Behaviorism in My Technology-driven US History Class

When students display the behaviors that are most-wanting in a collaborative learning environment, it is the role of the teacher to be cognizant of their approaches to reinforcing students’ actions appropriately. Having a background in Special Education, where I spent six years of my educational career working with students with moderate to severe disabilities. Working in the Special Education population, the theory of behaviorism is practiced predominantly in all classes when attempting to break a behavior students’ display that is unwanted in the learning environment. Orey (2010) explains that behaviorism falls under the idea that behaviors are learned and can be unlearned through reinforcement and be replaced by the desired behavior. Understanding how to approach students and their behaviors, when I crossed content and began teaching US History, I continued to adopt the theory of behaviorism with my own classes and observed many students replaced unwanted behaviors with appropriate ones. However, since integrating technology into the classroom, the relationship between behaviorism, technology tools, and how a teacher provides practice, feedback, and reinforcements has become intertwined into a behaviorist web of a positive learning environment.

            One of my favorite actions to observe is an effort taken in my class. I love it when students live outside their comfort zone and are willing to take risks in their learning abilities. I ask students from time to time, “what is the worst thing that can happen when taking a risk in your future?” Knowing the answer for my eighth-grade student is, nothing, I encourage students to better themselves each day they walk through the doors of our classroom. However, if I am not encouraging my students’ efforts to better themselves by reinforcing desired behaviors, I am not able to have my students reach their full potential as a scholar. 

One way, behaviorism relates to the instructional strategy of reinforcing effort and providing recognition is through modeling the desired behaviors you are looking to observe in a given activity. Through modeling, students are able to learn through observation, which helps students’ develop an understanding of how to practice the desired behavior (Orey, 2010). When modeling desired behavior to students, teachers must be aware of how they reinforce students’ effort in order to have students display the desired behavior. One way teachers can reinforce students’ effort is to be consistent in modeling and addressing students to information regarding what effort is to look like (Pitler et al., 2012). When students are aware of what effort is to look like, they can begin to monitor their own progress towards their effort towards mastery learning. But as important it is for teachers to reinforce students’ efforts, providing recognition towards students’ mastery when their effort displays the desired behavior is crucial towards a student’s growth.  

When providing recognition to students, teachers must understand the importance of how they recognize students’ hard work and the relationship to internal emotions and self-esteem. The more a teacher provides students with recognition and praise, the students’ self-efficacy, effort, and motivation to learn, improve (Pitler et al., 2012). One example of how I provide recognition of desired behaviors is through acknowledgment of actions I am looking to see in my classroom. When I observe students distracted and off-task, I reinforce other students who are displaying my desired behavior by shouting them out and providing positive recognition of their positive behavior. Secondly, when providing recognition to students through the lens of behaviorism, the learning environment can be rewarding for both students and teachers because students begin to work to receive social approval from their peers and feel accomplished (Orey, 2010). As a result, students receiving social approval from their peers and feel accomplished in their learning, students are inclined to encourage their peers to better themselves, which I look for students to accomplish every year. 

            Providing opportunities for students to practice their learned skills through homework assignments can lead teachers into a world of frustration. When homework is taken seriously, students can deepen their understanding and develop further proficiency skills (Pitler et al., 2012). From my own experience, assigning homework was never successful. I thought this was because many students’ parents work multiple jobs or do not speak adequate English to help students with homework. Upon reflecting on previous experiences, it was not the parents who worked multiple jobs and could not assist students because of language barriers, it was how I provided positive feedback to those who submitted the work. In order to have students change the undesired behavior of not completing homework, I knew it was going to take time to shape my students’ work ethic with homework assignments but understood the long-term benefits to commit to this practice. When students did not complete the homework assignments, I would resort to a form of punishment by holding students during lunch and after school to give them the opportunity to complete the assigned homework. Within a few weeks, students understood the importance of completing work within a given time frame and began to complete assignments but continued to stay after school to receive help knowing they would not receive it at home. Using behaviorism to have students understand the importance of homework, punishing the undesired behavior decreased the frequency of the behavior repeating and in return, students would be reinforced for demonstrating the desired behavior (Orey, 2010).  

            When integrating technology into the classroom, adopting the theory of behaviorism is the teacher’s best opportunity to creating a learning environment where students respect the technology and are using it as a learning tool and not a toy. Also, behaviorism can be utilized in many ways as a teacher incorporates technology into the classroom. For students who disrespect the learning environment and are using sites that are unacceptable or playing video games when they should be collaboratively learning with their peers, I use punishment to decrease the unwanted behavior of disrespecting the learning environment. As a consequence, students would lose technology privileges if this was an additional offense and would receive textbook work for the remainder of the week. On the contrary, when students are displaying desired behaviors when using technology in a collaborative setting, I am able to support student learning by reinforcing my students by commenting on their work using the comment section through Google Docs. Giving my students positive reinforcements by complimenting and recognizing their effort towards achievement, students, in return, are inclined to produce better work and become motivated. 

