Englemann cautions that the sequence of skills presented in the published curriculum you use may create problems for your learners. Thus, it will be worth your while to examine this sequence and adjust it when necessary.
Also, solving complex problems in math, writing compositions, and interpreting difficult reading passages are all tasks that require learners to perform prerequisite skills automatically and effortlessly Mayer, Imagine the difficulty your learners would have writing an essay if they could not form letters, spell, punctuate, and construct grammatical sentences. Learners who cannot perform prerequisite skills effortlessly and with minimal errors find it difficult to transfer new learning to unfamiliar problem contexts.
One of the key ingredients for transfer of new learning is the mastery of prerequisite skills. As we saw in our study of operant conditioning, Skinner was able to elicit rapid correct performance by the skilled use of reinforcement and stimulus control. As you will recall, the basic elements of operant conditioning are a a response or behavior that you want to teach or shape, b an effective reinforcer, and c the delivery of that reinforcer immediately after performance of the desired response.
The challenge—both to psychologists in the lab and to teachers in the classroom—is to elicit a correct response. The skilled teacher gets learners to respond correctly by bringing correct responses under stimulus control.
Exactly how is this done? How does a teacher deliver instruction in a manner that minimizes the likelihood that learners will make mistakes? Four important factors are involved. We have already discussed the first of these factors. In this section, we explain the remaining three. You want them to look at a word and pronounce it correctly. Here are two examples of possible directions:. Whether you are teaching word recognition to first-graders, subtraction to second-graders, paragraph construction to sixth-graders, or problem solving in physics to eleventh-graders, instructional directions should be specific to the behavior you want your learners to acquire.
So think carefully about what you want learners to do and how you will direct them to do it. Discard information and explanations that are extraneous and serve only to distract the learner. They make a useful distinction between active and passive responding. Active responding requires the learner to do something: write sentences, calculate answers, focus a microscope, balance a scale, weigh rocks, and record observations.
Passive responding , on the other hand, includes such activities as listening to lectures, paying attention to peers while they are reading, watching television, and waiting for teacher assistance.
This is unfortunate because their research also demonstrates a strong relationship between learner achievement and active responding. Behavioral scientists, therefore, urge you to plan your lessons so that learners spend at least 75 percent of their time engaged in active responding. Research on the opportunity to respond has also found that correct responses are more likely to come under stimulus control when you design your practice material worksheets, seatwork drills, homework assignments, and so forth to elicit correct responses 70 to 90 percent of the time Borich, ; Stephens, Many teachers purposely design materials for learner practice to be challenging—in other words, they design it so there is a strong likelihood that the learners will make mistakes.
Behavioral scientists have demonstrated that learners acquire basic facts and skills faster when their opportunities for practice result in success most of the time.
Although you might predict that more errors would result from fast-paced lessons, research indicates just the opposite for the acquisition of facts and action sequences. In summary, the behavioral science approach to learning suggests that you deliver instruction in the following ways:. During instruction teachers often provide prompts —hints and other types of supplementary instructional stimuli to help learners make the correct responses.
Because, as we have seen, the behavioral science approach is concerned with minimizing mistakes, it places a high value on the use of prompts that increase the likelihood that learners will respond correctly.
Behavioral scientists identify three categories of prompts used by teachers to shape the correct performance of their learners: verbal prompts, gestural prompts, and physical prompts. We will discuss the use of all three kinds in the following sections. Verbal prompts can be cues, reminders, or instructions to learners that help them perform correctly the skill you are teaching.
Verbal prompts help guide the learner to correct performance and prevent mistakes and frustration. Gestural prompts model or demonstrate for learners a particular skill you want them to perform. For example, if you were to point to the fine adjustment knob on the microscope and make a turning gesture with your hand, you would be prompting the student to perform this step of the process.
Gestural prompts are particularly helpful when you anticipate that the learner may make a mistake. Teachers use gestural prompts routinely to remind learners how to fold a piece of paper, to grasp a pair of scissors, to raise a hand before asking a question, or to hold a pen properly when writing. Some learners lack the fine muscle control needed to follow a demonstration and imitate the action that is being modeled. This is called a physical prompt. With a physical prompt you use hand-over-hand assistance to guide the learner to the correct performance.
Teachers routinely use physical prompts to assist learners with handwriting, cutting out shapes, tying shoelaces, correctly holding a dissecting tool, or performing a complex dance routine. This is referred to as least-to-most prompting. Verbal prompts are considered the least intrusive, while physical prompts are considered the most intrusive Cooper et al.
The reasoning behind using a least-to-most order of prompts to assist learners is that verbal prompts are easier to remove or fade than are physical prompts. Learners who are dependent on physical prompts to perform correctly will find it more difficult to demonstrate a skill independently of the teacher.
