Question

Mrs. Altier, new to Worth High School, is an English teacher who also studied psychology. She is considering some ways she will use learning theories in her classroom teaching. Discuss ways that Mrs. Altier can use each of the following learning theories to help her students do well. Thorndike's Law of Effect Reinforcement schedules Pavlovian Classical Conditioning Observational learning Discuss how the following process might affect Mrs. Altier application of learning theories: Preparedness (expectancies) Latent learning Attention

Answer 1

Here are some ideas for Mrs. Altier for her new position at Worth High School.

• Law of effect by Edward Thorndike.

This law states that any action followed by a positive outcome is more likely to reoccur in the future, on the contrary actions followed by unpleasant outcomes are weaker on their chances to reoccur.  Mrs. Altier could use these principles promote and extermine some behaviors in her class, for example every time their students do something good like finishing an assignment on time she could praise them for it, on another instance if a student is ever rude to another one Mrs. Altier could send him to detention which is an unpleasant outcome and might decrease the behaviour.

• Reinforcement Schedules.

The idea behind reinforcement schedules is that the rate and frequency of reinforcement could and should be adjusted along the way. The way Mrs. Altier could design a reinforcement schedule is by identifying those desired "good" behaviors from her students, for example; cleaning up their sitting spaces after class ends. At the beginning because this is a new behaviour Mrs. Altier can do something like give them a little piece of chocolate as a prize every time after they clean their spaces, but of course Mrs. Altier wouldn't be able to give them a chocolate for the rest of the school year to have them clean their spaces. What Mrs. Altier should do is re-adjust the reinforcement schedule by planning the spacing out of the times she gives them the piece of chocolate to eventually be able to go without them and still have a clean classroom.

• Pavlovian Classical Conditioning.

A fun useful way in which Mrs. Altier could use the principles of Pavlovian Conditioning, is by, for example, figuring out a way to get the class to be silent without having to use her voice, instead she could choose a physical cue as knocking the table with her fingers twice to get them to be quiet. At the beginning before conditioning she would tell them to be quiet then she would knock on the table twice, during conditioning she would knock on the table twice while instructing the client to quiet down, after conditioning she would eventually be able to get the class to be silent by just knocking on the table twice.

• Observational learning.

Observational learning theory, by Albert Bandura, basically states that change on the behavior of a person can occur after observing the behavior of another. This is more likely to occur when the model performing the behavior is considered to have desirable characteristics such as attractiveness, intelligence, popularity, etc. Mrs. Altier could use this knowledge to improve the learning of material,; lets say that the classroom has been studying recycling procedures as well as the importance of them; Mrs. Altier could reinforce the putting in place of such practices by inviting over a successful young entrepreneur, who the students could admire and who has encountered success on a business area related de recycling.

Processes that might affect Mrs. Altier application of learning theories.

• Preparedness:

This is the psychological concept that defends that some concepts are more easily assimilated than others and it tries to explain why is it that this happens. In this case preparedness or expectancies from the students could be a negative factor for Mrs. Altier if the classroom have had bad experiences with teachers being boring or excessively strict; because Mrs. Altier could be trying to create a good feeling environment within the classroom but by the students not being accustomed to this it could be hard for them to cooperate at first and might receive her proposals with some skepticism.

• Latent Learning:

Latent Learning refers to the concept that learning may occur but not show up until needed. Let's say that Mrs. Altier is not getting a lot of class participating from students, when she asks questions, as she would like so she hasn't been able to get a grasp of how well they have been doing in history before her taking over. A good and fun way to encourage her students to show how much they've learned is by organizing a trivia game where if the class manages to get enough points they can win a school trip. In this situation, students will have a motivation to actually make evident how much they actually do know about history.

• Attention:

According to psychology, attention is both limited and selective and it is the way we process information from our environment. Mrs. Altier can be planning to put in place a series of learning theories to reinforce positive classroom behavior on her new students but to do that she must be able to first and foremost grab their attention. High school students these days live in a very stimulated, full of information environment. Mrs. Altier must figure out a way to grasp their attention among so many things occupying her student's minds.