Behaviorism

toc =Introduction to Behaviorism= Behaviorism is so embedded in how we think about education that it has become invisible; we don't typically connect behavioral techniques with its philosophy or consider the implications of this. And yet there are serious problems with it as a guiding theory within education. We throw around behaviorist terms such as positive reinforcement, time out, punishment, and so forth without considering how the behaviorism philosophy can actually impede real learning. Within the limited terms of behavioral theory, we cannot differentiate between something that looks like learning and something that is learning. As you will see, this has a direct bearing on the education you have received as a student and the education you are expected to provide as a teacher.

This unit not only seeks to help you to understand critical ideas and terminology, but also to think through how this set of ideas influences and limits both our understandings of students and our abilities to respond to their educational needs. You may choose to embrace behaviorism or not, but this should be a conscious decision (ooops, behaviorism doesn't allow for the concept of "consciousness") on any teacher's part, coupled with understanding the implications of that philosophy for one's teaching practice.

Behaviorism is a "technology," in that it is a series of possible practices that can influence what other people do. There is no ethical stance behind behaviorism. Although BF Skinner, a prominent behaviorist researcher, sought to do good with behaviorism, a quick look at phenomena such as pathological gambling or some of the more misguided trends in education demonstrates that behavioral techniques can be used to perpetrate great harm.

So, watch the beady little rat's eyes in the Voki below--they follow your mouse (perhaps this is a cross-species affinity?). That's because I positively reinforced him until he was consistent in this behavior.... No? Push play and see what he has to say.

Voki (Skinner's Rat)
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Presentation
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Flashcards
Here are quizlet flashcards for your learning pleasure. media type="custom" key="12719626" Be sure that you really understand these terms. Many people get "negative reinforcement" mixed up with punishment. If you are going to take the Praxis, it is important to know what negative reinforcement is and how it works.

=The Big Deal About Behaviorism=

Behaviorism and Moral (Ir-)Responsibility
Behaviorism is based on a central idea that the workings of a person's mind are inconsequential to understanding what the person does and why. How a person feels about something or his or her introspection and decision-making about something does not matter in part because these things cannot be objectively observed or determined. If there is no subjectivity (a person's own "take" on the world), then people are at the mercy of whatever environment they are in. That environment could be cultural, it could be physical, so the concept of environment can be fairly complex within behavioral theory. But, in essence, people have no free will. When people have no free will to choose what they will do, then they can take no responsibility for their choices.

If people have no free will and no responsibility, then when they are students or subject to some kind of creator of an environment in which they interact, their personal desires are of no consequence. This means that students are the recipients of actions by teachers rather than independent agents of their own lives. Students are, in this view, essentially passive and if they are put in the right environment, they will take in or "learn" whatever the creator of that environment has in mind, whether the environment's creator was interested in the well-being of the student or not. Environment creators manipulate student behavior. And, these creators do not have to take responsibility for the ways in which they have manipulated others because they themselves have no free will. Under these terms, a behaviorist could all too easily argue that the most egregious criminals are not responsible for their behavior because they are simply products of their environment. .

These are the essential moral problems of behaviorism.

Linguistic Issues in Behaviorism
There is a linguistic issue with behaviorism and it relates to Orwell's 1984. If you read the book (whether because of your school environment or because of your own volition), you may recall that one of the ways Big Brother controlled people was through the impoverishment of language. This website is a dictionary of "newspeak" from both the book and the movie: []

If you look at the word "free," it has come to have only one meaning as in "the dog is free of lice." By limiting this word, such a culture limits the ability to articulate thoughts about any other type of freedom.

Within the world of behaviorism, the ability to talk about volition, desire, subjectivity, perspective, or even mind, is limited since those constructs fall outside of the world of behaviorism. That would be all well and good in that many theories focus on one thing and cannot be used to discuss a full range of human pursuits. The only problem is that behaviorism purports to be a complete explanation about human existence.

Since one cannot speak of subjectivity or emotion within behaviorism, then as long as someone looks as though he or she is learning--has the same behaviors as someone who is ostensibly learning, such as filling out worksheets or reading deadly dull textbooks--then that person must be learning. In the world of behaviorism, an internal drive to learn something does not exist. Reading a textbook with the internal purpose of refuting whatever it says cannot happen and is fundamentally indistinguishable from someone who is getting pizza coupons to read the same book.

