PLE Post 8

 

My CSEL intervention case study is about Lisa, a third grade student who is disruptive and uncooperative when working in small groups. These groups are heterogeneous  and usually meet at least twice a day. Although the group composition changes about every four weeks, Lisa does not seem to get along with any of her peers. The group that Lisa is currently working with is having a hard time  grasping the material and completing their project in an acceptable manner because Lisa is so disruptive. She gets angry with her group mates when she does not get the job she wants and refuses to complete her section of the project. She also constantly interrupts other group members and does not pay attention when her group prepares for class presentations.

 

Fortunately, there are tools from a behaviorist view that can encourage Lisa's productive behaviors. The first tool I could use to help encourage Lisa's productive behaviors is positive reinforcement. During small groups, I would monitor Lisa's participation and reward her when she is on task and working well with the other members. For example, if Lisa contributes to her group's discussion, I could verbally reward her by saying, "That's a great idea Lisa! Keep up the good work!"  If Lisa does not respond to this type of reinforcement, I could try giving her stickers or some other reward to help get her motivated to work in her group. The second tool I could use to help encourage Lisa's productive behaviors is negative reinforcement. For example, I could make an agreement with Lisa that if she cooperates and does her part of the project, she can skip any five math problems she wants on her homework. Although this seems like bribery to me personally, behaviorists do support this type of approach.

 

There are also tools from a behaviorist view that can discourage Lisa's undesirable behaviors. The first tool I could use to stop Lisa's disruptive behaviors is negative punishment. For example, I would tell Lisa that for every day she refuses to be a productive member of her group, she will have to sit out for recess. The second tool I could use to discourage Lisa's current behaviors is presentation punishment. For example, I could make Lisa sit in the front of the class right next to my desk every time she refuses to work with her group.

 

From what we have learned in our Educational Psychology class so far, from a constructivist view, Lisa has not yet constructed her own understanding of why group work is important. One way to help this is by having a meeting with her where the two of you can talk about it one-on-one. I think it is important to ask her why she does not value group work, and why she does not want to cooperate in a group. One possible answer is that she had a bad experience with group work in her second grade classroom and individually constructed the view that group work is not beneficial for her. Once Lisa has explained her view, it is then my job as a teacher to help her socially construct a new view on cooperative learning groups. We can do this by brainstorming how small groups help students learn and what the best ways are to interact in a group so everyone can benefit. 

 

Constructivist and behaviorist tools differ greatly. I think the biggest difference between the two is that the behaviorist tools focus more on changing the environment and giving the student rewards or punishments, whereas the constructivist tools focus more on the student and how they see the world. I think the benefits of behaviorist tools are that they work with most students so they are easy to think of. I think the benefits of constructivist tools, on the other hand, are that they are child-centered and are unique for each student's needs. These benefits can also be seen as deficits for the theories because one of the greatest drawbacks of the behaviorist tools are that they do not focus on each unique student, whereas one of the biggest drawbacks of constructivist tools is that they can be more time-consuming because you have to figure out what specific tools you need to use for each unique child in each unique situation. In my future classroom, I will probably handle the everyday problems using the behaviorist tools because they are fast and effective. If my class is being too loud in the hallways, I am not going to analyze how each student constructs their knowledge about hallway etiquette but will instead give my class silent lunch. Conversely, if I have one student who is consistently difficult, like Lisa, I think I would like to sit down and talk with them about why they are misbehaving. In my future classroom, I would like to use the constructivist tools when I am trying to work with students individually.

My resource for this week's post is from the website http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/usingweb/bckgrnd.htm. My favorite thing about this resource is that it has a graphic comparing behaviorism, constructivism, and cognitivism. I know a lot of us are still a little confused on the main differences between these three learning theories, and I thought this graphic would be really helpful to reference when we write our CSEL. It tells each theory's proponents, applications, instructional design focuse, the view of the learner, its assets, and its implications.