Week Four - Behaviorism

 What is Learning? Learning is moving from a state of ignorance to understanding and incompetence to a state of skillfulness, or at least gaining more skillfulness (or knowledge) than where one began.  

I am sure I learned about behaviorism in my undergrad program. I would certainly not have been able to name it in more recent years. After reading this week, my short definition of behaviorism is how we behave, why we behave in those ways and how we alter those behaviors.  

Reading through Driscoll’s article I chuckled at myself—thinking about my behaviors in regards to this particular course and how I need to make some modifications so I can be successful, but let’s put self-reflection to the side.

A good majority of my hands-on experience with behavior management came in the form of being a paraprofessional in an upper elementary special education class for kids with severe physical and cognitive disabilities. Our days were filled with behavior management. “Put simply, behavior is more likely to reoccur if it has been rewarded or reinforced” (Driscoll, Radical behaviorism, p. 35).  Reinforcement is crucial in every classroom but in this particular class, it was overwhelming obvious how students responded to various forms. The kids were always seeking some sort of validation or attention. Probably no surprise the most sought after treasure was ‘iPad’ to play games.

“Special education teachers are typically well trained in the use of behavior modification since they regularly deal with children who have special problems and special needs. As part of the individual education plans for individual students, teacher may target problem behaviors, devise and implement interventions, and keep records to monitor student progress and inform changes to the original plan” (Driscoll, Radical behaviorism, pp. 56-57).

Our day was broken down into 15-30 minute segments of time. With 10-12 students and 4-5 adults, there were a lot of moving parts. Each student had a different schedule with one on one time, small group time, and large group time. Each student had different reading, math, and socialization goals which were assessed and tracked once a month. We put significant thought into which adults worked with which students to accomplish those goals and how to break them down into smaller chunks. One of our struggles was sending our kids up to middle school. Often, the teachers/paraprofessionals were frustrated because the student did not display the same levels of competency as they had in the elementary school. There were obvious reasons why this would be true. The class had significantly less structure in place. It was a new building, new teachers, new schedule, new everything. With us, most of them had been in the building and had some type of relationship with the adults prior to being students in the classroom. It seems like this relational piece is where behaviorism is somewhat lacking. We all behave differently in different contexts depending on who were are with or near. Figure 2.A – A Concept Tree for Principles of Behavior Management is helpful in providing a snapshot (Driscoll, Radical behaviorism, p. 45). In my experience, the effectiveness of the strategy varied greatly between students, the time of day, and the involvement of the guardians.

 

  

 

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Radical behaviorism. In Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 29-69). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Saettler, P. (1990). 

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