Behaviorism TIPR

How does the teacher use behaviorist techniques (e.g., shaping, Premack Principle, token reinforcement systems, etc.) to help students learn? Cite specific examples and be sure to include a reference in your response. How do students respond to this instructional method? *Note: this question refers to learning rather than motivation.


Behaviorism is a learning theory that only focuses on observable behaviors and discounts any independent activities of the mind. Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior based on environmental conditions. Behaviorism also operates on the principle of "stimulus-response". In behaviorism there occurs classical and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response.  Operant conditioning is a learning process that involves an increase or decrease in the likelihood of some behavior as the result of the consequences. Here is a brief explanation of what classical and operant conditioning is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTVQHhbhYbA. 

In the class that  I am observing one of the behaviorist techniques that I saw used by the teacher was Positive Practice.  In positive practice, rather than punish, the student(s) can try again, thus reinforcing the correct behavior. For example, there is a student that does not follow the class rule of sitting in his desk.  He walked into the classroom, went to his desk, and stood up on the top of his desk and was almost reaching the ceiling.  The teacher asked the student to go back out of the classroom, and to return to the classroom again sitting as he should.  She was reinforcing the correct way to enter the classroom.  He did respond as he should, but if he had not, if I were the teacher, I would come up with some sort of consequence using reinforcement or punishment to try to get him to perform the correct behavior.  

Another example of a behaviorist technique I saw in one of the classes was positive reinforcement.  As the students walked into class, there was a bell-ringer on the board that were two practice problems from the previous class lesson.  She gave them a few minutes, and then asked for volunteers to come up to the board and demonstrate how they solved the problem.  Whether they got the problem correct or not, she gave them some positive reinforcement....they were able to pick a treat out of a bucket. There was many students that raised their hand to come up to the board to demonstrate.  I could see that  the students were actually try to work out solving the problem because they wanted the positive reinforcement.  It makes me think there was probably some classical conditioning going on because the students knew beforehand there was going to be some sort of positive reinforcement.  The teacher was conditioning their response to want to work on the problems, so they would could come up to the board, and thus get their treat (positive reinforcement).