Behavioral Views of Learning

Quiz #5

After the Quiz… Take a moment to read and write down your thoughts for the following case study

Alan is an 11th grade student in your lowest level class. He is a very nice guy, gets along well with everyone, and doesn’t cause any trouble in class; however, he doesn’t seem to finish or turn in any assignments that you give him. Whenever you give instructions to the class for an assignment he seems to be paying attention, but during the assignment he just sits there. When you remind him to do the assignment, he works for a few minutes and then he goes back to just sitting there looking bored. When you talk to him after class about his performance, he says that he will work harder and that he really wants to do well. He tells you that he is just lazy. Alan’s school record indicates that he has a 2.8 GPA, he rarely misses class, and has no diagnosed learning disabilities. Why do you think Allen is having trouble? What do you do to get Alan to finish his assignments?

Classical Conditioning: Classroom Examples

•A first grader feels ill when recess time approaches because he was beat up on the playground the last 3 days in a row.

•Certain smells that can elicit nauseous sensations

•Speech phobia : cold sweat, shaking knees and hands

Operant Conditioning: Using Reinforcement Effectively

First of all you should understand that behavior is often the result of particular conditions. You should also accept the fact that quite often you are going to be a haphazard shaper of behavior. Nevertheless, there will be times when you and your students may benefit if you say to yourself, “Now, there have to be some causes for that behavior. Can I figure out what they are and do something about changing things for the better? Am I doing something that is leading to types of behavior that are making life difficult for some or all of us in the room?” e.g., are you inadvertently rewarding students for misbehavior – perhaps by calling attention to them or failing to reinforce desirable forms of behavior. Examples.

Using reinforcement appropriately, to strengthen behaviors you want to encourage. It probably seems obvious that you should reinforce good behavior in the classroom but it doesn’t always occur – for example, one very large study examined 1,350 teachers in 38 schools and found that teachers praised students’ work very infrequently – about 2% of the time in the primary grades and 1% of the time in high school. After you resolve to use reinforcement make sure you use it appropriately – here are some guidelines:

Use the weakest reward available to strengthen a behavior. e.g., don’t use material rewards if praise would be just as effective – save the material rewards for a special behavior for which praise or other reinforcers may not be effective.
When possible, avoid using rewards as incentives. Don’t get into the habit of automatically telling the student that if she does what you want, you will provide a specific reward. Instead, sometimes ask the student to do something (like work quietly or help another student), and then provide the reinforcer. (helps to avoid the problem of extrinsic reinforcement undermining intrinsic motivation)
Reward at a high rate in the early stages of learning, and reduce the frequency of rewards as learning progress. (continuous reinforcement is often necessary to establish new behaviors but intermittent reinforcement leads to more persistent behavior)
Remember that what is an effective reinforcer for one student may not be for another. For some students, comments such as “Very interesting point,” or “That’s right” will strengthen the target behavior. But for others, something less overt, such as smiling encouragingly, may be just right.
Set standards so that success is a realistic possibility for each student. Because classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse, you may have students whose English proficiency is limited or who have disabilities related to learning and intellectual functioning. One way to deal with such diversity is to reward students for making steady progress from whatever their baseline level of performance was at the beginning of the term. (remember the concept of shaping and successive approximations)

Give students opportunities to make overt responses, and provide prompt feedback

Require students to make frequent, overt, and relevant responses. The tendency of many teachers is to talk, and for large chunks of time. Another approach is for teachers to limit the amount of information and explanation they give to students and substitute opportunities for students to respond overtly. In addition, the responses should be directly related to the objectives. If your objectives emphasize the application of concepts and principles, then most of the responses students are asked to make should be about applications. The reason for this suggestion is that the delivery of corrective feedback and other forms of positive reinforcement can be increased when students make frequent responses, thereby accelerating the process of shaping. Examples.
Provide feedback so that correct responses will be reinforced and students will become aware of and correct errors. Research clearly shows that students who study material about a topic, answer a set of questions about that material, and are then told whether their responses are correct and why score significantly higher on a subsequent test of that material than do students who receive no feedback. You should also remember that immediate feedback is more effective than delayed feedback so return those exams quickly!

Operant Conditioning: Using Punishment Effectively

Potential problems with the use of punishment

Emotional reactions (commonly fear and/or anger)
Escape/avoidance
Negatively reinforcing for person administering
Modeling
Ethical issues

Using punishment that is too mild

Many behaviors difficult to punish immediately
“Punishment” may actually be positively reinforcing
No new behavior
Generalized response suppression

Guidelines for the effective use of punishment

Choose a specific behavior to be punished
Choose alternative behaviors to reinforce
Minimize the causes of the response to be punished
Select an effective punisher
Avoid over-reliance on punishment

Observational Learning

To remember the processes involved in observational learning imagine that you are going to show your students how to solve addition problems. First, you make sure you have their attention. Second, you explain and demonstrate how to solve simple addition problems and ask your students to prove that they have encoded and retained this procedure in memory by reproducing your behavior. Third, you give them several addition problems to solve. Fourth, you reinforce students with praise when they come up with correct answers.

Break

5-minute presentations

Michael Cassidy (cueing and prompting)
Sharon Terrell (Premack Principle)
Helen Ezell (shaping)
Lucy Pryor Brady (contingency contracts)
Camille Brennan (observational learning)

What’s Next?

Coverage of Cluster 7 (Cognitive Views of Learning)

Before class you should…

submit response paper by Wednesday (midnight). See syllabus for details.
read cluster 7
prepare for quiz covering cluster 7 by answering/studying short answer questions below
prepare 5-minute presentation if applicable (see info below)

Short Answer Questions

Discuss the concept of working memory – be sure to include a discussion of the 3 components of working memory, the duration of information in working memory, how information in working memory is transferred to long-term memory and how information from working memory may be forgotten.
Do children of different ages tend to use working memory in the same way? Discuss developmental differences in working memory. Note: This information is found in the Reflecting on Cluster 7 section at the end of the chapter (page 301 in my text).
In one sentence each, define maintenance and elaborative rehearsal. Provide an original example of each. Be brief.
Distinguish between implicit and explicit memory – describe types (or subcategories) of each. Provide one original example for both explicit and implicit memory.
Review Guidelines: Gaining and Maintaining Attention in your text (p.274 in my edition). For each of the 5 guidelines presented provide a brief, specific, example of how you would use it in a real classroom situation. DO NOT summarize, define, or otherwise repeat the information presented in the guidelines.
What is metacognition? What are the “three essential skills” that support metacognition? Think of a specific classroom situation in which you might need to improve metacognitive ability – using the strategies discussed in table 20.1 describe how you could do this. Is NOT necessary to use all of the strategies presented. There is no need to define or summarize the 8 strategies – i.e., you should simply describe your example and how you are using the strategies. e.g.,

In my Social Statistics class when I teach students how to calculate probabilities in a normal distribution, I always begin by drawing a normal bell-shaped curve on the board, identifying the location of the z-value, and shading in the area to be calculated. I begin with simple examples but always explain the importance of drawing the curve first. I present many examples in class – I do all the work first and then gradually require them to do it on their own. Some of the problems are difficult and so occasionally students will get confused. When this happens I back up one step and repeat a simpler problem – showing them how drawing the curve helped me to answer the problem. I repeatedly remind them that an understanding of the basic properties of normal distributions will be important later in the course.

Define what is meant by automated skills, and describe the stages assumed to be involved in developing them.

5-Minute Presentations

Be sure to read your syllabus for specifics regarding 5-minute presentations. Potential topics for next week include…

sensory memory
declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge
elaboration and organization
mnemonics