So far, we have learned that behavioral scientists view the eliciting of a correct response as one of the four basic elements of learning. Correct responses followed by reinforcement results in more permanent learning then correct responses intermixed with incorrect responses.
Mistakes slow down the learning process and often lead to frustration and attempts by learners to avoid, or passively respond to, a learning activity. Establishing stimulus control over learner performance is the key to errorless learning.
In order to elicit rapidly paced, correct performance, you must pay particular attention to four important factors when planning your lessons:. Picture the following situation: You have just begun a unit on converting fractions to decimals with your fifth-graders.
After demonstrating how to perform this skill, you pass out a worksheet with 20 problems. You give your learners 10 minutes to complete the task. As the students work, you move from desk to desk checking on their answers. You notice several students getting answers wrong. What should you do? Here are some alternatives. Educational psychologists using the behavioral science approach have researched the issue of how best to respond to the correct and incorrect responses of learners.
They have arranged the possible consequences into three general categories: 1 informational feedback, 2 positive consequences, and 3 negative consequences. If a learner correctly recalls the major historical events leading up to the Civil War, legibly forms a lowercase cursive letter, or accurately solves an algebra equation with two unknowns showing her work, you should do two things immediately: 1 tell the learner the answer is correct, and 2 briefly describe what she did to obtain the correct answer.
For example:. Behavioral scientists remind us that better learning results when you tell learners not only what they got right, but also why they got it right Cooper et al.
Learners give incorrect answers for several different reasons: carelessness, lack of knowledge, or lack of understanding. In the first case, some teachers scold or use some form of verbal punishment. Behavioral scientists and many educators strongly advise against these consequences for careless performance. Instead, they recommend that you use the following types of feedback whenever students give incorrect answers, regardless of the reason:.
Such responses often create feelings of anxiety and distaste for schoolwork, which encourage disengagement from the learning activity. Students or individuals may see things being done, but the social learning theory says that internal thoughts impact what behavior response comes out.
Social learning argues that behavior is much more complicated than the simple stimulus and response of behaviorism. It suggests that students learn through observation, and then they consciously decide to imitate behavior. There are underlying emotions like peer pressure and a desire to fit in that impact behavior.
Teachers can implement behavioral learning strategy techniques in their classroom in many ways, including:. Teachers may practice skills using drill patterns to help students see the repetition and reinforcement that behavioral learning theory uses. Question and answer. Teachers can use a question as a stimulus and answer as a response, gradually getting harder with questions to help students.
Guided practice. Teachers can be directly involved in helping students go through problems to give them the reinforcement and behavior demonstration you want them to follow. Regular review. Reviews are important to behavioral learning theory.
Going back over material and giving positive reinforcement will help students retain information much better. Positive reinforcement. Behaviorist classrooms utilize positive reinforcement regularly. This can be in the form of verbal reinforcement and praise, reward systems, added privileges, and more.
While behaviorism is a great option for many teachers, there are some criticisms of this theory. Other theories have come forward that take behaviorism further, implying that there are many additional factors to consider when evaluating behavior.
A PBIS approach emphasizes positive reinforcement rather than harsh discipline, such as out-of-school suspension, which is strongly discouraged by the U. Department of Education. Key components of PBIS include clear communication of rules, regular routines, consistent reinforcement of targeted behaviors, social skills training and natural consequences, such as temporary loss of privileges. You can use behaviorism to increase learning and decrease distracting student behavior.
When writing lesson plans, identify what knowledge and skills you want students to master. Determine how you'll objectively evaluate performance. Develop a system for tracking student progress, and intervene if problems arise. Communicate to students your academic and behavioral expectations.
What about if you wanted to create a fully behaviourist classroom? What would it look like? Dr Hendrick puts forward the idea that, just because a student is engaged and working doesn't mean they are learning. He argues that the process of learning is much more internalised than behaviourists ever thought. Herein lies the common criticism of behaviourist pedagogy: learning is more than just actions.
Behaviourism has informed a number of classroom learning techniques that teachers use on a regular basis. Quick feedback - The sooner you give feedback after a task, the more effective it will be in shaping that student for success. But if you introduce a reward system that praises students for doing a certain amount of revision, with some kind of incentive, you can begin to create positive associations. This should combat cramming which rewards last minute efforts as they happen closer to the time of feedback.
Over time students learn to come into the classroom and either sit down and await instructions or begin working on a task on the board. But operant conditioning still holds true when trying to instill a learning mindset in our pupils. By providing valuable and speedy feedback, rewarding good behaviour and getting students used to routines, teachers start to create habits in students that make them improve their learning.
This can give teachers greater control over the class and empower them to take lead of lessons. Doing too much could put them off school work altogether, whilst doing nothing could mean losing out to devices that are a little more enticing than homework.
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