Learned Behaviors

The focus of our reading and discussion this week is on learned behaviors. People learn in many ways: they can learn by observing, by positive reinforcement, by negative reinforcement, and by punishment.  People are always learning, but educators can utilize learning behavior theories in order to ensure that students are learning desired behaviors and skills.

We read about three behavior theorists this week.  

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory explains how people learn from observing and replicating the behaviors of others.  In his experiment, he had one group of students observe adults being physical abusive to a doll.  A second group did not observe such behavior.  The group that observed the violent behavior exhibited more violent behavior than the group who did not observe violent behavior including the inventing even more violent behaviors than they had observed and even the use of guns.  

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning is an experiment in how to achieve desired behaviors.  Pavlov was able to condition responses in behavior by using a neutral stimulus alongside unconditioned natural behaviors.  His famous example is making a dog salivate by ringing a bell, because he had conditioned the dog to do so by ringing a bell every time the dog was presented with food and naturally salivated.

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning also is an experiment in how to achieve desired behaviors.  Sknner showed that positive rewards reinforce behaviors and will create a higher frequency of the behavior.  He used what is called Skinner’s Box in order to train a rat to get food by pushing a lever.  The positive reward of the food increased the amount the times the rat would press the lever.

As educators we utilize operant conditioning more often than we realize.  As such, we should ensure that we are reinforcing the behaviors we want to see students exhibit.

I have often confused negative reinforcement with punishment in my classroom.  Negative reinforcement is allowing a student to escape something they do not want to do whereas punishment is providing a negative consequence.  Our class discussion revolved around sending students to the office and I believe it is important to remember that for some students that consequence is not a punisher, it is a negative reinforcement. If a child does not want to participate in the classroom setting, sending him/her to the office is a reward not a punishment.  

I found the example in the book regarding physical education students rather amusing.  The example showed that making students sit out of activities and make them watch instead was extremely effective at reducing undesirable behaviors.  When I was a child, I hated P.E. class.  I believe the sit and watch consequence would have been a negative reinforcement for me.  I would have done anything to get out of playing dodgeball or running.  The group of elementary school students in the example must have all really enjoyed P.E. 

After this week’s readings I realize that I may have not given enough time and energy to positive reinforcers before resorting to punishments and that I have often reinforced negative behaviors without realizing it.  I am guilty of giving the squeaky wheel the grease. The child constantly disrupts often gets my attention and I need to work on ignoring those behaviors.  Our school is beginning PBIS this year and I look forward to finding new behavior strategies for use in my classroom.

Bandura and Social Learning Theory. (2013). Retrieved 27 May 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjTxQy_U3ac&feature=youtu.be

Peppermint Patty In School YouTube. (2015). Retrieved 27 May 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKJ4crsNlY&feature=youtu.be

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Acquisition of Knowledge

Description

 The focus of our reading this week is on the acquisition of knowledge.  Teachers should be aware of various psychological and sociological theories that describe how and when children acquire knowledge.  Educators can use information from multiple sources to determine what is acceptable for their students to learn at a certain age and how to increase learning if they seem to be behind.  

Analysis

When a teacher is planning a science lesson for a child in the second grade, it is important to remember that the child is not a small adult.  The student thinks about the world differently and does not have the same cultural toolbox as an older student or an adult (Slavin, 2018)  A child in the second grade would be in either Piaget’s Pre-operational stage or in the Concrete Operational stage.  

The 2nd grade student would be in the process of learning measurements and that a liter of water is the same amount of water no matter what size container it is in.  This student would also be ready to learn how to see and evaluate events or ideas from more than one perspective and to evaluate the relationships between objects (Slavin, 2018, p 27-29).

An 8th grade student would be in Piaget’s Formal Operational stage (Slavin, 2018, p 29).  This child is ready to form hypotheses outside of their own experiences.  This child may rely on cues from other students and working with peers to discover new information. 

Both the younger and the older student will need modeling and explanations from adults and peers in order to process new information well. (Slavin, 2018, p 34).

Reflection

In reading the multiple theories on acquisition of knowledge I realize that although (at least according to Piaget) that individuals should be beginning to form adult ideas by the age of  11, it is true that stages in learning acquisition occurs at different ages and sometimes at drastically different ages.  According to Piaget reversibility should be acquired by around age 11 (Slavin, 2018, p 27), yet I have economics students that are 17 to 19 years old who still do not understand that division is the reverse of multiplication.  Somewhere, somehow there has been a delay in knowledge acquisition of these students.

Language acquisition is especially important in a persons very young years.  Parents who read to their children and talk to their children provide vocabulary to them that can lead to future success in school.  Gaps in the vocabulary of my students is very wide.  By the time I get them as seniors in high school, they have moved from parent influence to peer influence on their language and it is easy to see their values based on what words are in their vocabulary.  Slang and personal speech that they think adults do not understand is also very important to them at the high school age.

High school students should be able to predict, summarize, create alternate endings, and understand place, setting, view point, and tone.  Yet depending on vocabulary acquisition, students vary greatly on their abilities in literacy.  Our school has pushed a focus on writing, but many teachers are finding it difficult to incorporate writing into a math class that has an EOC (it seems like just one more thing teachers are asked to do without providing more planning or grading time).  

In my classroom, I often have the expectation that students should know things based on their age or what their level of development should be.  Yet, I often forget that many of our student who live in poverty, or who have had traumatic experiences are not always developmentally on-level.  Learning more about the stages of development can remind me that my students may not acquired the skills of a high school senior and I may need to restructure my lessons in order to provide scaffolding to help them reach where they should be.

Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Introduction

Welcome to my Blog Journal for EDAT 6115.  This blog will be a reflection on information gleaned from my summer semester 2020 as a graduate student at Georgia Southern University in Dr. Lomax's class entitled Knowledge of Students and Their Learning.