learning: process through which experience causes permanent change in knowledge or behavior....

Learning: process through which experience causes permanent change in knowledge or behavior.

Behavioral learning theories: explanations of learning that focus on external events as the cause of changes in observable behaviors.

The focus on the external is key…some people believe that there’s more going on than meets the eye.

Because of an experience…

Lessons on the sound “th” makes…

Automobile accident…

Winning a video game…

Your behavior changes for a long time

You play more video games

You avoid this street.

You say “/th/” when you see T-H.

Contiguity

The simple pairing of stimuli and responses, so that if they occur together often enough, experiencing one results in another.

Contiguity

Stimulus

Stimulus: event that activates behavior

Contiguity

Paired With Response

Response: observable reaction to a stimulus

Contiguity

7x8

Contiguity

7x8 56

Contiguity

Ed Psych guy with theory on peer learning

Contiguity

Ed Psych guy with theory on peer learning

Vygotsky

ContiguityWhen two things are next to each other, they are “contiguous.”

Stimulus Paired With Response

7x8The notes that make a C major chordDate of the Declaration of IndependenceGender of French word “jour”Types of blood vesselsEd psych guy with theory of peer learning

56CEG1776MasculineArteries, veins, capillariesVygotsky

Contiguity is a great way to learn facts that are necessary to know. It is not necessarily a good way to learn how to APPLY or use those facts.

Contiguity learning strategies: flash cards, drills, worksheets, repetition. One purpose of the pictures in these reading guides is to help you associate ideas with pictures you can remember.

Classical Conditioning

Association of automatic responses with new stimuli.

Respondents: responses (generally automatic or involuntary) elicited by specific stimuli. Smell good food and your mouth waters. You can’t make your mouth water and you can’t stop it from watering.

Classical Conditioning (Pavlov’s Dog)

Unconditioned stimulus

Don’t worry about “unconditioned” just yet. This is the stimulus. What do you think the dog will do? (How would you respond if you were REALLY hungry????)


Unconditioned stimulus Unconditioned response

Doggie drool

When the dog gets the dog food, it drools or salivates. This is an involuntary response—the dog does not plan to drool—it just happens.

Unconditioned stimulus (US): stimulus that automatically produces an emotional or physiological response.

Unconditioned response (UR): naturally occurring emotional or physiological response.


As teachers, we can manipulate this response by causing the animal to associate something else with the dog food. In this case, there is a lab worker who always provides the food.

The lab worker initially was a neutral stimulus: stimulus not connected to a response.

Classical ConditioningThe lab worker always brings the dog food to the dog. So the worker gets ASSOCIATED with the dog food in the dog’s mind. This is an example of contiguity learning. If you experience something good, you might associate that good thing with some other thing. For example, if you win some money in the lottery, you might associate that with the lucky rabbit foot that you put in your pocket that morning.

Classical conditioning

Conditioned stimulus

Conditioned stimulus (CS): stimulus that evokes an emotional or physiological response after conditioning.


Doggiedrool

Conditioned response

Because the dog associates the lab worker with food, the dog begins drooling when it sees the lab worker, whether or not the lab worker has food. Similarly, you might put your lucky rabbit foot in your pocket the next time you plan to buy a lottery ticket.


Conditioned response (CR): learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

Unconditioned and conditioned stimuli and responses

Unconditioned (think of unlearned—involuntary) stimulus is an object or event that causes an instinctive or reflexive (unlearned) physiological or emotional response. The dog food is an unconditioned stimulus.

Unconditioned response—is the instinctive or reflexive (unlearned) physiological or emotional response that is caused by the unconditioned stimulus. Doggie drool is the unconditioned response. No one taught the dog to drool in response to food.

Conditioned stimulus—is an object or event that becomes associated with the unconditioned stimulus. In this case, it was the lab assistant. If the lab assistant hadn’t been the one feeding the dog, the dog would never have associated him with food, and wouldn’t drool in the assistant’s presence. This is a learned association, so it is “conditioned.”

Conditioned response—is a learned physiological or emotional response that is similar to the unconditioned response. The dog drools in the presence of the lab worker (even without the food).

