Building Discipline in Elementary School Students Through Consistent Reinforcement of Behavior

Abstract

Student discipline in the early grades remains essential for creating orderly and productive classroom learning. This study examined changes in the discipline of second-grade elementary students after the implementation of behaviorist-based classroom practices. A quantitative pre-experimental design with a one group pretest posttest model was used. The participants were 19 students from Class II-A at a private elementary school in South Sumatra, Indonesia. Data were collected using a 16-item Student Discipline Observation Checklist covering compliance with classroom rules, learning readiness, task responsibility, and self-control. The intervention involved positive reinforcement, repeated routines, explicit rules, immediate feedback, and consistent consequences. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Shapiro Wilk test, a paired-samples t-test, and Cohen’s dᶻ. The findings indicated a significant improvement in students’ discipline after the intervention, t(18) = 5.55, p < .001, with a large effect size (dᶻ = 1.27). The greatest improvement occurred in task responsibility, while self-control showed a more limited change. These results suggest that behaviorist-based practices can support classroom discipline, although the absence of a control group limits causal interpretation.