            Another way the technology tools work together to support student learning is by creating a collaborative learning environment by providing student recognition towards effort and achievement. It is most important to praise students’ effort when the desired behavior is demonstrated to help increase the frequency of behavior (Orey, 2010). But when students are given the opportunity to provide input on their effort towards learning, students can develop a deeper understanding of what the teacher is expecting. A strategy to incorporate technology tools to help support student learning is through student reflection of their effort and achievement throughout the unit as compared to a rubric to help guide students’ understanding of expectations. When students have constant and structured exposure to teachers’ expectations and understand how to achieve given expectations, students can appreciate the importance of effort and its relationship to achievement (Pitler et al., 2012). When teachers are consistent with behaviorism and students are displaying desired behaviors academically and behaviorally, learning can become elevated and students’ academic skills can increase because the learning environment provides a safe learning space for all students to actively learn. 

The way I currently use behaviorist-based instructional strategies and technology tools in my classroom setting is by creating a collaborative learning environment through the use of Google Classroom. One expectation I give my students when they are working together on a group project or completing a Document Based Question (DBQ) essay is to share their work using the Share option on Google Docs. Concurrently with their work, I am able to make comments reinforcing their effort towards achieving mastery or could provide feedback on what improvements can be done before final submission. Through collaborative workspaces using technology, students are becoming global collaborators in the learning environment by contributing effectively to group projects while using collaborative technologies to work with others (International Society for Technology in Education, 2019a). Furthermore, through the collaboration process with my students’ projects and essays, I am able to create a learning environment where students can take ownership of their learning and achievement in both independent and group settings (International Society for Technology in Education, 2019b). From experience, with immediate feedback and reinforcement, students adjust quickly and have a better chance at learning when compared to submitting a rough-draft and not having another chance to improve on skills for another week. 

            Upon deciding that my students will participate in Genius Hour (GH) every other week, they will create an actionable plan that was well-researched and developed throughout the school year that brings community awareness to a problem they are passionate about. The project is the end of the year’s culminating project and will weigh heavily towards the students’ final grade due to the fact they begin working on their project beginning in December. Creating a grading system and making students aware that each category is weighted differently, Dowd (2019), found that students are reinforced to increase efforts in categories weighted heavier. Therefore, every-other-week when students participate in GH, they will understand the importance of each opportunity they have to conduct their research and complete the assigned due dates. 

            Within their project, students will be expected to conduct research and gather credible resources to incorporate into their presentation to support their arguments. In order for students to gather credible resources, they will need to practice good research strategies and one way I will encourage students to use expected strategies is to have them practice dependable research strategies. At the beginning of the project, students will begin researching using techniques they are accustomed to. By the second GH activity, students may continue using their own strategies but are expected to incorporate the new strategy I modeled in class. To reinforce the behavior I expect out of students, praising or giving additional points towards their grade to students that demonstrated the use of the learned strategy in hopes of shaping students’ behavior (Nebel, 2019). 

For my Special Education (SpEd) students who are intellectually disabled and still held to the expectations of all students during the GH activities, conducting small-group instruction and chunking tasks will help students develop needed skills. The reason I will conduct small-group instruction accompanied by chunked activities for my SpEd students is that complex material such as proficient research skills becomes overwhelming and frustrating for students resulting in the learning process being slowed (Algahtani, 2017). 

In closing, behaviorism plays to the advantage of both student and teacher if the teacher’s purpose is to produce active members of the digital society of the 21st-Century. If not, teachers can create a toxic environment where students’ behaviors are not punished, resulting in students’ continual practice of behaviors that are undesired.  

References

Algahtani, F. (2017). Teaching students with intellectual disabilities: Constructivism or behaviorism? Educational Research and Reviews. 12(21). 1031-1035.

Dowd, M. (2019). How to use behaviorism in the classroom. Retrieved from https://www.theclassroom.com/use-behaviorism-classroom-8156621.html. 

Nebel, C. (2019). Behaviorism in the classroom. Retrieved from https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/8/10-1. 

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E.R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD. 

Orey, M. (Ed.). (2010). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://textbookequity.org/Textbooks/Orey_Emergin_Perspectives_Learning.pdf.