For many years now I have been aware of the behavioral practices of Skinner and Pavlov. Their names recall in my mind common strategies for training pets or conducting scientific studies on animals. I was first introduced to behavioral learning in my TESL courses during my undergraduate studies. During that time I became aware of behavioral psychology, but I did not give it much credence because it seemed to be a shallow theory, one which ignored the cognitive and social aspects of learning. I did not (and still do not) think that humans are robots, and so I took note of the general aspects of the theory and then stuffed it somewhere in the back of my mind in a file that I don’t access much.
When reading through the possible syllabus for this course, I thought that I could very well skip over that chapters dealing with “Behavior Psychology” because I had already been introduced to those ideas. Well, little did I know that this chapter would open the door to a skeleton in my closet that has deeply influenced and affected not only my academic life by my social development as well. As it turns out, there are parts of my human existence that have been the product of behavioral practices, and if I am not intentional with my instruction of students, I may as well pass on many of these same manipulative and controlling tendencies –all in the name of education.
Behavior is an essential part of life. Our social interactions are affected by it. And there are reasons why people behave and act the way that they do. But is focusing on behavior an affective way to approach a relational situation? Possibly. At least for some aspects. But can a responsible model for education be solely concerned with external behaviors? Personally, I believe that to do so is not only to diminish an individual, but will but a severe roadblock in that person(s) future. Current research has show that an educational model that is only concerned with the positive and negative behaviors of children is ill equipped to properly motivate students to learn and in fact does act in some cases as a deterrent to learning. In my following posts I will unearth my own discoveries as to how deeply I have been affected by behaviorism as well as analyze and critique a few studies and models that relate to and challenge this school of thought.
2 comments:
I agree that subscribing only to behaviorism would be extremely limiting. What would the world be if we were all intrinsically motivated? What about taking something from behaviorism (the concepts of reinforcement and punishment) and applying it to modeling? Modeling is very powerful and social cognitive theory incorporates elements of cognition? Do we decide to model people in hopes of attaining extrinsic reinforcements, or can we model others with an intrinsic motivation?
Yes, I think that modeling can be coupled with intrinsic motivation. The problem that I am discovering is that when society conditions a child or student to be extrinsically motivated, either by reinforcement or punishment, to reverse that process requires a deep meta-cognitive adjustment wherein the individual decides that neither punishment or rewards are ends in themselves. Modeling is powerful because it provides room for deep learning, where the child or student is allowed to observe the correct behavior and then attempt to imitate it without outside pressure. It is often this outside pressure that squelches desire and hinders the learning process, making the learner feel like the task is impossible. In response to the question about motivation: I think that it is preferable if one develops socially and cognitively with the ability to trust others -good preparation for modeling, as well as discovers the inner determination to learn, not because they have to, but because they want to. These are not all of the factors that play into a social cognitive theory of learning, but trust and confidence are important. The issue I am finding with the behavioral approach is that it replaces the internal desire for an external one (which will not result in lasting motivation). Focusing on punishment can create such fear that a child or student is paralyzed, and chooses to do nothing because she or he is terrified of failure. Finally, I think that children may begin modeling to please. Perhaps this is innate? I don't know. And perhaps it is possible to encourage children to grow beyond pleasing others to learning to make choices based upon what they internally think and feel, to get comfortable with who they really are.
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