The sad thing is that so many who have control over the world of education have bought into behaviorism and things that only look like learning and teaching (in my terms, I use quotation marks for the questionable activities of "teaching" and "learning" which are disguised as teaching and learning) that many people are glad to walk down the halls of a school and watch teachers "deliver" scripted lessons to students who then memorize what the teachers say and parrot that back to the teachers on some form of activity that purports to assess this song and dance.

"Teaching" and "Learning" and the Federal Definition of a University Credit Hour
In order to keep a small number of educational institutions from defrauding the government, the federal government has developed a definition of a college credit hour:

// 1. One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two // // hours of out-of-class student work each week for approximately fifteen // // weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks // // for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a // // different amount of time; or //

// 2. At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this // // definition for other academic activities as established by the institution, // // including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other // // academic work leading to the award of credit hours. // Quoted from: http://literacymethods.wikispaces.com/Rigor which has the original document that can be downloaded.

Having a definition of a credit hour of this sort keeps educational institutions from claiming they are providing an education for students, collecting federally-supported tuition from students, and then having no teaching going on. However, such a definition can be so easily morphed into a behaviorally-oriented approach to university classes where students are assigned homework with the purpose of filling an allotted time rather than providing students with opportunities to truly learn. Unfortunately, there are all too many teachers and administrators who will focus on filling time rather than supporting the development of an intrinsic desire to learn and grow. //[This may seem to be a strange argument within a course where each week in a semester is supposed to take five hours; I originally developed the five hour idea as a way of breaking down the course into manageable chunks so students would not feel so overwhelmed. To me, the five hour concept is the **upper limit** of the time I would like this course to take from your life each week and not something to "fill" with random activities in order to show that students are learning. Your posts are my proof of your learning and they fulfill this role wonderfully.]//

But Behavioral Techniques Work...Should We Get Rid of Them?
Behaviorism is popular, in part because the techniques work at least often enough that we can get intermittently reinforced to use them (remembering that randomly-timed, intermittent reinforcement is the strongest form of reinforcement).

These tools should be seen for what they are. They can have an influence on other people's behavior because they are techniques of manipulation and as such they can set a foundation for real learning. For example, the structure or "environment" of a class can reinforce certain behaviors. When students face a window, they are going to be more likely to focus on what is outside the window than learning activities within the classroom. When classroom furniture is set up so that the window does not distract from classroom activities, then students are more likely to remain focused on learning.

Time out, as in a time away from a potentially problematic situation, is a good tool for people to learn to use for themselves, rather than something used by an authority as supposedly negative reinforcement but too often punishment. Sometimes we need to take a few moments of "time out" to get ourselves under a reasonable amount of control. Here the idea of time out is valuable, but only in a way that cannot even be expressed in behavioral terms since it based on free will and responsibility.

Positive reinforcement works really well when one is trying to get a dog to sit or lie down. That's because positive reinforcement becomes a means of communication between the dog and the handler. The same positive reinforcement does not work so well for cats because while dogs often have an internal desire to interact with and please people, cats tend to be more aloof.

Good teachers have a wide array of tools and strategies they can use to address the needs of their students and the tools of behaviorism fall into this category. They are valuable and they do work when judiciously used. The problem is that the theory itself does not have a concept of "judicious use" at its foundation.

=Philosophical Musings (Learning Activity)= The above essay reflects a critique of the philosophy behind the theory of behaviorism as well as connections between this philosophy and educational concepts such as teaching and learning. Think about your perspective and write about that. You get credit for thinking and writing, so you are free to agree, disagree, find your own way to deal with this or some combination thereof. To help you, here are some questions for you to think about:
 * When have behavioral techniques worked in your life (e.g., someone using them on you or you using them on someone else)? Can you think of times when they have not worked?
 * What moral stance, if any, should teachers have? Why? What is yours or why is the question of moral stance not important to you?
 * From your perspective, what does the concept "intrinsic motivation" mean (if it has any meaning) and how does that meaning relate, in your opinion, to the theory of behaviorism?
 * Other ideas that come to your mind?

=Graduate School Preparation= Here is [|Noam Chomsky]'s critique of Skinner's Verbal Behavior: []

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