Educational Psychology
Educational psychology can be defined as a psychology branch of human learning scientific study. In my understanding, it is a learning process study involving behavioral and cognitive aspects furnishing researchers with a personal differences understanding of affect, intelligence, self-regulation, cognitive development, self-concept, and motivation together with their learning functions. As an educator, there are different methods I have implemented to instill and teach good behaviors and habits to enhance my students’ learning experiences. Reinforcements work by increasing a particular behavior’s probability to happen sooner or later through stimulus removal after a habitual occurrence. When reinforcements are effective, they increase the frequency of a particular habit occurrence. Positive reinforcements function by providing a reinforcing or motivating incentive to an individual after expressing a specific desired action, increasing its probability of future occurrence. On the other hand, negative reinforcements function by removing a certain incentive after the exhibition of a specific action, thus increasing the frequency of the same behavior’s future occurrence (Blankenship, 2017). Positive and negative reinforcement is an effective and powerful strategy and the most commonly used in my teaching institution.
Reinforcement Theory Overview
The reinforcement theory was developed by a behaviorist named B.F Skinner and is a motivational theory that explains human behavior and the rationale behind it. Reinforcement theory is also referred to as Operant Conditioning and Behaviorism and is an aspect of psychology necessary for educators to understand and implement it in their teaching strategy (Dovey, Francis, Corbett, and Dibb, 2017, P.284). My understanding of how the reinforcement theory works suggest that a particular person’s behavior results from its effects. The reinforcement theory was developed due to researchers’ dissatisfaction with the unavailability of observable behavioral concepts capable of being experimented on or measured. Their wish to make psychology a more scientific discipline than other core sciences prompted them to explore and analyze measurable and observable behaviors, thus developing behaviorism theory. Concerning this, I perceive that psychology is strongly linked to cognitive evolution awareness and our human mind.
By applying reinforcement theory to motivate my class, I have understood how humans behave and why influencing my relationship with my students. Understanding learners’ behavior is essential because it helps you devise an effective way of dealing with them, facilitating learning, and improving students’ learning outcomes. The aspect that matters most in this theory is exhibited actions and their environment. For instance, in a classroom set up for me to implement Behaviorism theory, it will depend on the behaviors exhibited by my students, and the stimulus that I will add or remove will depend on the environment capable of influencing those behaviors. In my opinion, as Skinner was developing this theory, he did not see any need to focus on someone’s goals or intentions to understand the rationale of their behavior. Skinner has significantly contributed to developing psychological science by devising a theory that better understand human behaviors (Blankenship, 2017). The theory brings us to a position where we can use that to build better interactions and influence others’ behaviors for their benefit.
Reinforcement theory has helped most educators improve their teaching strategies and implement ways that will influence students’ behavior toward improving the learning outcomes, such as improving performance and how they interact with one another. Teachers have implemented this theory in many study areas, such as students’ motivation, learners’ personality development, and class performance. As a teacher using this theory, I have had to focus more on students’ observable habits, which would have been different had I decided to implement a different theory such as the needs theory that primarily focuses on people’s states. Behaviorism theory emphasizes focusing on environmental influences, facilitating the development of a specific behavior. Using this behavioral theory, I can confirm that stimulus can shape students’ behavior to benefit both the educators and learners. The main approaches towards Operant Conditioning include negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement, negative punishment, and positive punishment. The most commonly used and used ones in my teaching experience are positive and negative reinforcements.
Positive Reinforcement
I can confidently argue that the positive reinforcement’s acceptance as a teaching and learning instrument has significantly motivated students in my class by enhancing their learning experiences. I have implemented this concept several times to encourage my students to work hard to achieve their set goals and improve their overall performance. Positive reinforcement involves giving a desirable or pleasant incentive to follow a particular behavior to increase its reoccurring possibility. I have used this severally in the form of a reward system to reward students, thus influencing their brain structure to control and regulate particular behaviors through pleasurable effects induction. Examples of these rewards that have been very effective are verbal praises, books, trophies, snacks, food, and other preferred items. Giving rewards did not necessarily bring about desired behavior or impacts (Blankenship, 2017). However, it stimulated the rewarded students to be positively reinforced or give out the desired actions meaning that the positive reinforcements highly motivated them.
As I learned more about the reinforcement theory, I discovered that B.F Skinner approved this theory by experimenting on animals’ behavior, specifically rats. The experiment involved creating a box with a lever that was supposed to give out food after being pressed. A hungry rat was placed into the box and left to find a way of getting the food to avoid starving death. In this case, food is the reward, and the behavior is pressing the lever. After fumbling for a while, the rat pressed the lever, which produced food. Several trials revealed that the rat kept repeating the behavior to be reward with food anytime it wanted to eat. This shows that the theory was effective and is considered a success for proving that positive reinforcement can increase the probability of a specific behavior’s future reoccurrence.
Negative Reinforcement
Negative reinforcement has substantially contributed to shaping students’ behavior by removing an unpleasant stimulus to reward a learner for producing desire behavior encouraging its future reoccurrence. For instance, some of my students who had performed poorly in their exams had to remain behind after classes to attend a remedial session, which they found to be very unpleasing. Those students who showed improved performance and commitment towards attaining better grades were relieved from attending the remedial sessions. This removal functioned as the reward for their well-done job, which kept them motivated and interested in improving their performance, thus enhancing their learning experiences.
