Individualized Interventions: When Teachers Resist

Administrators, consultants, and other service personnel in the schools often encounter resistance to the use of idea of using a reinforcement program to intervene with inappropriate behaviors or poor academic performance. This attitude becomes a problem when the offenders undermine a potentially successful intervention, or even refuse outright to participate. As child advocates, we are then placed in a very frustrating position: how do we combat this brick wall of resistance? And do we even have the right to interfere, when it appears, as it sometimes does, to be a cultural phenomenon? The purpose of this article, then, is to discuss some of the causes of resistance to reinforcement programs, and to propose some means of coping with those who present this attitude.

“They should do it because they are supposed to do it!”

Most people who assert this really mean, “They should be afraid NOT to do it!” In the United States, this belief has its roots deep in the traditions of its earliest European settlers. Many were religious zealots whose God was a wrathful and punishing being; the imminent danger of hell figured prominently in their daily life.