Just Do It (Later?): A Functional Behavioral Approach to Academic Procrastination

Date

2020-11-09

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

Procrastination is a persistent barrier to academic success, limiting the trajectory of future educational goals and reducing student engagement. Data show that 70% of students engage in procrastination behaviors (Schouwenburg, Lay, Pychyl & Ferrari, 2004). Students who acquire a procrastination learning style are less successful academically and are less likely to persist to graduation (Goda, et al., 2015). How can we define these procrastination behaviors? What purpose does procrastination serve? Using a behavior analytic (ABA) approach, we will look at strategies which will help foster a strong classroom community and retain students. We will explore schedules of reinforcement, and the effect of the reinforcement delay in terms of how students deal with various stressors in everyday life (Rozental & Carlbring, 2014). By incorporating these strategies into the classroom, we can create an environment in which on-time task completion feels rewarding and builds adaptive learning behaviors for the future.

Description

Keywords

Citation

DOI

Collections