Behavior Case Study: ALL CAPS Colleague In The Bean

The ALL CAPS colleague in the Bean chapter really bugged me, which made me spend a considerable amount of time thinking about him and his whiney attitude. I thought about how, through his rant, what he was basically saying is that he (and others) have a very hard time creating significant behavior change in student writing. As a behavioral psychologist, I thought about what the maintaining contingencies were in this situation, and I came up with a moderately bleak conclusion where two opposing contingencies are taking place.

Here it is, as I see it:

1.) In order to achieve significant behavior change, environmental contingencies maintaining behavior have to change. Behavior change will not occur if the environment stays the same.

2.) Students do not seem to "learn how to write" regardless of the number of writing classes they take (as per the whiney ALL CAPS colleague). …show more content…
4.) Reminder: reinforcement increases the likelihood of a behavior occurring again in the future.

5.) No matter what ALL CAPS says, if the behavior is persisting across time, it is being reinforced. That is just how reinforcement works.

6.) This got me thinking about minimal marking. Minimal marking is probably one of the few tools that would function to significantly improve student writing because it attaches a new punishment contingency to errors --> it is a lot more work for the students.

7.) Reminder: punishment decreases the likelihood of a behavior occurring again in the future.

8.) This lead to me to wonder why teachers do not use minimal marking more often.

9.) At this point, I had a depressing