Let’s see another example, this time with people…

Unconditioned stimulus:•Get yelled at by a teacher

You messed up. You were so

irresponsible. You are going to flunk.

I am angry at you. You are in

trouble.

Unconditioned stimulus:•Get yelled at by a teacher

Unconditioned response:•Feel bad

Unconditioned stimuli:•Get yelled at by a teacher

Associate teacher with classroom

APRIL

7APRIL

97

APRIL

8APRIL

7

Time passes…

The feelings return when the person sees just the classroom (not the teacher).

Conditioned stimulusConditioned response

Classical conditioning with people

Unconditioned stimuli:•Get yelled at by a teacher•Computer crashes•Do well on math quiz•Get threatened by dog

“Stimulus” is a Latin word and as a result, it has an unusual plural form, “stimuli.”

Unconditioned responses:•Feel bad•Feel angry•Feel good•Feel scared

Remember, your response here is involuntary. You don’t plan for these emotional responses.

Note on reading this and the next three slides: Ideas accumulate. Be sure you pay attention to the arrows & relationships on this slide before proceeding to the next.

Classical conditioning with people, part 2Unconditioned stimuli:•Get yelled at by a teacher•Computer crashes•Do well on math quiz•Get threatened by dog


Associations:•Teacher with classroom•Computer crash with having used a particular program•Math quiz with lucky rabbit foot•Dog with street you were walking down

Associations do not have to be “rational”—it would make sense to associate studying with doing well on a quiz. But sometimes you can do well on something without having prepared for it. Or, you can discount your preparation.

Info from last slideNew info

Classical conditioning with people, part 3




Conditioned stimuli

Conditioned responses:•You feel bad when you walk in the classroom.•You feel angry when you open up the program.•You feel good when you see the rabbit foot.•You feel scared when you see the street.

Generalization & discrimination




Conditioned stimuli


Generalizations:•You feel bad when you walk into all other classrooms•You feel angry when you use any computer program•You feel good when you see your lucky rock•You feel scared walking down any street

Discrimination:•You still feel good when you go to a different classroom.•You feel good when you open up other programs.•You don’t have any particular feelings about your lucky sweater•You don’t feel scared about any other street.

Generalizations: you have the same feelings about situations that are similar. Discrimination: you only have that feeling about the one situation.

Generalization occurs when the stimuli similar, but not identical, to a conditioned stimulus elicit the conditioned response.Discrimination is the ability to give different responses to related but not identical stimuli

ExtinctionUnconditioned stimuli:•Get yelled at by a teacher•Computer crashes•Do well on math quiz•Get threatened by dog

•Feel bad•Feel angry•Feel good•Feel scared


Conditioned stimuli


Extinction Examples:•A teacher makes an effort to make you feel good about his/her classroom. You enter classrooms without feeling bad. •A computer expert teaches you how to prevent the crash. You use the computer but no longer get angry.•You fail a test despite the lucky rabbit foot. You no longer feel good about the rabbit foot.•You spend time learning about dog behavior and how to deal with it. You walk down the street without feeling scared.

Extinction: conditioned stimulus occurs repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus and no longer elicits the conditioned response. In other words, the original bad or good thing has gone away, so the association between it and whatever secondary thing you connected it to gets weaker over time and you no longer have the feelings about the secondary situation.

Unconditioned responses:

Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus occurs repeatedly in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus and no longer elicits the conditioned response.

ABC’s of behaviorism Antecedent: events that precede an action Behavior Consequences: events that follow an action

People and animals interact with their environment. Factors present in the environment (antecedents) influence behavior as do consequences. For example, a window in a classroom is an antecedent to the behavior of staring out the window instead of paying attention to the teacher. Scientists manipulate antecedents and consequences in order to study behavior.

Operant Conditioning

A form of learning in which an observable response changes in frequency or duration as a result of a consequence.

A consequence is an outcome (stimulus) that occurs after a behavior and influences future behaviors.

This is a three-part process: behavior, consequence, response

Operants: voluntary (and generally goal-directed) behaviors emitted by a person or animal.

