I had learned about operant conditioning previously in an intro psych course. In operant conditioning you have:
positive reinforcement- add something to encourage behavior, most effective
praise students when they are doing something right
negative reinforcement- take away something to reinforce behavior
ex: take away the final exam if students get higher than 85% on term exams to reinforce studying
positive punishment- add something to decrease behavior
ex: add detention to get the student to behave better
negative punishment- take away something to decrease behavior
ex: taking away recess to get the student to behave better
a way to remember this is to think
positive: something is being added
negative: something is being taken away
reinforcement: increase a behavior
punishment: decrease a behavior
The point was brought up in class about how this can just be used to have students behaving the way the teacher has them behave or they won't get "a marble". It doesn't teach them to manage their own behavior. I remember in grade 6 we got play money if we did something good and then could buy stuff from the class store. I thought it was awesome back then but did not realize that it was just a way to get us to behave in class- I just thought about the prize I was going to get when I got enough fake money.
Also in class we discussed different approaches
1. Technical instrumental approach- this would be operant conditioning-- so controlling behavior
2. humanistic approach- helping students be all that they can be, look at the whole human, have them learn to manage behavior
3. critical perspective- what are unstated political dimensions going on?
gender, class, race, sexual orientation, dominant group in society and how are these continually reproduced in the school system?
Ideally, I would like to follow the humanistic approach--but in all honesty who's saying if I had a wild grade 8 boys physical education class one day that I wouldn't try and use operant conditioning?
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