Learning: The Behavioral Perspective

This is Unit Four, part one, on learning from the behavioral perspective: what learning and transfer are, then classical and operant conditioning. Unit Three closed on justice and care in classroom decisions. Unit Four turns from how learners develop to how they learn. Carry one idea through this part: judge learning and its consequences by what actually happens to behavior, not by what a teacher intended. At the entry on naming the quadrant, the part shows how a scolding can work as a reward. By the end you will be able to classify an example of transfer. To label the parts of a classical-conditioning episode. To name the operant quadrant for a classroom consequence. To explain why negative reinforcement is not punishment. And to explain why intermittent reinforcement makes a behavior hard to extinguish.

Eight entries on what learning is and how it transfers, from readiness to hugging and bridging.

Teaching is not the same as learning.

EDP 0301 Teaching Is Not Learning

Teachers tend to equate learning with the curriculum and academic achievement, yet the same assignment produces different learning in different students: one learns the history lesson's dates, another mostly how to work with a partner. Incidental learning, beyond the planned curriculum, happens constantly, even when it is not the teacher's focus.

Two meanings of readiness.

EDP 0302 Readiness

Readiness has two meanings: a student's preparedness for a school task, and the school's and teacher's readiness to adjust to the students they actually have, as a teacher adapts reading materials for a student not yet reading independently. At older ages, readiness is usually discussed as prerequisites, the knowledge a new task assumes.

Carrying learning to new settings.

EDP 0303 Transfer

Transfer is using knowledge or skill beyond the setting where it was learned, carrying it from a source situation to a new target, as fractions learned in math help a student double a recipe at home. Learning in varied contexts creates more links in long-term memory, making later transfer more likely.

What helps transfer.

EDP 0304 What Helps Transfer

Transfer depends on how well the original learning was mastered, how similar the new situation is, and whether learners grasp the critical attributes connecting the two, as students who understand why a formula works apply it to unfamiliar problems. Abstraction, finding the underlying principle, model or analogy, lets knowledge travel beyond its first setting.

Help, harm, or nothing.

EDP 0305 Positive, Negative and Zero Transfer

Positive transfer helps performance in a new situation, negative transfer interferes with it, and zero transfer leaves it unaffected. Knowing Spanish helps with Italian vocabulary but can mislead on words that look alike and differ. Negative transfer is worth anticipating: an old habit intrudes where a new rule applies.

Near and far, low road and high road.

EDP 0306 Near and Far, Low-Road and High-Road

Near transfer moves to a similar situation and far transfer to a very different one; low-road transfer is automatic, high-road transfer deliberate and mindful. Using a new keyboard is near and low-road; using statistics to judge a news claim is far and high-road. High-road transfer can reach forward or backward.

Classifying transfer.

EDP 0307 Classifying Transfer

To classify an example of transfer, ask three questions. Did the earlier learning help, hurt or do nothing? That makes it positive, negative or zero. How different is the new situation? Similar settings mean near transfer; very different ones, far. Was it applied automatically, through practised skill, or deliberately, by thinking about what earlier knowledge might apply? That is low-road or high-road. A student who learned to outline essays in English and chooses, unprompted, to outline a science report shows positive, fairly far, high-road transfer. Distance and deliberateness are separate dimensions, so judge each on its own.

Two ways to teach for transfer.

EDP 0308 Hugging and Bridging

Perkins and Salomon describe two ways to teach for transfer: hugging makes learning resemble the future situation, as a mock job interview does, and bridging helps students abstract and connect ideas, as asking where else a principle applies does. Authentic tasks, problem-based learning and cognitive apprenticeship build transfer into instruction.

Five entries on four theories of learning, behaviorism's focus, and classical conditioning in the classroom.

Four lenses on learning.

EDP 0309 Four Pillars of Learning Theory

Four theoretical approaches frame learning: behavioral, focused on overt behavior; social cognitive; constructivist, focused on changes in thinking; and information processing, focused on thinking's processes. The same lesson can be read through each lens in turn, and social cognitive theory joins behavior with the cognition behind it, bridging the behavioral and cognitive units.

Learning as observable behavior.

EDP 0310 Behaviorism

Behaviorism treats learning as a change in observable behavior, and it is strong at linking an action to what precedes and follows it, as a student starts raising a hand after the teacher calls only on raised hands. Its weakness is explaining thinking: behaviorism describes what students do, less how they reason.

Pavlov's bell.

EDP 0311 Classical Conditioning

In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus that triggers an unconditioned response becomes a conditioned stimulus that triggers a conditioned response. Pavlov's bell, paired with food, came to make dogs salivate on its own. Food causing salivation is unconditioned; the bell causing salivation after pairing is conditioned.

Labeling a conditioning episode.