Operant ConditioningBehavior

Operant ConditioningConsequence (Stimulus)


Behavior increases or Behavior decreasesLearning (Response):

Consequence (Stimulus)

Operant ConditioningBehavior Consequence (Stimulus)


Operant ConditioningBehavior

Behavior Consequence Response

You answer a question

You speed

A child misbehaves in class

Jimmy calls Billy a name

You leave for work early

Operant ConditioningConsequence (Stimulus)Behavior

Behavior Consequence Response

You answer a question The teacher praises you

You speed The police officer gives you a ticket

A child misbehaves in class The teacher gets angry and chaos breaks out

Jimmy calls Billy a name Billy ignores the name calling

You leave for work early You avoid heavy traffic

Operant ConditioningConsequence (Stimulus)


Behavior Consequence Response (increase or decrease)

You answer a question The teacher praises you You try to answer another question

You speed The police officer gives you a ticket You don’t speed next time


The child does it again

Jimmy calls Billy a name Billy ignores the name calling Jimmy doesn’t do that again

You leave for work early You avoid heavy traffic You leave early again.


A type of learning in which an observable response changes in frequency or duration as a result of a consequence. In other words, it is learning (change in behavior) that takes place because of the consequences of one’s actions.

Behavior Consequence (Stimulus)


Examples: •You answer a question correctly & the teacher praises you, so you try to answer another question.•You speed and the police officer gives you a ticket so you don’t speed the next time you drive that highway.•A child misbehaves in class & the teacher gets angry. Chaos breaks out, so the child does it again.•Jimmy calls Billy a name. Billy ignores the name calling. Jimmy doesn’t do that again. •You leave early for work and avoid heavy traffic, so the next day you leave early again.

Consequence: an outcome (stimulus) that occurs after the behavior and influences future behaviors.

Types of Consequences

Behavior Consequence Response (increase or decrease)

You answer a question The teacher praises you You try to answer another question

You speed The police officer gives you a ticket You don’t speed next time


The child does it again

Jimmy calls Billy a name Billy ignores the name calling Jimmy doesn’t do that again

You leave for work early You avoid heavy traffic You leave early again.

The type of consequence determines the learning. Reinforcing consequences increase behavior and both the lack of reinforcement and punishment decrease the behavior.

Increase in behavior (reinforcement)

Decrease in behavior (punishment)

Decrease in behavior (lack of reinforcement)

Reinforcer: any event that follows a behavior and increases the chances that the behavior will occur again..Reinforcement: use of consequences to strengthen behavior.

Types of consequences

What determines the type of consequence is the effect it has on the behavior.

You may intend for something to be a punishment but it might turn out to be a reinforcer. If the consequence increases the behavior, then it is a reinforcer, no matter what you intended. The teacher in the example probably intended for getting angry to be a punishment but it turned out to be a reinforcer.

Types of Reinforcement: Positive vs. Negative

Examples: •You answer a question correctly & the teacher praises you, so you try to answer another question.•A child misbehaves in class & the teacher gets angry. Chaos breaks out, so the child does it again.•You leave early for work and avoid heavy traffic, so the next day you leave early again.•You practice your musical instrument to avoid having a bad lesson with your teacher

Positive Reinforcement: the process of increasing the frequency or duration of a behavior as the result of presenting a reinforcer.

Negative Reinforcement: the process of removing or avoiding a stimulus (consequence) to increase behaviorNotes:Negative reinforcement is REMOVAL, AVOIDANCE. A behavior that removes the possibility of a negative consequence is considered to be “negatively reinforced.”

Punishment: Two Types

Presentation Punishment: learner’s behavior decreases due to being presented with a punisher (such as a bad grade which leads to a student goofing off less).

Removal punishment: a learner’s behavior decreases because he or she is removed from the situation (or positive reinforcement for the behavior no longer is possible). For instance, a child is given “time out” so no longer gets positive reinforcement from other students for clowning around.

Punishers: consequences which weaken behavior or decrease their frequency. The process of using punishers to decrease behavior is called punishment.

