SAGE Open 1 –7

Despite their effectiveness, the use of behavioral techniques in the classroom has decreased since their height of popular-ity in the 1970s (Saville, Zinn, Neef, Van Norman, & Ferreri, 2006). Bryan Saville and his colleagues identified four pos-sible factors contributing to this declining use of behavior principles, including (a) an instructor’s resistance to change, (b) incompatibility between program requirements and the academic calendar, (c) the increased workload required by some behavioral systems, and (d) lower confidence in the success of behavioral systems following misuse or misap-plication. Perhaps in response to these criticisms, researchers have started looking for ways to incorporate variations on behavioral principles to today’s classroom. Among these variations is contract grading. Contract grading is a system in which students determine and specify at the beginning of a class the grade they would like to earn, from a set of instructor-defined parameters. Although there are a myriad of ways to implement contract grading, in general, the following components are employed: (a) assignments are graded pass or fail; (b) a mastery crite-rion (often between 80 % and 100%) is determined by the instructor, and meeting this criterion is required to obtain a passing grade; (c) students are provided multiple attempts to earn a passing grade for each assignment; and (d) students choose from a variety of assignments. The use of contract grading is supported by wide-ranging benefits. Students may be better able to monitor their prog-ress, feel they have a greater role in their learning, and are more likely to perceive primary control over their grad