December 1, 2008

What?
Today we talked about Behaviorism, which is a semi-permanent change in behavior. We talked about the advantages, you can see a change in behavior and the change can be measured, and the disadvantages, mode of assessment is different for each student. We also talked about how behaviorism is different from the cognitive-computer theory, constructivist-building upon knowledge, and behaviorism-the black box. We talked about the basic assumptions of behaviorism influence environment, focus on observable events, learning results in a behavior change, contiguity of events, and there are similar learning principles across species. We talked about classical and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, the conditioning are involuntary, for example Pavlov and the dogs. Operant conditioning is voluntary and desired behaviors are reinforced, for example Skinner. We talked about reinforcement encouraging behaviors and reinforcing these behaviors through different means like in a token economy. To reinforce a group we use a group contingency, which is a reinforcement for the entire group. We talked about shaping which is breaking tasks down into smaller pieces, with attainable criteria, and successive approximations. We talked about elimination and extinction procedures, where the behavior is ignore. Usually after using an extinction procedure there is an extinction burst, where the student tries harder to get your attention. We also talked about cueing and reinforcing incompatible behaviors. Lastly we talked about punishers, ineffective punishment, and reinforcement verses punishment.
So What?
This information is definitely needed in the classroom as teachers we need to be able to identify children's behaviors, why they are exhibiting these behaviors, and how to handle misbehavior. It is important to know what motivators can be used while working with students. The extinction procedures are extremely useful to eliminate behaviors that are not appropriate. We also need to know that punishers are different and unique for each student and are only to be used when reinforcement has failed. It is also important to punish in private not in public. We also have to be aware that punishers are temporary, may distract the student from the behavior, have negative emotional responses, lead to aggression, and they donot demonstrate or model the correct behavior.
Now What?
This has been extremely important and is something I use daily at the special education preschool I work in. In order to meet the needs of our students we are very aware of the behaviors of our students. We notice any change in their behavior and try to find out why their behavior has changed. We use eliminating behaviors daily to deal with all different types of misbehavior. We usually use extinction procedures and precision commands, which the students really respond to. The student have learned that they follow directions or their is a consequence, usually hand over hand. We have also used token economy in our classroom to improve verbal and social skills. For the month of October we gave the students pirate coins for participating during circle time. This encouraged our nonverbal students to begin to participate by doing the actions and trying to learn the songs. half way through the month we had almost every one of our students participating in our circle time. At the end of the month the student took their coin to a fish pond where they fished for prizes.