Pro Teaching

Acknowledgments

I would like to give a big enormous thanks to everyone at Laurel Hill Secondary School, would helped me with this project, especially, the three first year science classes and their teachers, because without them I would not have been able to do this experiment.  Also, I would like to thank Mr Cregan, would allowed me to do this experiment, to use the schools facilities and who gave me advice.  I would also like to thank Ms Crowes fourth year physics class, who helped me hugely in putting the finishing touches to my project. 

I want to give a big massive thanks to Ms Crowe and Ms Curtain, who were totally dedicated with helping me with my project and for their continuous advice and support.  Because without their help this project would not be have been like, what it is now. 

I would also like to Maeve Guilfoyle, who worked with me on this experiment, but unfortunately could not make it to Dublin.  I would also like to thank Aisling Cooke, who helped me enormously with this project and for coming up to Dublin with me.  I would also like to thank both of our parents, because without their support and their cars, we wouldn’t be able to show this project.

Introduction

Before I started this experiment I found it interesting that there are loads of different teaching styles that various teachers used.  I wondered what type of teaching methods were the best for the students, and what style helped the students get good grades.  I was more interested in positive and negative reinforcement.  That was down to the fact that I looked at different classes and I saw two main styles.  One style was that the class was thought by a teacher who was really interested in the topic that they were teaching, and they enjoyed teaching the class.  This made the class lively, energetic and it made the students pay attention, but only half.  The other style was that the teacher used made the class boring, dull and complicated, this made the students uninterested and that they would not pay attention. 

This made me want to investigate about positive and negative reinforcement and I wanted to see what type of reinforcement was better for the students in general.  I looked at skinner theory (see appendix iii) about extreme reinforcement, and I wondered that, does extreme reinforcement have a good or bad affect on students grades. 

Discussion

B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant conditioning.  The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it does.  During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer.  This special stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant — that is, the behaviour occurring just before the reinforcer.  This is operant conditioning:  “the behaviour is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behaviour in the future.”

Eg. If a student in a classroom answers a question correct than the teacher will give them a reward, thus in the future the student will keep on answering questions correctly in order to receive the reward that the teacher has.  The operant is the behaviour just prior to the reinforcer, which is the reward.  Over a short period of time other students will catch on to the reward that the teacher is offering for each correct answer.  The teacher is now referred to as a positive reinforcer.

‘‘A behaviour followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behaviour occurring in the future.’’ – This means that when a person/student behaves the way the reinforcer/teacher wants them to behave accordingly, and then they will get a reward.  This is positive reinforcement.  

But, if the teacher stops giving the students a reward for every correct answer, then most of the students will stop their answering behaviour.  This is called extinction of the operant behaviour.  The teacher is now known as a negative reinforcer.

‘‘A behaviour no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased probability of that behaviour occurring in the future.’’- This means that if the reinforcer/teacher wants to change the person/student behaviour then they should remove something that the student desires most e.g. a reward f some kind.  This is known as negative reinforcement.

If the teacher wanted the behaviour that the students had before they were negatively reinforced in the classroom, then all the teacher would have to do is offer them a reward each time they get an answer correct, the behaviour of answering a question correctly will ‘pop’ back into existence, much more quickly than it took of the student to learn the behaviour the first time.  This is because the return of the reinforcer takes place in the context of a reinforcement history that goes all the way back to the first time the students where taught to answer a question correctly.

According to skinner if a teacher keeps on reinforcing a class either positively or negatively then the students will respond with the appropriate behaviour, either negative or positive.  It is clear from the results that when a class was taught either positively or negatively they responded with the appropriate behaviour.  Therefore, when a class was taught negatively they responded negatively, and when the class was taught positively they responded positively. 

In the negatively reinforced class when they were given a before test, the before test  was different than other two classes before test, due to the reason that in the negatively reinforced class we covered more aspects of the topic than in the other two classes.  The before test that was used in the control and positively reinforced classes, questions differed but they where based on the same topic. 

