Operant Conditioning In The Classroom

The first way that behavior perspective learning is incorporating in the classroom is through operant conditioning. Students who learn to behave a certain way based on their environment is called operant conditioning. Through my observations I saw how student’s behaviors are more operant rather than respondents. For example, the students in my classroom have learned when they are in the whole group environment they must raise their hands quietly when they are ready to talk. If the students don’t raise their hands or are talking when their not suppose to my cooperating teacher uses negative reinforcement to by saying “I only call on students who raise their hands when they are ready to talk” or uses physical cues by raising her own hand when …show more content…
The first concept that my teacher modeled a lesson was when she taught using math mountains for adding two digit numbers because she used attention and retention to help the students learn the process. During the math mountain lesson my teacher gave a visual step by step instruction on how she set it up and talked aloud through setting up each step. She did several problems working aloud and visually showing each step, but each problem allowing the students to help more and more. My cooperating teacher had modeled the behavior she was seeking from the students by showing detailed visual on how to do each step. The way she maintained attention is by highlighting important words or key factors that would help the students better understand the math problems. The elements used for observational learning I have noticed in the classroom are fine-tuning already learned behaviors and strengthening or weakening inhibitions. Most of the students in my classroom already have great behaviors in the classroom and my teacher doesn’t have a a lot of behavior problems to deal with in the classroom. This helps with fine-tuning already learned behavior because all of the students are great models for one another to use for direction on wanted behavior used for the classroom. Since the majoriety of my classroom is small group work, my teacher often times switches the groups up to coordinate students who can help model for students who might need extra reminder. Strengthening or weakening inhibitions is a way that works best in the classroom because my teacher will say “ I like how M is holding a two finger squeeze in line, if I can get all the students to have a two finger squeeze then we will head to lunch”. Right away when the students hear that the look to that student and model their behavior to get the acknowledge and the same