History of Fred Jones' Work

Fred Jones worked in clinical psychology at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) where he received a Ph. D. specializing in work with schools and families. As the head of the Child Experimental Ward while working at the UCLA Medical Center Dr. Jones developed methods of helping children with severe emotional disorders. He then began to cross these methods over to special education and general classroom setting while working at the Medical Center.

Once his work took him to the University of Rochester Dr. Jones developed the non-adversarial management procedure which led to the writing of his first two books; Classroom Discipline and Positive Classroom Instruction. Since then Dr. Jones has been conducting extensive research and constantly working in classrooms to improve his techniques along with touring the country teaching these methods. Dr. Jones’ most recent book, Tools for Teaching, is an update of his previous work including new material that has been learned since his last publication.
Implementation in the Classroom

Jones has developed a non-adversarial method of creating a classroom that moves smoothly. In his three books Jones addressed many levels that the method can be successful on. One book focuses on the classroom as a positive discipline site, another book looks at how the entire campus can benefit from the positive discipline and the third book takes those concepts to the everyday/every minute problems faced by a teacher.

There are two important systems that have come from Jones’ research. The first is Preferred Activity Time (PAT). PAT is a system that can benefit both the students and the teacher. The students are able to spend time having fun while learning after earning the privilege. The teacher has an incentive for the students to work hard and then can enjoy the activity with their students. The second system is simply positive reinforcement. The teacher can set up simple techniques of their choosing to reinforce behavior from a student that will teach that student the acceptable way to behave/act. These techniques can vary from award presentation after set amounts of time, commendations sent home, point accumulation for buying power of rewards, or any reinforcer (anything that anyone will work for) that is applicable to the individual student/group.
Elementary Implementation

As elementary teacher cross all of the content areas there are many different ways they could establish PAT in their classrooms. For many it may be advantageous to vary the activity to use multiple students’ interests. A teacher who values art as part of the curriculum and would do art projects anyway with the students could get two for the price of one. The teacher might start the day with the following announcement: "Students, I would like to direct your attention to the project table over by the window. As you can see, I have laid out art supplies for our preferred activity at the end of the day. As usual, I have set aside twenty minutes for Preferred Activity Time (PAT). "Of course, once you get started on an art project, you always love to have more time. And this time, you can! All the time we save during the day by hustling will be added to PAT. We could have forty minutes for art if we really get things done." This example gives the students the tangible reward right in front of their face all day long to push them to earn the extra time.