Aversive: irritating or unpleasant

Problems with Punishment

Physical punishment can teach aggression. Punishment may increase defiance. It suppresses behavior temporarily. Punishment may make a student sneaky (avoiding

the person who punishes or avoiding getting caught at the activity).

Punishment causes negative emotions (classical conditioning) that may get in the way of a more positive relationship on which teaching is based.

What to do?

Use positive reinforcement as much as possible—e.g., “catch ‘em being good.”

Use punishment when nothing else has worked.

Remember that behaviorism is a limited theory, focusing only on external features of human beings. Before creating a discipline plan, become familiar with the other theories of human psychology and their implications for the classroom.

Reinforcement schedules

Descriptions of the patterns in the frequency and predictability of reinforcers.

Behavior is affected by how often and how predictable your reinforcers are.

Continuous vs. Intermittent

Continuous: a pattern in which every response is reinforced; you reward all instances of a behavior. If you give a star for every single homework assignment turned in, you are using a continuous schedule of reinforcement.Intermittent: a pattern in which a behavior is reinforced only periodically; you only reward some instances of a behavior. If you do not give out a star for every single homework assignment, then you are using intermittent reinforcement.

Interval vs. Ratio

Interval: you reward after a period of time. For example, you reinforce (reward) homework only on Mondays and you do not reward it on other days. Or you reward homework on random days (we’ll see more about this in a moment). Interval is related to time.Ratio: you reward after a number of instances of a behavior. For example, you reward every five homework assignments or you reward after a random number of completed assignments. Ratio has to do with the number of times a behavior appears.

Interval: how long between behavior & reinforcement

Ratio: the number of responses before you get a reinforcement.

Fixed vs. variable

Your interval or your ratio can be fixed or variable. If it is fixed, then you reward in relation to a specific period of time (every Monday) or a specific number of instances of behavior (every 5 homework assignments). If it is variable, then you reward randomly in relation to either time or number of instances.

But why? Think about this: if a teacher rewards every

homework, then maybe you would think, “I don’t have to do tonight’s homework—I’ll get a reward the next time.” The behavior of doing your homework might actually decrease. (Continuous reinforcement)

Intermittent reinforcement is actually more powerful, particularly when you don’t know what will be reinforced (ratio) or when (interval). If you know that homework will be rewarded on Monday, you might slack off on the other days. But if you don’t know when homework will be reinforced, you will probably do the homework all the time because you don’t want to miss out on a reward.

Reinforcement schedules: Why?

Continuous: offers steepest learning curve (students learn behavior quickly because it is consistently rewarded) but behavior disappears when reinforcements disappear. For example, students rewarded with pizza coupons will read books but when the pizza coupons stop, the students for whom the coupons were the only reward (they didn’t like reading in the first place) stop reading.

Intermittent: requires behavior to be performed occasionally without reward or without immediate reward. For example, students don’t know when they will get the pizza coupons, so they read some books without pizza coupons. The teacher can give the pizza coupon for every fifth book (fixed ratio), randomly (variable ratio), every Friday (fixed interval), or on a random weekday (variable interval). The result is that the behavior doesn’t disappear as easily.

Intermittent rewards and gambling

Gambling offers a wonderful (and dreadful) example of how intermittent rewards dramatically reinforce behavior. Slot machines and lotteries reward on an intermittent variable ratio basis: your chances of winning are random every time you play. What keeps a person pulling the arm of a slot machine or playing the lottery? The thought that “maybe this time I’ll get the reward.” When the reward comes, it is emotionally powerful because of the efforts made that were not rewarded. For some people, this idea can lead to a profound addiction to gambling. Other forms of gambling may involve more skill, but random chance still influences the outcome and the reward schedule still strongly contributes to the maintenance of the behavior. By the way, the house always wins.

Extinction The disappearance of a conditioned response as a result of

nonreinforcement. When a behavior is not reinforced, it disappears. For example, when

Billy calls Tommy a name and Tommy ignores Billy, Billy is less likely to use name calling to get attention from Tommy. Tommy extinguishes Billy’s behavior by ignoring it. If you can get a kid to ignore name calling (which is REALLY DIFFICULT) that will remove the fun of the name caller.

