Three psychological methods which can help to ensure a students success in learning are shaping of behavior, bolstering self-efficacy, and improving teachers' expectations. This is how these fundamental tools can be used to increase children's success in the classroom.
Concept 1: Shaping of Behavior is an important component of positive reinforcement/behavior modification in the classroom.
Positive reinforcement can be a very successful technique in promoting student learning, but it must be used correctly to be effective. Imagine this scenario, to help master the davening, the rebbe of a second grade yeshiva class hands out coupons when the children have their fingers placed on the correct word. The child who has the most coupons at the end of the week gets a prize, so do all those who have at least half the number of coupons that he has. The children who have less than that number do not get a prize. But this is not helping Dovid, who did not get a coupon during the first and second week, and seems to be doing even more poorly the third week.
What's wrong? Dovid is not responding because behavior modification is about shaping existing behavior so that is starts to approximate a desired behavior. It is not about a teacher's standards, but rather a teacher taking an already existing behavior in the student, and at the first indication that this behavior is evolving toward the desired behavior, rewarding it. If Dovid is usually not even on the right line of the siddur, and now he is at least on the right line, his teacher should reward that behavior, even if it does not fully meet the goal. In the situation described above, no shaping is occurring. The only thing happening is that Dovid must be getting frustrated about not getting coupons or a prize. Eventually, that frustration is likely to evolve into anger, hopelessness, or low self-esteem or some combination of all three. Having these negative feelings will lead to lowered expectations, and yet poorer performance.
Someone might say: "It isn't fair to reward Dovid, in the scenario above, because we are not requiring the same performance from all the children in the class in order to receive the same reinforcement!" This is true. And this is as it should be. Behavior modification is not about having uniform requirements for all children. It's about reinforcing successive approximations to a desired behavior. In this way all children can achieve the reinforcement.
Concept 2. Students' self-concepts actually determine their success in learning.
Self-efficacy is a term that denotesan individual's feelings of competence. Research has shown that given a group of children, all with roughly the same abilities, the best way to predict who will accomplish and who won't is by means of self-efficacy.The student's view of himself determines the success he will have: If a student believes he will succeed, then he probably will; if he believes he won't, then he won't!
What makes a child believe in his self-efficacy? To a large extent, it is the messages (both explicit and implicit) that teachers and parents instill. Every child needs and has the right to be given the message that he will succeed. A teacher who doesn't give students that message hinders his ability to succeed in teaching them.
Concept 3. Teachers' messages and expectations determine students' success in learning.
The psychological literature teaches us that what is in a teacher's head about a student, namely, the teacher's view of the student, actually determines the progress that the student will make. Why are teachers' expectations so important? Because they are instrumental in molding a student's self-expectations. And, as we have seen, a student's having positive expectations, i.e., feelings of self-efficacy, will in and of itself, lead to his increased success.
These three principles make very powerful statements about what makes students succeed or fail in learning. If we want students to succeed, we must not stick to a rigid standard, but reward any behaviors that show movement in the desired direction. Teachers need to give exercises/activities that increase in difficulty gradually, so that children are able to do them and meet with success. When students experience success, they feel empowered, enabling them to approach future tasks with a "can do" instead of "can't do" attitude. We must also, in our own heads, view our students as capable and achieving. By doing so, we enable them to view themselves as success stories. They will then go on to enact these scripts in real life.
Barbara Rumain, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the Lander campus of Touro College on Avenue J in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her work has been awarded by the National Science Foundation. She can be reached at [email protected].