Module 3

Chapter 7 discussed the different ways students learn and the different ways teachers can help shape students' behavior. One of the subjects I found interesting was classical conditioning.  The book defines classical conditioning on page 265 as, “association of automatic responses with new stimuli.” Classical conditioning reminds me of my high school psychology class. My teacher conditioned my class to say “you’re pretty” instead of “God bless you” after someone sneezed in class. The first person to shout out “you’re pretty” after a sneeze received a jolly rancher. The experiment did not take long to take off, everyone wanted a jolly rancher (reinforcement). After a couple weeks my teacher stopped giving out jolly ranchers, but students still responded to every sneeze by saying “you’re pretty”. Not only did students use this response in psychology, they also kept saying “you’re pretty” whenever they heard a sneeze no matter what class they were in. The learned response of “you’re pretty” took awhile to break even after the reinforcements stopped. The book states that if a reinforcement is positive it will strengthen and increase behavior. Receiving a jolly rancher for saying “you’re pretty” after anyone sneezes is definitely a positive reinforcement, everyone wants a piece of candy. On the other hand, negative reinforcement strengthens behavior by removing an unwanted stimulus. I found it interesting that negative reinforcement is commonly misconstrued with punishment. When a specific behavior is punished the behavior will most likely decrease. Positive reinforcement is an extremely helpful technique I would like to utilize in a classroom of my own. Although I am not so sure I believe in rewarding my students with candy, I am sure that I would follow the Premack principle for an academic related positive reinforcement. It is my job to figure out what a student would want to select as their preferred activity as a reinforcement to complete their less preferred activity. For example, if my students are struggling with motivation to complete their class assignments I might reward them with iPad free time on academic websites (i.e. cool math games, IXL, etc.) upon completion of their work.