Behaviorist Views of Learning - chapt 9

What:
We can understand a great deal about human learning and behavior by looking at stimulus-response principles. Conditions already present in a learners environment - antecedent stimuli - tend to evoke certain kinds of responses either involuntary (in classical conditioning) or voluntary (in operant conditioning). Those responses may, in turn, lead to changes in the learners environment. There are many ways that teachers can evoke certain behaviors. Such as punishment, reinforcement, and stimuli.
So What:
All students that we are going to have in the classroom have different personalities with different needs. We have the daunting task of using education to evoke the most productive behaviors out of every single student. This is going to be very difficult because students react differently to behavior shaping activities. I think the behaviorists theory is very interesting and we do need to study it to become better prepared to deal with students in our classrooms.
Now What:
I am a huge believer in reinforcement. I think that that is going to be my number one way to motivate students. I like positive reinforcement the best. Although I could see myself using negative reinforcement in extreme cases. As we discussed in class we need to be careful about the kinds of positive reinforcements that we use. One student may need a good pat on the back for completing an assignment, while at the same time there is another student who has no problem with any of the assignment and they could either feel left out or you could insult their intelligence. I find it so interesting the things that we are trained to automatically do in school and in life. I want to learn more about the subject.