Classical conditioning

Hello everyone,

At the risk of sounding crass, I'd like to talk about classical conditioning.

Yes, I mean that our students can be conditioned, and the same sorts of things Pavlov did with his dogs, we do with students.

For example, if, this late in the semester, your students misbehave, it's because you've conditioned them to do so. If they sit silently, you have conditioned them. Ditto, if they do their work, do not do their work, work their hardest, sleep in class, use their cell phones, listen to ipods, participate in discussions, show respect, and so on. (I'm speaking generally, not necessarily specifically.)

In other words, it's very much a part of what teachers do.

Classical conditioning is easy to understand in principle: Encourage behavior with rewards; discourage behavior with negative consequences.

You remember the original experiment: Pavlov rang a bell and furnished food; the dogs salivated at the food. Later, when he rang the bell, the dogs salivated, even without the food.

He conditioned the dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell.

Look at your students when the school bell rings (I can't resist this obvious transition). What are they doing? The real answer is, they are doing exactly what you have conditioned them to do. If you like what they do when the bell rings, then you're in a good position. If you are not pleased with what happens, then you must look to the way you have rewarded them for that behavior. If you want them to change, you must re-condition them.

Don't take this idea in any way other than the most innocent: we owe it to our students to help them learn to behave like professional adults in certain situations. Most of them will be professional adults in only a few years.

So let's talk practically.

There are a few things that I was taught about Pavlovian conditioning that I think are worth remembering when you are trying to affect the behavior of your students.

At the beginning, Pavlov discovered that rewards or punishments must be immediate and constant. This is important so that the reward or the punishment may be immediately associated with the behavior you intend to change. Over time, for positive behavior, the reward must be intermittent if you want the student to behave independently of the reward. If you condition your students to do things only for an immediate reward, they may become virtually incapable of performing without rewards. They need to be taught to function independent of rewards--eventually. If you do not have any system of immediate consequences, you will condition them to seek the easiest way.

Of course, human beings are incredibly complex, and the system of rewards and punishments must be appropriate to the complexities of the individuals you're working with, as well as the culture we teach in.

You must learn to understand what they consider to be both positive and negative consequences. Giving a fail to a student, or sending the student to the deans may be considered positive experiences to some students. A spirited classroom debate may be negative. (For most teachers, the memory of a fail or being sent to the deans is incredibly negative, and a classroom debate is positive. What rewarded you or threatened you when you were a student may not necessarily be the same stimuli with your students.) Phone calls home, praise, and criticism are likewise ambiguous under some circumstances.

If you have conditioned the kids into wrong behavior this late in the first semester, all is not lost, but you must look more carefully, and you must be more specific in your system of rewards and punishments (the word "punishment" makes me squirm uncomfortably, but no other works in this case that I can think of). I still think that the phone call home is the best tool to achieve behavioral change, either positively (viz, get them to do something) or negatively (viz, get them to stop doing something).

Be careful of the power you wield, but don't be afraid to use it. By all means, condition them to do good.

Jeff Combe