There are students who have become used to being reinforced for bad behavior. Remember the example of a student misbehaving and the teacher getting angry? For some students, a teacher’s anger is a powerful reinforcement—it will surely cause those students to behave in a similar way again. Ignoring their behavior may work. If it doesn’t, the most important thing is to address it without ANY anger.

Satiation

Satiation involves using a reinforcer so frequently that it loses its potency, or ability to strengthen behaviors.

When a reinforcer is overused, it causes satiation. It no longer is reinforcing and the behavior decreases. If kids get too many pizza coupons for reading, they won’t be able to use them or they will get sick of pizza so the coupons are no longer an effective reward. The students who need an external reward for reading will decrease their reading behavior.

You can also satiate a bad behavior. For example, if a young child spits, you can have the child spit twenty or thirty times in the toilet. Having to spit a whole bunch of times removes the fun of it.

Antecedents: Environment

Your classroom environment shapes behavior. In the above picture, the environment makes it possible for the students to pass notes. They would be less likely to do so if the teacher were writing on an overhead projector (and therefore facing the students). If you have students sitting around tables, that environment encourages interaction. Desks in rows facing the front discourages interaction. A large window may cause some children to be distracted. Buzzing florescent lights also may distract some students. A neat, orderly environment is less distracting to students whereas a chaotic environment can engender bad behavior from students.

“Antecedent” is something that comes before something else. In this case, the environment comes before the behavior of the students.

Antecedent: stimuli that precede behavior.

Stimulus control: capacity for the presence of absence of antecedents to cause behaviors.

Antecedents: Prompts and cues

Prompts and cues are specific antecedent stimuli intended to produce behaviors teachers want to reinforce.

“Comes before,” as in the prompts and cues come before the desired behavior Hints

Stimulus, something that stimulates, creates a need to make a response

To make stronger

In other words:Teachers use hints to help students behave in a desirable way that they can praise. The hints happen before the behavior.

Cue: providing a stimulus that “sets up” a desired behavior.Prompt: a reminder that follows a cue to make sure the person react to the cue.

Cues and prompts

What do you need to do next? Show me what you

need to do.

Applied Behavioral Analysis

Identify target behaviors:

What needs to be changed about what the student is doing?

Establish a baseline:

You can’t know if what you are doing is working unless you know what is happening. Count up the problem behaviors over a period of time.

Choose reinforcers and punishers:

Make sure these are likely to succeed. For example, some kids like stickers and others don’t care about them. Stickers are not a reinforcer for all children. Be sure to be consistent in using the reinforcers and punishers. This technique does not work if you are inconsistent.

Measure changes in behavior:

This is how you know whether or not your intervention is working. If the behavior is decreasing, you are on the right track. If it is increasing or staying the same, you need to think of something else to do (e.g., different reinforcers).

Reduce frequency of reinforcers:

You don’t want to send a kid to the next grade who still needs to have tokens for reading or whatever your system is. Also, see slides on intermittent reinforcements for reasons to reduce your frequency of reinforcers.

Applied Behavior Analysis: the application of behavioral learning principles to understand and change behavior.

Behavior modification: systematic application of antecedents and consequences to change behavior.

Applied Behavioral Analysis

Identify target behaviors:

A student gets out of her chair during individual work time.

Establish a baseline:

She does it three times, on average, every day.

Choose reinforcers and punishers:

She likes video games. You make a deal: for every ten minutes she remains seated during work time, she will get a token (a paper clip). When she has three paper clips, she can play a new video game on the computer during free time. If she gets up, she does not get the token and she cannot play the video game.

Measure changes in behavior:

On the first day, she gets up once, so she only has two paper clips. On the second day, she stays in her seat, receives 3 paper clips, and plays the video game. On the third day she slips, but succeeds on the fourth day. At the end of the second week, she is staying in her seat during the whole work time.

Reduce frequency of reinforcers:

You begin reinforcing intermittently. You phase out the whole system within a month.

Methods for Encouraging Behaviors

Reinforcing with teacher attention Premack principle Shaping Positive Practice

Reinforcing with teacher attention

Praise good behavior and ignore bad behavior…

Except, when peers reinforce bad behavior and your ignoring it is not working. Then you need to address bad behavior.

