Informed Application

INFORMED APPLICATION

1. As a 9th grade teacher, you consistently have a problem with students becoming restless 5 min before the end of each period. Based on behavioral principles what aspects of this problem are relevant when trying to design a behavior modification program?
-These behaviors are based on a stimulus and response outcome. The stimulus (antecedent) is what causes a behavior to occur and the behavior that does occurs is the response. Behaviorists want to know what is causing the restlessness to occur. If they can figure out why the behavior is occurring they can get rid of or change the stimulus and hopefully be able to modify the behavior.


2. Teachers often struggle with getting students to internalize basic math facts like multiplication tables. This issue can be approached from different perspectives. If the teacher operates from a behavioral perspective, what is she going to emphasize to help the students learn more effectively?

-That our learning comes from prior life experiences. The teacher needs to find out what is causing her students to struggle with learning their multiplication tables. By finding out the stimuli (antecedent), the teacher can help the students overcome this antecedent, and be able to learn their multiplication tables.

INFORMED APPLICATION

1. Physical Education teachers often go to considerable effort to help students enjoy participating in athletic activities. How can you use Classical Conditioning to help students learn to associate Physical Education with positive behavioral responses? Identify each of the components of Classical Conditioning.

-Unconditioned response-could be the fear of participating in games/ activities.

-Unconditioned stimulus- the sight of the student’s physical education teacher.

-Neutral stimulus- the gym.

-conditioned response-not fearing P.E. class.

-conditioned stimulus-physical education teacher.

-By using classical conditioning, it is possible to make a student not shutter at the sight of his P.E. teacher because it reminds him of bad memories involving P.E. class. If the student has more positive experiences with P.E. then he will being to not shutter when he sees his teacher. The teacher should guide the students towards success and positive experiences, thus changing the students bad experiences into good ones, and then the sight of his teacher will not bring about feelings of dread but of positive experiences.