Operant Conditioning

Nov 8^th, 2010

When I was little, my mother would always get me to do something by taking away something, or offering me something. I’m not sure she knew that what she was doing would be something I would study in college! The process of taking something away or giving something for a desired outcome is called operant conditioning. It sounds cruel but it’s a way to “condition” or train a child to do what you want them to do. Operant conditioning is used by teachers for teaching children behaviour and classroom management. There are four ways to do this:

Positive Reinforcement: a teacher would give something, to reinforce a good behaviour that is happening.

Negative Reinforcement: a teacher would take something negative away to reinforce good behaviour.

Positive Punishment: a teacher would give something negative in order to get less of certain behaviour.

Negative Punishment: a teacher takes away something positive in order to get less of certain behaviour.

See a pattern? Whenever something is “positive”, something is being given, whether it’s a wanted or not. When something is “negative”, something is being taken away, whether it’s a good or bad thing. When something is being “reinforced”, the teacher wants to create more of this behaviour. When someone is “punished”, the teacher wants to create less of this behaviour. Make sense? I didn’t think so either, so I’m going to show the examples I came up with in class.

Positive Reinforcement: A child answers a difficult question, teacher gives a gold star. The teacher is giving something to get more of the good behaviour.

Negative Reinforcement: If a teacher is monitoring a child in class and then the child starts doing better, you can monitor less and less. The teacher takes away something unwanted that is already there in order to create more of the good behaviour.

Positive Punishment: A child is talking in class frequently, so the teacher gives more homework. The teacher is giving something in order to get less of a certain behaviour.

Negative Punishment: A child is bullying other children, so the teacher takes away recess time. The teacher takes away something the child likes in order to get less of a certain behaviour.

I’ve been told that teaching something is the best way to learn it, so hopefully that will help me retain this!

In my opinion, I think they’re all very good ways to have a child behave properly, but I think it would differ from elementary to high school. Positive reinforcement and negative punishment would probably work the best on younger kids, and negative reinforcement and positive punishment would probably work the best on high school students. Younger children are more focused on pleasing a teacher, and most of them really enjoy school and want to be there, so I think the two that the student would receive praise or lose something they enjoy doing would result in the best behaviour. A lot of high school students really don’t want to be at school, and they’re only going because they have to; therefore, I think the two that mean they lose out on social time, have to do something extra, or aren’t being watched so much would be the most effective.

I’m actually really glad we learned this; I always thought there was a theory behind what my mother was using on me, and now I can use it on my future students to have them behave properly!