Make sure your praise is honest (the student actually did something desirable), specific (you tell the student exactly what they did right), and believable (don’t go overboard).

Premack Principle The phenomenon in which a more desired activity

serves as a positive reinforcer for a less desired activity. “You can play a video game when you have finished your homework” is an application of the Premack Principle.

This is something to think about when organizing the work in your classroom: if you are asking students to do something that is not fun, be sure you follow it up with something they do enjoy. Let them know that when they have finished they not so fun part, that they will get a chance to do the more fun thing.

Shaping Behavior

How to get a goldfish to go through a hoop.1. Establish a reward: Give it food every time you flick the water with your

finger so it associates a flick with a reward. (Your timing with the flick will be more immediate than if you were to reward directly with food. Be sure to give food after you flick when going through the procedures below).

2. Reward the fish every time it goes near the hoop.3. When the fish is going near the hoop consistently, withhold the reward

until the fish gets within two inches of the hoop.4. Reward only when fish is within one inch of the hoop.5. Reward only when fish sticks nose through hoop.6. Reward only when at least half of fish’s body goes through hoop.7. Reward only when fish goes all the way through the hoop.

Shaping behavior is the process of giving rewards for successive and better approximations of the behavior you want.

I learned about this on a dog training video; I SAW the fish go through the hoop and then I saw the fish get MAD when the owner forgot to give it its food reward (yes, fish can throw tantrums).

Good fishy!!!!Successive approximations: small components that make up a complex behavior.

Task analysis

In order to shape a behavior, you have to analyze it.

Task analysis: system for breaking down a task hierarchically into basic skills and subskills.

Task analysis: an example

Without realizing it, I did a task analysis of bicycle riding when I decided to teach my little sister how to ride. I planned all components of this lesson before I taught it.

First, I had her sit on the seat and use her feet to propel herself, so she could start to get the feel of balance.

Then I taught her how to use the brake.

After she was comfortable with these skills, I took her to a gentle slope and she was able to go down the slope without falling (she had learned balance) or being scared (she knew how to stop).

When she was able to go down the slope, then I taught her how to use the pedals. She learned to ride a bike in less than an hour. I learned how to be a teacher (I was probably nine).

Positive Practice

Practicing correct responses immediately after errors.

Musicians know how to do this—after having made a mistake, go over a passage again and again correctly.

It’s a good idea to do it in almost any situation—spelling, math, reading, etc.

Coping with undesirable behavior

Negative reinforcement Satiation Reprimands Response cost Social isolation Cautions

Negative reinforcement

A negative situation ends or is avoided when the student performs the desired behavior.

Students who turn in all their homework and have an average of 90% on it can avoid the exam.

When a student has finished his seat work, he can join the other students for free time.

Negative reinforcement Allows students to have some control (e.g., I can

choose to do my work quickly so I can have some fun).

Use positive words. Not, “you can’t go until you have finished your work” but “when you have finished your work, you can go.”

Don’t bluff—never say something to a student that you don’t intend to follow through with.

Make sure you can enforce the negative situation (you can’t keep kids after school who have to take a bus unless you know transportation is possible).

Go for action, not promises.

Satiation

Requiring a person to repeat a problem behavior past the point of interest or motivation.

Preschoolers who spit: have them spit in the toilet 20 times.

Silly behavior: this could be satiated pretty easily. Have the students repeat the silly behavior beyond the point at which they are tired of it.

Be careful about which behaviors you attempt to satiate. It will not work in some instances. It would be hard to satiate someone who loves video games by making them play video games.

Reprimands

Criticisms for misbehavior—rebukes. Private reprimands work a whole lot better

than public ones (in part because public attention to one’s behavior can actually reinforce it for certain students).

Remember that the goal is to establish a positive relationship with students. Public reprimands work against positive relationships because they are embarassing.

Response cost

Punishment by loss of reinforcers. This is like paying a fine. If you do something

wrong, you have to pay for it (e.g., a warning, a mark beside the name, etc.).

