Vignette for Behavioral Learning Theory

Gregorio is a shy and rather awkward fourth grade boy. Whenever his teacher dismisses the class for recess, Gregorio tries to remain in the classroom. He asks his teacher if he can help her, or he starts up conversations about shared interest, or he does just about anything that allows him to stay in class with her. When his teacher does get him to leave the room, she will often find him in the hall talking to another teacher or the custodian.

1. Use the concepts of positive and negative reinforcement to explain Gregorio’s behavior.

2.  Assume for sake of argument that Gregorio is afraid to go to recess. How would classical conditioning attempt to explain this fear?  Use the classical conditioning idea of extinction to explain how you would reduce or eliminate this fear.

3. Using the child in this scenario as an example, explain why it is important to understand a behavior and why it is occurring before teachers try to modify it?

Elementary Vignette for Cognitive Learning Theory

Ms. Gregorio teaches 4th grade in a large, urban school district in the southwestern United States. Her school is linguistically diverse with as many as twenty languages other that English spoken by students. Because of the large number of different home languages, Ms. Gregorio must plan her lessons with the needs of linguistically diverse learners in mind.

1. Here are some of the teaching approaches that Ms. Gregorio routinely uses with her second language learners. For each approach, describe how a cognitive learning theory concept or concepts could be used to support or generate that teaching approach.

a. When she asks questions during a discussion, Ms. Gregorio makes sure to provide extra time for her second language learners to formulate their answers, because they are often translating her English question into their own language, and then translating back into English. If she rushes them, she can overwhelm them.

b. When Ms. Gregorio introduces new content, she spends time at the beginning providing background information and teaching new vocabulary to her second language learners.

c. Many of her students are just beginning to learn to read in English. To help them become independent readers, she teaches them to recognize when they don’t know a word in the reading assignment. They are then taught to use context, pictures, and any parts of the word they can sound out to determine what the word is. If they can’t do this, then they ask another student or teacher.

2. Although these teaching ideas were suggested for second language learners, do you think these are generally good teaching ideas for most if not all students? Why or why not?

Elementary Vignette Motivation Theory

Ms. Washington teaches sixth grade at Carolyn Jones Elementary School in a small midwestern town. This year she has a student named Bob who is a big worry to her. It is possible that she may have to retain him if he doesn’t improve. When she talks to him about his difficulties with school, he says that he does not do well because teachers don’t like him and they never have. There is nothing he can do about it. He also says that there are just smart people and dumb people. He is one of the dumb ones and that’s the way it’s always going to be.

If his schoolwork is at all challenging for him, he typically just stops trying. This week they started a new math unit. Bob is not the only student who is struggling with the new unit, but he is the only one who stops trying when it gets hard. Also, Ms. Washington has noticed how much Bob dislikes answering questions in class. He tells her he doesn’t like to look stupid. Interestingly, today he asked if he could go back and do the math in the last unit. He liked that math better. Ms. Washington believes that he wants to go back to that math unit because it was easy for him.

Ms. Washington has tried a number of things to motivate Bob. She found that Bob lives on a farm and that he has loved animals and farming his whole life. She tried to integrate these interests as often as possible. It has only been somewhat successful. He told her one day that school has nothing to teach him that will make him a better farmer. He’ll never use what he is learning.

1. How would you describe Bob’s two different attributions for his lack of success of school in terms of Weiner’s three dimensions of attributions (locus, stability, controllability)? How will his attributions affect his willingness to try harder if things become challenging?

2. What evidence do you see that Bob has an entity view of ability and a performance goal?

3. How are the concepts of personal interest and utility task value relevant to Ms. Washington’s somewhat less than successful attempts to connect to Bob’s love of farming?

Elementary Vignette Development

This is Mr. Bronson’s first year of teaching first grade. Much of his experience has been with middle school students. He is quickly learning that first graders and eighth graders pose different challenges. He is seeing the following behaviors in his students that he is not sure how to handle.

• His students are very talkative when they are supposed to be working alone on an assignment. However, when he walks around the room, they are not talking to each other but are often talking to themselves. He wonders if he should require them to be quiet.

• He has had a problem with stealing. When he has talked to his class about why it is wrong to steal, his students only seem to focus on staying out of trouble. They don’t think about how stealing affects others. He finds this very odd.

• He is amazed how many of his students are turning off to school because they cannot do as well as they want. He hears the phrase, “I’m stupid” frequently from his students. This experience has helped him see how important it is to help student succeed.

1. How would the Vygotskian view of self-talk help Mr. Bronson understand the noisy behavior during seatwork?

2. How would an understanding of Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning help Mr. Bronson understand his students believes about why cheating is wrong?

3. Given the probable age of these students, how would an understanding of Erikson’s psychosocial stages help explain Mr. Bronson’s students who are turning off to school?