When I was in primary school, I used to have classmates who would always forget to bring their books to school. Hence, my teacher will make them choose 40 words from a dictionary and make them copy down the words + meaning in a foolscap paper and submit it to her, each time they forget to bring their materials. I personally thought that it was a form of punishment back then, a negative one with that said. However, now that I thought about it, I don’t think it was a bad one though because while copying and choosing words, most of us end up reading what we want to from the dictionary and ended up having better vocabulary in our list.  This also ensures that most of us will remember to bring our materials proper before coming into class.

As an AED T&L back then, I tend to bring in stickers to class so that the students would be more motivated to answer questions during my quizzes. I also get them to paste those stickers in their subject related book, so that I can keep track of their materials for the lesson (because most times Social Studies for NT is not an examinable subject, and the buy-in rate for the students is exceptionally low). They will be able to redeem their stickers for something bigger, like a pen, a cute plush keychain, a ruler, or we also allow them to combine those stickers together so that we can have an interesting IT lesson for them to redeem during the upcoming lesson. This motivates them to keep up with the lesson better. 

I felt that reinforcements may be a good feasible way to ensure that desired behaviours are maintained or improved. However, as it was mentioned in the slides, when reinforcements are being used too much in class, it may backfire at the end of the day.  

We as SEN officers can be the conditioned stimulus too to evoke a positive feeling in our students to facilitate a positive learning experience in school. By building positive teacher-student relationship with our students, we can be the assuring and emotional safety figure to reduce the students’ anxiety or fear of learning. Students will associate us as the adult in school who looks after them, supports their learning and behavioural needs, and makes them feel included. 

Now that I have an increased understanding of operant conditioning, it is important that I use reinforcements as my first go-to tool when working with children and adolescents as it has more positive effects. Using punishment should only be when necessary, after we have exhausted the reinforcements, as it can be humiliating and demoralising for students that we are working with. If we use punishment on students, it may also backfire as they may start to dislike the teacher, school or the subject. This behaviour may even continue throughout the academic career of the student – which is not what we want in the student. As educators we must also be wise and prudent in using operant conditioning – we must find the balance in using reinforcement and punishment. It is important to form positive TSR with our students, know our students well, what works for them and what does not. 

 

I think that it is an interesting learning approach which looks at how students’ behaviours can be conditioned and shaped by the presence or removal of stimulus and reinforcers. 

 

When I was a student in Secondary School or JC, I studied harder especially during the year of national exams. I was motivated to do well in order to get into my dream school and course (positive reinforcement). I think that the concept of ‘operant conditioning’ can be applied in this context. As I studied hard (voluntary behaviour), and was rewarded with improvements in my results (Eg. class ranking, school ranking, good progress award) which gave me a sense of personal achievement and boosted my self-confidence to do well in my studies (positive reinforcement). Therefore, I continued to study hard consistently for my national exams. 

As a student, I experienced the classical conditioning and punishment, more towards negative than positive. However, I do observed that reinforcement and positive classical conditioning are being practised more often now which I think is more effective and does not embarrass the student.

But I guess the concern would be, will some students take advantage of the situation like Russell’s case study. However, based on the slides, probably have to relook on the reinforcers. Maybe mum can bring him to see the doctor to confirm his stomachache while teacher can give extra guidance to him and make the test more manageable to boost Russel’s confidence then he will come to school. 

It is convenient to use punishment or negative classical conditioning especially when you need a fast response but may not work in the long run. Hence, start on a positive note, strike a balance and only use punishment when necessary.