BEHAVIORISM AND EFFECTIVE LEARNING

HOW TO USE BEHAVIORISM TO FOSTER EFFECTIVE LEARNING

By WAMAKALE DAVID WILLIAM

(Bachelor of Arts with Education student at MAKERERE UNIVERSITY, Kampala)

[wamakaled@gmail.com]

QUESTION; As a professional Teacher, elucidate how you would use the principles of behaviorism to foster effective teaching and learning. 

Introduction 

Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, and conditioning occurs through interactions with the environment. Behaviorists believe that our actions are shaped by environment stimuli. 

According to this school of thought, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner regardless of internal mental states. Therefore, behaviorism can also be defined as "a systematic approach to understanding the behaviors of humans..." (wikipedia.org). Behavior is either a reflex evoked by a pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially [but not limited to], reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Therefore in a school in general and a classroom in particular, learners require appropriate environment so as to function and in a motivational state as "behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior", but that " they focus primarily on environmental events." Hence as a professional teacher, I would use the principles of behaviorism to foster effective teaching and learning in the ways below. 

Reinforcement. This is a stimulus that increases the probability of performing behaviors. Reinforcement is both positive and negative. The key to making positive reinforcement effect is to reward the behavior immediately. For example, as a teacher I would use phrases like 'thank you', 'good attempt', 'correct, keep up', 'good answer, bright boy/girl' to students who participate in giving answers in my class and by so doing, it positively motivates them and more others to copy the behavior. Therefore, positive reinforcement is providing a stimulus that a student enjoys, seeks or craves, in order to reinforce desired behaviors (Chance, 2014). Negative reinforcement on the other hand is removing a stimulus that an individual does not desire, to reinforce desired behaviors or talking something negative away in order to increase a response, hence fostering effective teaching and learning.

 Punishment. This is a stimulus that decreases the probability of performing behaviors.. It also is in two forms that is to say, positive and negative punishment. According to Pryor (2019), he defines punishment as providing a stimulus that an individual does not desire to decrease undesired behaviour. For example if a student is doing something they have been warned not to do, as a professional teacher, I might whip them. The undesired stimulus would be the whipping, and by adding this stimulus, the goal is to have that behavior avoided. The key to this technique is that even though the tittle says positive, the meaning of positive here is "to add to" so in order to stop the behavior, as a professional teacher, I add the adverse stimulus (whipping). The biggest problem with this type of training is that the student does not usually learn the desired behaviour, rather it teaches him or her to avoid the punisher. Therefore in both cases, punishment (both positive and negative) decrease the likelihood that the antecedent behaviour will happen again, hence a way of fostering effective teaching and learning. 

Pairing/Sequencing of activities. This can be done in a way that easy and brief tasks are interspersed or paired with longer and more demanding ones, and this enhances engagement and learning as well as reducing disruption. Preceding difficult activities with a few simple ones has been found to enhance transition to a new activity as has scheduling active learning after breaks before moving on to more passive activities such that children/students have time to adapt to quieter routines. For example, if I got to know that my students come late, I would pair my subject with a test and award wages accordingly such that in every lesson, students have to come early to do a test and study hence fostering effective teaching. 

Use of Audio-lingual method. The audio-lingual method or the New key (Decoo, 2001), is a method used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist theory, and postulates that; The correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while the negative one would receive negative feedback (Reinmann, 2018). It is just as functional and easy to execute when teaching en masse.Skills are taught in the following order: listening, speaking, reading, writing. Language is taught through dialogues with useful vocabulary and common structures of communication. Students are made to memorize the dialogue line by line. Learners mimic the teacher or a tape listening carefully to all features of the spoken target language. Through repetition of phrases and sentences, a dialogue is learned by the first whole class, then smaller groups and finally individual learners. Therefore as a professional teacher I would use behaviorism in the sphere of audio-lingual method elaborated above, to foster effective teaching and learning. Predictability of events and activities. This can be done through establishing routines, information, cues and signals about forthcoming transitions and changes, as well as for content, duration and consequences for activities. In this way, my students get to know and prepare for forthcoming routines. 

 Conclusion. 

In conclusion, behaviorism is a wide study of how controlled changes to a subject's environment affect the subject's observable behavior. As professional teachers, we control the environment and use a system of rewards, punishments and others in an effort to encourage the desired behaviors in the subject. Learners are acted upon by their environment, forming associations betwixt stimuli and changing behaviors based on those associations. However, behaviorism may oversimplify the complexity of human learning; downplay the role of the student in the learning process; disregard emotion, thoughts, and inner processes; and view humans as being as simple as animals. But all in all, behaviorism can effectively be used to foster effective learning and teaching as elucidated in the essay above.

 References, 

Brau, B., Fox, N., & Robinson, E. (2020). Behaviorism. In R. Kimmons & S. Caskurlu (Eds.), The Student's Guide to Learning Design and Research. EdTechBooks. https://edtechbooks.org/student guide/behaviorism 

Chance, Paul (2014). Learning and Behavior, Belmont, CA: Jon Davis Hague. p

 Geer-Chase, M, Rhodes, W, A., & Kellam, S. G. (2002). Why the prevention of aggressive disruptive behaviors in middle school must begin in elementary school. The Clearing House, 75(5). p.242-245 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio-lingual_method 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism 

Reinmann, Andrew (January 2018). Behaviorist Learning Theory. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English language Teaching, p.1-6 

Wilfred, Decoo. "On the Morality of Language Learning Methods" Speech dated November 8, 2001.