120 hr. TEFL Course Module 7-Pedagogy (Pt.4 Behaviorism)

Module 7: Pedagogy

7.1.3 Behaviorism (1 of 2)

Behaviorist theory is an idea that hinges completely on motivation and how teachers can get students to succeed in the classroom. While many thinkers contributed to the formation of behaviorism, the ideas can be easily summed up by the famous experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov, who proved that a dog could be conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus that does not inherently cause that response. He did this by essentially ringing a bell every time before he gave a dog food to the point where the dog began to salivate in anticipation of food. After some conditioning with this model, he removed the original stimulus and found that the dog continued to salivate at the sound of the bell even when it was not followed by food. The dog had now been conditioned to feel hungry whenever he heard the bell according to Pavlov.

To understand the educational theory, we first need to clear up a few phrases that are often misunderstood. Since behaviorism depends heavily on response to a stimulus, the following phrases refer to the manipulation of stimuli by an outsider (in our case, the teacher):

Positive reinforcement: When an outsider rewards a desired behavior by providing a desired stimulus. An example is giving a student a good grade for working hard on an assignment.

Negative reinforcement: This is probably the most misunderstood term in behaviorism. The word “negative” refers to removal, and the word “reinforcement” refers to a stimulus. Therefore, negative reinforcement is when an outsider rewards a desired behavior by removing an undesirable stimulus. An example would be rewarding a student for good behavior by not yelling at him or her as you normally would.

Positive punishment: This is when an outsider presents the subject with an undesirable stimulus as a consequence of doing something wrong or not doing something right. An example would be giving a student an F for not doing his or her work.

Negative punishment: This is when an outsider removes a desired stimulus from the subject as a consequence of doing something wrong or not doing something right. An example would be telling a student that he or she can no longer sit with friends because he or she is misbehaving.

Pavlov’s experiment displayed classic conditioning, which refers to conditioning involuntary behavior (a dog does not choose when to salivate). B.F. Skinner extended this idea, referring to his ideas as operant conditioning, which refers to conditioning voluntary actions through reinforcement and punishment.