Response cost

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE find some other means of applying response cost than taking away recess time.

Your students with ADHD need to move around. You will be setting yourself and them up for failure if they don’t get recess—and yet they are the ones who are most likely to lose it due to bad behavior.

Response cost

If you MUST take away recess, then find some not so fun way of getting these kids to move around. This will save YOUR sanity.

A substitute teacher I know was handling students who were doing in-school detention. He took them to the gym when no one else was there and made them run up and down the bleachers for fifteen minutes. That got out some of the energy and yet it was not fun (it was not a reward).

Social isolation

Removal of a disruptive student for 5-10 minutes.

Time out: technically, the removal of all reinforcement. In practice, isolation of a student from the rest of the class for a brief time.

For this to work, the student has to be removed to an empty area, not some place where there are people to watch and interact with (e.g., principal’s office).

Social isolation

This is controversial. In part, it’s really hard to supervise a class of 25 students and a student who is being isolated—a student by him or herself could get in trouble. Any room in a school that is small enough to be truly empty is likely to seem jail-like to school critics (e.g., on the 6 o’clock news).

Highly imaginative students do not respond to this method of punishment. They will just play by themselves until you say it is okay to come back to the rest of the students.

Cautions

Punishment doesn’t create positive behavior. Harsh punishment might set up retaliation or

teach “might makes right.” If you are going to use punishment, then you

also need to work hard on teaching the correct behaviors to students.

Functional behavioral assessment and positive behavior support

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA): procedures used to obtain information about antecedents, behaviors, and consequences to determine the reason or function of the behavior.

Positive behavioral supports (PBS): interventions designed to replace problem behaviors with new actions that serve the same purpose for the student.

What are students getting out the behavior?

It’s important to ask why a student is behaving in a certain way. What is this student getting? Attention? Escape from an unpleasant situation? Something the student wants? Meeting sensory needs?

What does this student want?

Attention? Then how can we help the student get attention in a more positive way?

Retaliation? Then how can we help the student solve social problems more effectively?

Positive behavioral supports

After you determine the purpose of the behavior, then you determine the things the student needs to be taught so that his/her needs are met through behavior that is acceptable in the classroom.

These things are positive behavioral supports.

Behavioral approaches to teaching and management

Group consequences Contingency contracts Token reinforcement Severe behavior problems

Group consequences

Good behavior game: arrangement where a class is divided into teams and each team receives demerit points for breaking agreed upon rules of good behavior.

Group consequences: rewards or punishments given to a class as a whole for adhering to or violating rules of conduct.

Group consequences

Your book tells you that an appropriate reward would be extra recess. Basically, this reward teaches that learning is not rewarding in and of itself because the reward is NOT learning.

Find a learning-based reward—such as the team that wins gets to choose which of several fun learning activities the whole class will do.

Contingency contracts

A contract between the teacher and a student specifying what the student must do to earn a particular reward or privilege.


There are lots of different ways of establishing rules in the classroom and you’ll be finding out more about approaches to classroom management other than behaviorism.


Another way to think about classroom rules is that they give students a message about what the teacher expects. If you have a whole bunch of rules about cheating, then that lets students know that you expect them to cheat. If you have rules that are all about childish behavior, then students know that you are expecting childish behavior.


In my opinion (here comes the soapbox), classroom rules even for young students should be based on an expectation of mature behavior. The majority of your students will live up to this and you will really enjoy your class.

There will be a minority of students who won’t be able to live up to adult rules. Rather than “dumbing down” the classroom rules for a minority of students, use contingency contracts with these students. In the contingency contract, you can develop rules that these students can understand and follow.

Token reinforcement

Token reinforcement system: system in which tokens earned for academic work and positive classroom behavior can be exchanged for some desired reward.

Token reinforcement systems

Only use: 1. to motivate students who are completely

uninterested in their work and have not responded to other approaches

2. to encourage students who have consistently failed to make academic progress

3. to deal with a class that is out of control

Tokens are a last-ditch effort. They take a lot of work and they don’t encourage intrinsic motivation. But they can work in situations where nothing else has.

