract. o If the positive consequences are successful, use of negative consequences may not be needed.
- Decide how often child will be reinforced. Will each occurrence of the behavior be reinforced, or will it be intermittent?
- Determine the current rate of the target behavior by taking baseline data over at least five days. There are several common methods of observation: o Anecdotal → observer takes notes and records all significant behavior during a given period of time. o Event → observer uses a tally sheet to determine how often a behavior occurs during a given time period o Duration → observer determines the amount of time the student is involved in the target behavior; may use a stop