The main idea of this chapter was how to teach a child to change his or her behavior. The book included many ideas of what to do and what not to do when a teacher (or even a parent) is trying to change a child's behavior. The chapter focused on what types of reinforcements and punishments are most effective or ineffective and why. It also talked about how different stimuli can bring about different outcomes.
What was confusing to me about this chapter is that it kept telling us as teachers what we should not do to punish students. I understand that the book was trying to get us to shift into more reinforcements than punishments, but it would not give alternative punishment ideas. It went on and on about the types of things that were "ineffective" punishments that were effective for me as a child, but it would not give alternatives.
A behaviorist defines learning as a change in behavior because of an external stimuli. Behaviorists would say that learning happens when a child changes their behavior because he or she has been trained to associate a behavior with a stimuli. For example, when a child hears a loud noise he or she may become scared. If the child is then presented with a mouse immediately after hearing the loud noise he or she will associate the mouse with the loud noise and become scared of the mouse by association.
I think that this chapter wanted to make clear that there are some types of punishments that are not effective in teaching a child anything about their behavior and these should not be used. I do think that the chapter did give many options on how to provide "appropriate punishments". Punishments are typically used to decrease a behavior and if you look into the section on effective ways to decrease inappropriate behaviors I think you may find some things that could be 'punishments' so to speak.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that some of the punishments the book listed as ineffective (such as extra homework and withdrawal of recess) also worked for me when I was a child, I can understand the reasoning for not wanting to use these punishments, as they make homework seem like a daunting, negative task, and may not give students a chance to get all of their energy out before coming back to class.
ReplyDeleteStarting on page 168, there are some effective strategies for decreasing inappropriate behaviors. Satiation (the teacher makes a student perform the inappropriate behavior over and over), extinction (teacher no longer gives reinforcement for an unwanted behavior), and social isolation (time-out) are some of the examples the book gives.
That's a nice overview of chapter topics, but two things:
ReplyDelete1. Be careful in the language you chose here. You aren't teaching the child to change their behavior (in the sense the child is making a choice and is empowered to change their behavior or not), since this implies something in the mind. According to a behaviorist, you are simply 'changing or shaping the child's behavior (yourself).' It's a small but important distinction.
2. It's a nice list of topics covered, but what important information did you pull out of the chapter? If you were to describe important tools from this chapter to a practicing teacher, what might you tell them in a couple sentences?
I hope the negative punishment activity in class helped?
Wonderful definition of behaviorist learning. :)