Chapter 6: Behavioral Views of Learning

by April

This was an interesting chapter, I think in part because Prof. Mabry said when class first started that behavioral theories are outdated. Then I thought of how we tend to believe what we heard first so I tried to keep an open mind while reading. The questions as to whether using a reward system was a good or bad technique was highly debated in my last school. Some teachers loved it, some hated it. I fell in the middle, where I usually seem to be. I found it helpful at times and less helpful at other times.

I have certainly employed many of the strategies in the chapter in my own teaching. Specifically there is a section that talks about involving the family when working with a child with significant behavior issues. They suggested something like getting or having taken away buttons and the number left going towards points for things at home such as TV time. Which by the way, I think is a horrible idea. I may have mentioned this before but it always seemed to me that the kids who had significant behavior problems were also kids who spent a lot of time in front of the television at home. So, I think rewarding good behavior with TV time is not helpful. However, the family in my class chose to use this to help their child with his behavior problems. He had a chart in class and if he got a certain number of smiley stickers on the chart that day he got to take home a smiley face on a piece of paper and his family would reward him with TV time. This was very helpful for a little while but it's affects wore off in time. This seemed to be the case with most of the situations we tried to use reward system for. To me this says that using a reward system needs to be coupled with other strategies while slowly weaning the child off the reward system.

However, I'm not sure I'm ready to completely count out behaviorists theories. I liked the point in the debate section that said, "Would you continue to work for a company that didn't pay you, even though you liked the work? (page 239)" Well, obviously the answer is no. We work to earn a living and hopefully because we enjoy our job. In teaching our motivations are hopefully higher than just making a living but for many people, they work because they need money to live. So our world is system based on rewards. I absolutely think intrinsic motivation is important but I'm going to be open to behaviorist strategies in cases where other strategies aren't working.

I liked the point about functional behavioral assessments. The question, "What are students getting out of their problem behavior?" was a great one. The next step of course being that you would find another way to help the child get what they are getting through misbehaving. A simple example from my experience is the child who steals toys. Obviously what the child is receiving is the toy they want. So at that point, my job as the teacher is to help them learn better ways to communicate with peers to get what they want.

I feel like there is a lot that could be commented on in this chapter but I will end by saying that I think self-management skills are really important to teach. A 4th grade teacher I volunteered for mentioned to me that her students lack of self-management skills was a major reason for their academic struggles. Helping students set goals, and monitor and evaluate their progress can go along way in getting them to accept ownership for their learning.