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STUDENT’S BEHAVIOUR IN THE EVERYDAY CLASSROOM
Dilfuza Ergashevna Inamova
UzSWLU, senior teacher
There is a disconnect today between what goes on in much of psychology and
what goes on in our classrooms. Cognitive approaches dominate the psychology field
and have for decades. But by and large our classrooms still mirror the influence of
behaviorism in psychology. There are times and places where behaviorism has
proven successful. For example, individuals have been helped through
desensitization to deal with and overcome debilitating fears. But there are many times
and situations when behavioral approaches do not work.
Early behaviorists sought to establish psychology as a hard science, arguing
and attempting to realize in their methods that psychology had to be structured along
the lines of physical sciences, with the examination of observable and measurable
phenomena. Where philosophers like John Dewey saw psychology as the logical
next step in understanding who we are as human beings, behaviorism was turning
its back on philosophy and seeking to align itself with the “hard” sciences (Slater,
2004: 9),
hence behaviorism’s emphasis on the observation and measurement of
behaviors. Behavioral theories of learning, which explain learning in terms of
environmental events, often dismiss mental phenomena when it comes to explaining
how we learn (Schunk, 2004: 29). John Dewey argued that everything that exists for
us exists in our consciousness, thus psychology must study consciousness to help
us understand our existence (Martin, 2002: 102). Yet other proponents of
behaviorism, like John Watson, dismissed consciousness as unreliable and therefore
not worth studying, noting that “Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely
objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little
as do the sciences of exact subjects.
Behavioral learning theory permeates our schools and the everyday
classroom.
B.F. Skinner had high hopes for his behaviorist theory, operant conditioning.
Skinner saw no reason why behavioral principles could not be applied to the creation
of a utopian society (see his Walden Two, 1984). Skinner viewed operant
conditioning as applicable in schools. He was against learning that involved students
working on assignments to avoid negative consequences such as bad grades and
teacher criticism. Instead, Skinner favored teachers presenting materials in small
steps; with students actively responding to the activities of the classroom and not just
listening passively; that teachers provide immediate feedback to students and their
responses; and that students follow their own pace in learning. Sad then that much
of the behaviorism we see modeled in our schools ignores the high hopes of one of
its leading proponents. Yet, in other ways, ways Skinner may not have agreed with,
our schools, and our everyday classrooms do mirror operant conditioning. Positive
reinforcement involves adding something following a response that increases the
likelihood of that response occurring again. Today through a behaviorist lens, we can
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view a community’s approbation and a student’s advancing a grade as positive
reinforcement for passing scores on standardized exams. High-stakes testing can be
seen to impinging on primary reinforcers: students learn that their choice of future
classes and colleges, that the range of jobs and incomes available to them, that their
ability to live a good life and provide one for their families, that, in short, nothing short
of their futures may be judged on scores on standardized exams today. The Premack
Principle “says that the opportunity to engage in a more-valued activity reinforces
engaging in a less-
valued activity” (Schunk, 2004: 54). At one time in their lives, most
students question what it is that goes on in school. They wonder why they choose to
go along with it. Most of them, listening to the advice of the adults and society around
them, often viewing as models of success men and women who made it through
schooling, most of these students make a conscious decision to do as well in school
as they can for what it will bring them in the immediate, near, and distant future. The
emphasis on standardized testing and the reality of their consequences can be seen
as a form of shaping. Schunk defines shaping as “the basic operant conditioning
method of behavioral change, defined as differential reinforcement of successive
approximations to the desired form or rate of behavior” (2004: 59). Students, parents’
schools, and communities all learn that these tests, which are imposed upon them in
the guise of helping them, can actually hurt them. Thus, students learn to want to do
well on these exams, teachers teach their students how to succeed on them, schools
devote more and more time to test prep, and parents and communities sanction it all.
It is with not only high-stakes testing and the availability of future life opportunities
where we see behaviorism at work in our schools. Indebted to positivism in its attempt
to model itself after the physical sciences, behaviorism in schools views material to
be taught as invariable and easily identified. Behaviorism views learning as the
imposition of knowledge from outside a student lacking it. Behavioral approaches feel
rewards, and punishments are necessary to guide human behavior. Behaviorism
counsels learning content through small step increments in a linear fashion (Thomas
in Steinberg and Kincheloe, 2006: 106). Behaviorism is guilty of a form of
instrumental rationality, reducing complex psychological, social, and educational
issues to technical questions (Kincheloe et al.,1999: 9). Behaviorist learning theory
will be in for direc
t critique in the next chapter when we discuss Freire’s notion of the
banking concept of education. But everywhere around us in schools
–from
programmed instruction such as scripted reading and math programs, from
contingency contracts between students and staff, to behavioral objectives that
shape curriculums and guide IEPs
–behaviorism is alive and well in our everyday
classrooms.
REFERENCES:
1. Aikenhead G.S. (2006). Science Education for Everyday Life: Evidence-
Based Practice.New York: Teacher’s College Press.
2. Freire P. (1997). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
3. Freire P. (2003). Pedagogy of the Heart. New York: Continuum.
