Praiseworthy and Developable—How Psychology Takes Shape in Tutoring

In a standard tutoring session, positive reinforcement in commonly used to bolster a student’s confidence, as well as point out good aspects of the writing. This paper explores the use of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) in tutoring, an Applied Behavioral Analysis procedure in which instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback are used to teach proficiency in a skill. This paper examines the benefits of using BST in difficult sessions where standard protocol would be of little value to the student’s writing ability. Behavioral skills training is an intuitive and simple procedure, but proves to be an effective way to structure a session. BST is an easy and effective way to deliberately use positive reinforcement in a session