What confused me the most about this module: the concept of “extinction” as a strategy for decreasing inappropriate behaviors. The two paragraphs about it didn’t really click with me. What’s the key difference between satiation and extinction anyway? And also just like in last week’s post, I would like to get a lot more examples and information in general on about how to include children with disabilities and the differences on how to manage their behavior verses students without disabilities.
When it comes to “picking” between different theories in the classroom, you should always consider both extremes to find a middle ground/combination of the two. Of course you can’t just go one way or the other. It is very important to consider both behaviorism and constructivism when figuring out a solution to a classroom management issue.
-Constructivism would be associated with Piaget-style theories. When the student’s all look at the yellow marker, they are physically seeing the same thing, no matter what they have been taught by anyone ever…it is something they are discovering for themselves.
-Behaviorism would be associated with Piaget-style theories. When the student’s all look at the yellow marker, their opinion on whether it is an appropriate color to use for certain activities/pictures/whatever they are using it for, can all be different from other students because of their different backgrounds and home environments. OR, they could also all have the same opinions based on the operant conditioning that the teacher has enforced on the whole class of what the students should “think” of the yellow marker.
Well once learning has occured the behavior can be expanded on, altered, or eliminated. There are three things that behavioral theorists have researched that could effect learning after it has occured. These three things talked about in the text book are generalizaiton, discrimination, and extinction. Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus is paired repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus, the previously learned behavior will disappear or become extinct. The conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus have to occur right after one another or the learned behavior will become exctinct. For example with Pavolv's dogs. If the bell is repeatedly presented without food then the dog will slowly forget that when the bell is presented the food will occur. Therefore, he will not start to salivate when the bell is rung. I hope that this clears up your confusion on extinction.
ReplyDeleteThe second part of your question was asked by another student, and I have the same general response: Any learning theory and strategy is applicable to ALL students. Behaviorism as a strategy is better/worse for teaching particular kinds of things (behaviors) but the mechanism doesn't suddenly change with special education students. All humans learn in similar ways. Students are in special education for a variety of reasons, not all of which are lowered IQ. It's true that more targeted strategies are better within special education, but these strategies should NOT just be simplifying the information or making it easier (which, at times, is what Behaviorism seems to do, in my opinion, and it makes me sad). A student with autism may have above average IQ, but has trouble processing social information, so you would have to explain this in a new way, rather than punishing his socially inappropriate behavior. Behaviorism doesn't discuss thoughts or understanding, just behaviors, so that is one detriment of the theory....
ReplyDeleteThe students may or may not be 'seeing the same thing' physically, but that's another point.... their meanings of the marker may differ, and I think that's what you're saying.
Your behaviorism and constructivism distinction is a little unclear to me. Remember that Behaviorists do not discuss 'thinking', just behaviors. So, they would say that increasing appropriate yellow marker behaviors is good, and that assumes that the yellow marker is the same for all students. Are you saying that these 'appropriate yellow marker behaviors' would differ among students based on how those behaviors were rewarded and punished by their parents? I think that's right.