EDP 0312 Labeling a Conditioning Episode

To label a classical-conditioning episode, find the response that happens without learning and the stimulus that causes it: the unconditioned response and the unconditioned stimulus. Then find the stimulus that was neutral at first but became paired with the unconditioned one; after pairing it is the conditioned stimulus, and the learned reaction to it the conditioned response. A student repeatedly reprimanded harshly during math feels afraid; later the sight of a math worksheet alone brings fear. The worksheet is the conditioned stimulus. Label a reaction by what triggers it, and remember that classical conditioning explains emotional responses, not how students learn to read.

Emotions learned in school.

EDP 0313 Conditioned Emotional Responses

Classical conditioning explains many emotional reactions in school, such as fear of math that begins when harsh reprimands are repeatedly paired with math lessons. A teacher can also become a conditioned signal of interest and comfort, so a teacher's own manner is part of the pairing, for better or worse.

Six entries on operant conditioning: consequences, the four quadrants, and why reinforcement is preferred to punishment.

Behavior shaped by consequences.

EDP 0314 Operant Conditioning

In operant conditioning, Skinner's extension of Thorndike's law of effect, behavior is shaped by its consequences: reinforced behavior increases and punished behavior decreases, as a rat presses a lever more once pressing brings food. Classical conditioning pairs two stimuli before a response; operant conditioning links a behavior to what follows it.

Four quadrants.

EDP 0315 The Four Quadrants

Positive means adding and negative means removing: positive reinforcement adds something desired, like praise; negative reinforcement removes something aversive, like a seat-belt chime stopping; positive punishment adds something aversive, like a reprimand; negative punishment removes something desired, like a toy taken away. Reinforcement always increases behavior and punishment always decreases it.

The payoff: naming the quadrant.

EDP 0316 Naming the Quadrant

Here the part's idea does its work. To name the operant quadrant for a classroom consequence, ask two questions in order. Did the behavior afterward become more or less frequent? More means reinforcement; less means punishment. Was something added or taken away? Added means positive; taken away, negative. A student who finishes classwork early is excused from homework, and early finishing increases: something aversive was removed and the behavior rose, so it is negative reinforcement. The labels describe what happened to the behavior, not what was intended, so a scolding meant as punishment is reinforcement if the behavior increases, as when attention is what the student wants.

The most common confusion in behaviorism.

EDP 0317 Negative Reinforcement Is Not Punishment

Negative reinforcement is not punishment: it increases a behavior by removing something unpleasant, whereas every form of punishment decreases the behavior it follows. Buckling a seat belt stops the chime, so buckling becomes more likely. The confusion comes from the word negative, which here means removal, not harshness.

Why reinforcement is preferred.

EDP 0318 Reinforcement Over Punishment

Positive reinforcement is the most effective way to teach a new behavior, and psychologists favor reinforcing desired behavior over punishing unwanted behavior. Skinner's teaching machine gave small steps and immediate reinforcement, a forerunner of computer-assisted learning, and paying students for each book read raised reading comprehension in one study of second graders.

The costs of physical punishment.

EDP 0319 Drawbacks of Physical Punishment

Physical punishment carries real costs: children may come to fear the punisher, avoid the classroom and school itself, and show more aggression and antisocial behavior. And punishment can stop a behavior without teaching the alternative behavior that should replace it, which is one reason reinforcement is preferred.

Four entries on building behavior step by step, and what happens when reinforcement stops or comes only sometimes.

Building a behavior step by step.

EDP 0320 Shaping

Shaping builds a new behavior by reinforcing successive approximations, each step a little closer to the target, as praise comes first for picking up toys, then for sorting them, then for a fully tidy room. Each step is reinforced only until the next is reliable; then the bar moves up.

When reinforcement stops.

EDP 0321 Extinction

Extinction is the fading of a behavior once it is no longer reinforced, in both classical and operant conditioning, as a student who stops getting laughs for clowning gradually clowns less, and then hardly at all. Removing one source of reinforcement may not be enough when classmates supply another.

Spreading and narrowing a behavior.

EDP 0322 Generalization and Discrimination

Generalization spreads a learned behavior to similar situations, as raising a hand in math spreads to science; discrimination is learning when a behavior will not be reinforced, responding only to the right cue, as a student learns not to call out during tests. A cue signaling available reinforcement is a discriminative stimulus.

Reinforcement only some of the time.

EDP 0323 Intermittent Reinforcement

Intermittent reinforcement, given only some of the time, makes a behavior slower to learn but also slower to extinguish than reinforcement given every time: praise that arrives now and then keeps a good habit going. The same effect works against teachers, since clowning only sometimes rewarded by laughter is hard to extinguish.

Look at what you can now do. You can classify transfer by its direction, positive, negative or zero; its distance, near or far; and its road, automatic or deliberate. You can label a conditioning episode, naming each stimulus and response by what triggers it. You can name the operant quadrant by what happened to the behavior and whether something was added or removed. You can explain that negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant to increase a behavior, and so is not punishment. And you can explain why intermittent reinforcement makes behavior slower to extinguish, for good habits and for clowning alike. Part two turns to schedules of reinforcement and the behavioral teacher.