We gave the students a before test, so we could determine what the academically ability of the class was.  This and the after test let us see if the reinforcement affected the student’s grade.  The after test also showed us what the students learnt in the class.  We also had a focus group, this was to record the students reaction to our teaching and the reinforcement that was used.  The focus group results may vary because the first years might’ve been nervous about talking to two fourth years.

Our reasoning behind having more questions in the negatively reinforced class before test, was due to the fact that in the negatively reinforced class, we were more focused on getting to the point and not on explaining clearly to the students and making sure that they understood.  Therefore, we covered more material. 

While we were teaching the classes, we were very nervous, this was down to the fact that we were 4^th years and we had to stand up in front of a class and teach about a topic that we had to know everything about, we didn’t really concentrate on what reinforcement that we were using in the classroom.  Therefore, after each class we observed ourselves teaching and we used the observations sheets, this was to determine what type of reinforcement that was used in the classroom, while we were teaching the students.

In the positively reinforced class, in the before test the students got 40% of their before test correct, while in the negatively reinforced class they got 33% of before test correct.

In the negatively reinforced class they got 37% of their before correct, this means that 37% of the students reacted negatively.

In the positively and negatively reinforced class when they got a after test after they had been taught their positive reactions where almost equal, with 39% of the negatively reinforced class reacting positively and 40% of the positively reinforced class reacting positively. 

While the positive reaction was almost equal the negative reaction in both class was more obvious, 11% of the positively reinforced class responded negatively, while in the negatively reinforced class they responded 30% negatively. This result has shown me that a negative behaviour towards a subject from a teacher results in a class showing a negative attitude towards a topic, and inevitably could lead to a negative attitude a whole school subject.  

In the after test there were two questions on how they learn at home.  Most of the students answered that they prefer to move around and see things when they are trying to learn about a topic.   The majority of the students were spatial learners, this means that they like see things when they are learning, they prefer to learn when they see picture or they see experiments happen.  Also, a few students where kinaesthetic learners, this means that they like to move around when they are trying to learn about a particular topic.

Overall, from observing the three classes I expected the students in the positively reinforced class to perform better than both the negatively reinforced and the control classes.  I also expected the negatively reinforced class not perform well.  I expected the control test to have an average out come.

From my experience in teaching the classes before I looked at the results from the before and after tests, I expected the students in the negatively reinforced class to perform poorly.  Also, I expected the student in the positively reinforced class to before better than the students in both the negatively reinforced class and in the control class.  Again I expected the students in the control class to have a mixed outcome – they weren’t too positively or negatively.

From the results, I now feel that the students in the control class preformed better than the students because they had a good balance of positive and negative reinforcement, it allowed them to form their own opinions of the topic.  I feel that the students in the negatively reinforced class did not perform the best due to the fact that they were taught using too much negative reinforcement.  Also, I feel that in the positive reinforced class did not perform as well as the students in the control class because they were taught using too much positive reinforcement.    

Conclusion

Before conducting this experiment it had been my opinion that the positively reinforced class would’ve preformed the better than the other two classes.  I also thought that the negatively reinforced class would not have performed the same as the positively reinforced class and the control. 

Skinner stated that extreme forms of reinforcement be it positive or negative, would obtain greater results from a class.  My results have found that extreme reinforcement is not the ideal situation, when it comes to teaching a topic in a class. 

Our control class, which was a good balance of positive and negative reinforcement, provided us with the best results from the students.  The control class managed to provide us with the best results in the after tests. 

In the after test the control class students managed to get 63% of their test correct, this is an increase comparison to the positive class who only got 40% of their test correct, and the negative class only got 39% of their test correct.  This shows us the students preformed better when they were taught not too positively or negatively, this tells us that skinner theory of extreme reinforcement can be challenged.

Recommendations

From these results, I think that teacher should teach their classes using both negative and positive reinforcement, in equal measure.  This will allow students to form their own opinions of a particular topic or the subject in general.   I think that teacher should not teach their classes with either extreme reinforcement. 

Further Study

If I were to continue to study this particular topic, I would study the reinforcement that is used in primary school and see how it differs from the reinforcement that is used in secondary school.  I would also study how positive and negative reinforcement in a classroom affects the students choice of their third level course.