Behaviorism

How would you define successful mastery of your lesson objectives from a behavioral view of learning? Consider your CSEL intervention case study. Are there tools from a behaviorist view for either encouraging productive behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors that you could apply to the case? What are they?

Mastery of objectives would look like for me that a child can demonstrate what I was trying to teach them. For example if I was going to do a lesson on contour lines, I would first do a pretest and ask them to draw a contour line drawing of a dog or a cup in the box. Then we would go through our lesson. I would demonstrate what a contour line drawing is and what it is not. The students would practice making contour line drawings and would then incorporate them in whatever project we are doing. I would give the students the same test I gave them before the lesson to see if they now know how to do a contour line drawing of cup or a dog. I would also asses the students for their use of contour line drawing in their projects. I think that the post and pretests are the really key thing to qualify this as a behaviorist perspective. If the students were not able to master the concept of contour line I would reflect on what did not work in my teaching of that concept. If I was set on making sure 100% of the students mastered that concept before we worked on another one I would go through the whole process again but modify my teaching style or the learning environment. 

Some awesome examples of pre and post testing


The elementary case study revolves around Lisa, who is having difficulty working in a group. She is upset if she does not receive the job that she wants and interrupts other members of her groups. If I was to use a behavioral view of learning to try to discourage undesirable behaviors and increase productive behaviors the first thing I would do is monitor. I would keep a chart that shows when and in what circumstances she is misbehaving to try to understand the cause of the problems. I would reward Lisa with lots of praise or positive reinforcement when she cooperates with her group. I would use negative punishment like taking away recess time if she cannot work with her group.   I would monitor the situation and keep track of how she is progressing.