Token reinforcement

You’ll have to do continuous rewards (in other words consistently rewarding positive behavior in every instance) at first to get it started, then you can move to intermittent rewards.

You’ll need to make sure that the token store is open fairly often and that materials available are desirable to the students.

The fiddle fairyThis is my seven-year-old violin student, Anna. When she first started playing, she had a hard time practicing. Her grandmother made sure she had an instrument available at the after school babysitter’s, but that didn’t work (although the babysitter was very cooperative). So, we came up with the Fiddle Fairy. The Fiddle Fairy comes to children who practice. Every week Anna collected four stickers on her practice record (4 15-minute session), the Fiddle Fairy brought a little gift (thanks, grandma!). I did two rewards in a row and then began intermittent rewards. She now no longer needs the Fiddle Fairy—she is choosing to practice on her own. She has seen how practicing pays off, both in working on her Christmas CD and in being able to play for a bunch of grownups at a Bluegrass jam.

Reaching every student: severe behavior problems

Token systems and group consequences can work with students who have severe behavior problems.

You must be prepared to be consistent with these systems if you are going to implement them.

Some of the systems described in your book have a game-like quality (drawing criteria from a jar) that is probably motivational and also allows random chance to control things rather than the teacher always seeming to be in control (motivational).

Critique of behaviorist classroom management

“Flip a card” where students begin the day on green, move through yellow, red, and white (with stronger consequences) is an effective classroom management system. However, what is being rewarded is compliance with the teacher and students are being extrinsically motivated to do so (more on this in the chapter on motivation).

Wouldn’t it be better if students chose to behave themselves in a classroom not for some reward but because they felt themselves to be part of a community they valued? (Remember Kohlberg?) How about students becoming so absorbed in high quality teaching and learning that discipline was not an issue and the teacher didn’t have to have a card system?

What kind of environmental antecedent is the card system? In a sense, because of its existence, it says to the students, “I expect you to misbehave.”

You may find yourself in a classroom of students who have never succeeded in school before and who need external motivation. In that case, the card system may work beautifully. But add to that, the best possible teaching and activities that get at intrinsic motivation. And dump the card system as soon as you possibly can. After all, most job sites don’t have card systems or give out points every day for good behavior… We are trying to help students develop good work habits not just to succeed in school but also to succeed beyond school.

Putting Behaviorism Into Perspective

Behaviorism is not a good guide for instruction because it tends to focus on learning small bits when we often want students to deal with whole concepts.

Behaviorism does not explain higher order functions—anything that has to do with what is really going on inside a person’s head (it is simply a focus on the externals—behavior).

Reinforcers support extrinsic (external) motivation rather than intrinsic (internal) motivation.

It does not teach self-control because it is dependent on the teacher controlling students through reinforcers and punishment.

Antecedents

Classical conditioning

Conditioned response


Unconditioned

response

Unconditioned stimulus

Conse-quence

Contiguity

Continuous reinforcement schedule

Intermittent reinforcement schedule

Cues

Prompts

General-ization

Discrim-ination

Extinction

Learning

Positive reinforce-

ment

Negative reinforce

ment

Operant condition

ing

Potency

Satiation

Applied behavior analysis

Cognitive behavior

modification

Cognitive modeling

Inhibition

ModelingPremack principle

Presentation

punishment

Removal punishment

Productive learning environ-

ment

Punishers

Punishment

Reinforce-ment

Reinforcer

Reinforce-ment

schedule

Self-modeling

Self-regula-

tion

Shaping

Social cognitive

theory

Vicarious learning

Behavioral learning theories

Stimulus

Response

Respondents

Neutral stimulus

OperantsAversive

Ratio schedule

Interval schedule

Stimulus control

Behavior modification

Reprimands

Response cost

Social isolation

Time out

Positive behavioral supports

Functional behavioral assessment

Good behavior

game

Group Conse-

quences

Token Rein-forcement

system

Contingency contract

Social Learning theory

Observational learning

Vicarious reinforce-

ment

Self-reinforce

ment

Self-efficacy

Ripple effect

Self-management

Self-instruction

learning: process through which experience causes permanent change in knowledge or behavior....

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