B.F. Skinner used the same strategy in positive reinforcement to prove the effectiveness of negative reinforcement. He placed a wire that generated electric currents in the box containing the rat to give it a shock stimulus, which is unpleasant. These currents would turn off as a reward every time the rat pressed the lever. After the rat became aware of this, it would directly press the lever to relieve itself from the electric current. In this case, the incentive removed is the electric current, and the behavior influenced is pressing the lever. This experiment shows that negative reinforcement can be effective when implemented to shape someone’s behavior by removing unpleasant stimuli.
Reinforcement Application in a School Setting
The reinforcement theory that focuses on behavior determinations by analyzing its external consequences can be utilized in educational institutions to help solve certain issues, change students’ behavior hence enhancing their learning experience and improving learning outcomes. Before putting the theory into practice, I had to access and understand the desired consequences necessary for eliciting particular desired behaviors. Since its establishment, this theory has been put into educational institutions to reduce undesired behavior frequency while increasing desired behavior frequency.
In my experience, this theory has helped me motivate students to perform better and encouraging others to develop their personalities, such as building self-confidence. The theory I applied to achieve this is the “Behavior Modification Model” of reinforcement, which includes four different steps. The first step was to specify the behaviors I desired and being objective. I kept my students informed of the behaviors I was expecting from them, facilitating their learning experiences resulting in better learning outcomes. The second step was to access existing desired behavior incidences that involved keeping track of my students’ work quality and productivity, and personality development. Reinforcement can only be best applied if this step is done thoroughly, making it unchallenging to note the benefits for Behavioral Model implementation.
The next step was to outline the consequences that would bring about the desired behavior. In this step, students’ reinforcement is done to bring desired outcomes by consequences provision for unwanted behaviors or outcomes. An example of this is where the best-performing students are rewarded in front of those performing poorly, motivating them to put more effort into their school work to improve and be rewarded. The last step is assessing students’ behavioral change to determine if the Behavioral model of reinforcement was effective or not. This is an essential step that shows how well the reinforcement has worked. The behavioral model of putting reinforcement theory into practice has proven to influence students’ behavior effectively in my experiences. The model has also helped me build better relationships with my students, making their learning experience exciting and engaging.
Reinforcement theory strengths and weaknesses
Even though reinforcement theory has been universally deployed and broadly accepted in learning institutions due to its positive effects, educators must consider a few things before adopting its practices. Some teachers in my school have tried to criticize this theory by saying that if students are aware of the teacher’s attempt to influence their behavior, they may give skewed results to match their liking. This suggests that teachers should be very secretive when incorporating this strategy to get unbiased results. Students’ needs should be examined before deciding on the reward to ensure the reward is valuable to them, thus brings about the desired behavior. Something of value to certain students may not be of value to others; thus, it may produce better results for the first group than the latter.
Strengths
After using the reinforcement theory for some time, I have been able to identify some of its strengths and weaknesses. One of the strengths of this theory is that it gives motivation clues. This theory, as compared to others such as Needs theory, is external, meaning it relies on external factors. In a school setting, teachers have to focus on students’ external behavior seen through their actions or regular habits, making it unchallenging to motivate them using extrinsic rewards such as trophies, books, and snacks, among others. Another strength that I have observed personally is that it keeps students involved because they are always on toes working hard to be rewarded. This is more effective due to teachers’ variable reinforcement schedule to reward students who perceive these rewards to be randomly given. The other strength I noticed is that the reinforcement theory was easy to apply in the classroom to motivate and encourage students because it is majorly concerned with learned habits that can be easily changed.
Weaknesses
The weakness I noticed concerning reinforcement theory includes it overlooks intrinsic motivation by taking note of external consequences and behavior. The theory does not consider an individual state or intrinsic motivation. Another weakness that poses a challenge to most teachers is that proper rewards identification is difficult at times, especially if you cannot identify what is most likely to please your students. Students are also unique and different from each other. A reward might work for a particular student and fail to please another. For instance, a student with low self-esteem or lack of self-confidence might require verbal praise as a reward for behaving confidently. Giving a different reward such as books or snacks may not be appropriate or helpful in increasing the probability of frequently occurring behavior.
The theory can be best implemented in simple negative and positive behaviors that one can modify and easily keep track of, thus not being problematic. Rewards manipulation and control to influence students’ behavior were regarded as unethical by critic teachers who argued that it imposes students’ willingness. Another weakness is that the theory could not apply to complex behavior forms that required complex strategies to increase their occurrence frequency. The reinforcement effectively decreased with time as rewards meaningfulness reduced. For example, students’ praised verbally to enhance their confidence found it uninteresting once they gained that confidence; hence teachers have to fish for more different rewards.
Conclusion
Positive and negative reinforcement is an effective and powerful strategy and the most commonly used in my teaching institution. When reinforcements are effective, they increase the frequency of a particular habit occurrence. Behaviorism theory emphasizes focusing on environmental influences, facilitating the development of a specific behavior.