Author:
Jennifer Williams
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Date Posted: 23:20:11 06/13/10 Sun
In reply to:
Dr. M-J
's message, "Assignment #2" on 19:25:40 06/11/10 Fri
>Assignment 2 (Behaviorism): June 13
>Post a response to the following question by first
>clicking onto "Post a Reply to this Message"
>
>Think of a problem/situation in your area (teaching or
>counseling or as a parent) where you would use of have
>used behavioristic or social learning theories.
>Provide an example of the problem/situation and the
>solution.
The majority of my experience in education comes from my time teaching ESL. I've taught ESL in three different countries, in both public and private schools, and the one thing that remained constant was the stress placed on the importance of English education. Parents and administrators alike expected students to go from 0 to fluent as fast as possible. The pressure started as young as two and, of course, it was expected that the students would have fun throughout the entire process.
All of the classrooms, in every school that I worked for, had some sort of rewards system in place. A few of the classes would work towards having an average of 85% on a test in order to earn a pizza party. Some teachers handed out stickers as a reward for active participation in a lesson. Some teachers even kept a behavior/participation chart in their classroom. If a student followed the rules and stayed on task for an entire day, they would receive a star. Once they accumulated five stars, they would be able to go to the treasure box and choose a reward for their good behavior. In all honesty, at one point or another throughout my time in Asia, I used all of these methods. They have all worked to an extent, but there was one method, that would classify as a social learning method, that I found worked best.
The first school that I worked at, in South Korea, was a private school. We taught through language immersion so all of our lessons were taught entirely in English with no translation into Korean. Western teaching practices are a lot more laid back than Korean practices and one of our focuses was on fun, so, classroom management quickly became an issue. My method for maintaining good classroom management qualifies as social learning. I made the students responsible for their own conduct. We brainstormed class rules together. They told me what would make a successful classroom. We, then, whittled the list down to a reasonable ten rules and I printed these rules out so that each student had a copy. We went over the rules together as a class and I asked them to sign the bottom to say that they knew the rules and agreed to follow them. I found the students to be a lot more conscious of their behavior than if I had just posted a random set of rules on the classroom wall because they had some ownership in the process.
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