Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Activity 3.5: Group Activity: Theories into Practice: TED Talk Analysis
I, B. F. Skinner, watched a 20-minute segment of
Video 2, Writing Variable Expressions, 8th grade. This lesson is a perfect example of
shaping. The teacher begins with the
most basic principle, the definition of a variable, and reinforces student
answers and comments as she moves through the material, going from the
aforementioned to the definition of a variable expression, how to evaluate a
variable expression, and on until she reaches evaluating variable expression
with more than one operation. The
children in the class have been conditioned to quietly take notes, I’m sure
through reinforcement, sit in their seats, and raise their hand to answer/ask
questions. The students are always
reinforced, either positively or negatively, for asking questions/providing
answers, whether it is the teacher is saying, “Yes, you are correct,” or providing
feedback and answers to questions.
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Skinner:
ReplyDeleteDo you think that this is an example of shaping? I believe what you meant to say is that the teacher started by activating student's prior knowledge, to build upon already present schema. Students then assimilated and accommodated this abstract mathematical term using a schema in which they were familiar: that of professional sport team names. There is no response to abstract stimuli--the students must first be exposed to the stimuli, accommodate or assimilate this new information, achieve cognitive harmony, then respond accordingly.
(Vygotsky)
ReplyDeleteFrom your viewpoint Skinner, it would seem that eliciting a desired response from learners is all that matters. What about tapping into the learners' potential? I see the teacher's activities as her efforts to assist her students in going beyond simply demonstrating what they can do by themselves. It would have been even better if the teacher would have allowed for more interaction between the students so that each student would have increased opportunities to co-construct new understandings of variable expressions. It is not so much the reward/reinforcement that a student can receive that generates learning as much as it is the social interaction between the learner and her environment.
Excellent discussion, all!
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