BEHAVIORISM IN EDUCATION: BEHAVIORIST THEORY AND EXAMPLES - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The behaviorism in education can be applied to improve the acquisition of knowledge of students, their behavior or their attitude towards classes. Because of this, many of its techniques continue to be used today both in the field of formal education and in other less regulated areas.

Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that tries to understand, explain and predict human and animal behavior based on the stimuli present in their environment. In its most radical form, it assumes that all behaviors are either a response produced to an element of the environment, or a consequence of the individual's history.

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Despite the fact that some of its premises have been shown to be false, many of the ideas that emerged from behaviorism continue to be applied in a large number of different fields. Thus, ideas such as reinforcements and punishments, classical and operant conditioning, and habituation and sensitization are born from this theory.

It is impossible to apply all the ideas of behaviorism in education. However, those that do fit within this scope can be very useful for teachers, educators, and parents. In this article we will see which are the most important and how they are applied, as well as several concrete examples of their use.

Behavioral theory in education

The behaviorist theory is based on the idea that all the behaviors of a person have been learned through a complex system of reinforcements and punishments that has been given since birth. From this premise, several techniques are developed that can help to modify the way an individual acts.

The technique most applicable to the field of education is operant conditioning. This is based on the idea that a behavior will be repeated more or less frequently in the future depending on whether it is rewarded or punished; that is, whether the person associates pleasure or pain to carry it out.

Thus, by modifying the system of reinforcements and punishments related to a specific way of acting, it is possible to influence the behaviors of a person to shape their way of behaving as we please. This works especially well in the case of children, although it can also apply to adults to some extent.

How Reinforcements and Punishments Work

Operant conditioning is based on the application of reinforcements to the behaviors that you want to promote in a person, and punishments to those that you do not want to be repeated. Both reinforcements and punishments can be "positive" if they involve adding a stimulus to the behavior, and "negative" if they involve removing something.

Thus, when faced with a behavior that you want to modify, it is possible to have four types of responses: positive and negative reinforcements, and positive and negative punishments. The first two are used to make it more likely that a course of action will become more likely in the future, and the last to decrease its frequency.

Positive reinforcement involves giving the person pleasant encouragement, such as attention or praise, when they behave in a certain way. In contrast, negative reinforcement would involve removing something unpleasant from your experience, such as when a person manages to stop an annoying sound (such as the alarm clock) by pressing a button.

On the other hand, a positive punishment has to do with the use of an aversive stimulus to reduce the probability that a behavior will be repeated; for example, a child who is burned by touching a stove would have received positive punishment for perceiving pain.

Finally, the negative case implies the elimination of a pleasant stimulus to prevent a behavior from being repeated in the future. An example could be a father who takes his son's cell phone away so that he will not perform a certain action again.

How is behaviorism applied in education?

We have already seen that the most applicable part of behavior theory in education is the use of reinforcement and punishment to modify behavior. However, there are some aspects that need to be considered in order to understand how this approach is actually used within the field of teaching.

According to studies on operant conditioning, punishments are much more effective than reinforcement in modifying a person's behavior. Because of this, in the past it was very common to spank a child who acted "incorrectly", to humiliate him verbally, or to use any other type of physical or mental punishment.

However, for moral and ethical reasons, in recent decades it has begun to be seen that despite being effective in modifying behavior, punishments of this type can have very negative consequences for children. For this reason, currently the techniques used tend to be of a very different nature.

For example, today it is also known that withdrawing attention from a child is one of the most effective "punishments" there is. Due to this, to avoid unwanted behaviors, one of the best weapons of a teacher or parent is precisely to ignore the negative behaviors of children until they extinguish themselves.

And what about the reinforcements?

Despite the fact that punishments have been shown to be more effective, reinforcements are also very useful in modifying behaviors. For this reason, they are used regularly within the field of education.

Using reinforcement in this field can involve anything as simple as praising children's good behaviors, to using tools such as positive grades, or giving small rewards to those who perform certain behaviors.

Examples

Behaviorism in education is one of the most used tools. Because of this, there are many examples of this theory within the field of education.

An example of reinforcement could be the delivery of a small prize (such as a candy or a low value coin) to students who are able to correctly answer a question posed in class.

On the other hand, an example of well-applied punishment could be the withdrawal of attention from a student who is disturbing. The most common way to use this technique is to send the child out of the classroom, in such a way that no one is listening.

References

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2. "Behaviorism" in: Funderstanding. Retrieved on: May 03, 2019 from Funderstanding: funderstanding.com.
3. "How to Use Behaviorism in a Classroom" in: The Classroom. Retrieved on: May 03, 2019 from The Classroom: theclassroom.com.
4. "Behaviorism" in: Learning Theories. Retrieved on: May 03, 2019 from Learning Theories: learning-theories.com.
5. "Behaviorism" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: May 03, 2019 from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org.