Operant Conditiong

The thing about operant conditioning is, it's only good for the way you think of approaching something. If you twist something around, most of the the four times of conditioning are the same thing, just worded differently. If you give a detention, you take free time away. If you give a gold star, you take away stress. So instead of taking it quite so literally, I find that it really helps to look at it as the way that you choose to support or punish behaviour, and how you do so.

I see myself favouring the act of rewarding children, though, I personally stray from the concept of giving them a physical reward. We want to support them, and give them encouragement, but by handing out gold stars and rewards for every behaviour, it makes me question whether the child will learn to carry the behaviour out of the classroom and the sight of someone who will reward them. This ties in with the hidden curriculum of helping children learn and grow in the world, and there is all ready too much of people assuming that they'll only do something if there is a reward in it for them. I think everyone needs to look at the Hindu view of Dharma, and do good things simply for the sake of doing good. I think that we should instead award children with comments to reassure them that they are on the right path, a smile, the natural assurance between two people that they should be proud of themselves.

But, on the opposite side, I also believe that negative punishment and positive punishment are too close together to distinguish the two of them. If you give a detention, you lose free time. If you take away their distraction, you're giving them an ultimatum to behave to get their toy back. Since the two are so hand in hand, I would simply have to decide on my wording. And I think that a lose is more effective than a gain. Especially if it is losing something that I look forward too. It's more poignant, because it's removing something that they all ready know about, so it works for people who have never gotten in trouble before, and repeat offenders.

In class, we were given an activity to make an example of each of the time of concepts. I'd like to finish by sharing the four that I came up with in class, and expand upon them a bit.

Positive Reinforcement- Give the class more free reading time to reward good English marks. This is good, because while it is a reward, the reward is something that will directly benefit them in what they are doing. It promotes a continuation of the behaviour, and maybe helps them do even better on their next English assignment.


Negative Reinforcement- Due to such good works on the smaller tests in a subject, take off a question on their final and make it a bonus question instead. If this is a goal that kids are given as an incentive, it becomes something that could motivate studying for each earlier quiz, which will create more general knowledge, instead of a final rush to study at the final.

Positive Punishment- Give a student more questions from the textbook they have to answer in the homework for not doing their work in the assigned time. This will make the child manage time better to get the extra questions done, as well as give them more practice in the subject.

Negative Punishment- Take away group time if a child doesn't do his own work first and make him finish his individual work. This is a tricky one, for even though it could get him to finish his individual work, there would need to be care taken that the child would not miss out on important lessons learned during group time.