Discuss a question, confusion, or something you wonder about after reading the chapter (when commenting, look for these questions and answer them)
When I was in elementary school so many teachers used the extra homework and withdrawal of recess punishments, and these punishments were the main types of punishments my teachers seemed to use. I never got in trouble at school, but I remember sometimes the teacher giving EVERYONE extra homework. This always made me so mad, but made my mom more mad than me. Why would a teacher give the whole class extra homework? It doesn't even teach the kids in trouble anything, it gives the message that homework is bad, so why give more homework to go the good and bad students together?
(Choose one) -A behaviorist believes that someone must first learn basic components of a concept and how are associated with one another before understanding it in its complexity (as opposed to seeing something complex and learning about it as a whole). What kind of scenario would contradict this? How would someone learn differently?
I am a Spanish Education major and I see a contradiction of this within learning conjugation of Spanish tenses. In the beginning of most Spanish I classes, students learn how to say simple phrases such as “yo tengo” (I have), “yo estoy bien” (I am doing good), “yo llevo una camiseta verde” (I wear a green shirt) and other very simple phrases. These phrases are the ways students learn conjugations as a whole before learning about the basic components of conjugation. It is easier and simpler for students to learn direct translations first before learning actual conjugations, conjugation can be a complex concept for students to understand to begin with, for one reason because we never talk about conjugation when it comes to English. In my first Spanish classes in high school, I learned these simple phrases and then about 6 weeks into the course we learned about conjugation and about how the ending of a verb in 1st person present tense ends with-o, and for 2nd person present in an –ar verb, a verb ends with –as and so on. A student would learn differently by learning the VERY simple straight ways to say and use simple verbs before learning the complex, difficult explanation of why a verb ends with certain letters. A student needs to first learn the concept as a whole, aka learning how to say the direct translations, and when to use them correctly in speech before learning the specific conjugations, and learning the basis for the whole grammar part of a specific tense.
The punishment of homework I think is a "classic punishment" many teachers use to threaten students. I remember being given more homework because students misbehaved in class. It really did not teach the misbehaving students "a lesson," instead it just made the other students mad at them. I think this punishment technique is ineffective altogether, but teachers continue to use it because it seems like it would get students to behave. In actuality, assigning more homework causes them to misbehave even more. I think that substituting homework for time-out is a better route to take; this clearly pin-points the misbehaving students without punishing the entire class.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with what you said. It's like some current teachers are still stuck in the past. Assigning more homework is like an old practice, and teachers need to move on to current day practices. Time-outs only work in elementary school, and not even all the way through elementary school I would say, but that is a good solution for younger elementary school students.
ReplyDeleteI think giving homework to the entire class is a move toward group pressure or guilt. The punishment would be the guilt and resentment of causing the other classmates to get extra homework, OR the other students may pressure the first to do their homework on time next time? Or, perhaps your teacher did NOT have any learning theory in mind when doing this. We may never know.... It's just a lesson on how important it is to 'teach on purpose'. :)
ReplyDeleteYou say that your explanation of basics to complexity is 'better' in some ways, but I'd claim that babies in Spanish speaking countries (or some adults who move there) learn the language by total immersion. They see it in its complexity, with grammar rules and all, and somehow begin speaking in relative complexity.... It's just something to think about.