How Education Uses Behaviorism?

Behaviorism techniques have used in education for a long time to encourage behavior that is desirable and to discourage behavior that is not desirable.

So, How Education Uses Behaviorism ?? Behaviorism techniques used in education are contracts, consequence, reinforcement, extinction and behavior modification.

Contracts are highly effective in helping children concentrate on behavior change. Positive behavior should be identified and then the child and teacher (or counselor) should agree on the terms of the contract. A behavioral contract can be used not only in school but also at home and teachers and parents can work together to ensure that the child fulfills the terms of the contract.

Consequences should happen immediately after a particular behavior. Consequences can be positive or negative, material or symbolic, expected or unexpected, or immediate or long term. When a target behavior takes place, consequences occur. Positive reinforcement acts a stimulus to increase the probability of a good behavior while negative reinforcement increases the probability of that negative behavior will not take place. Here negative reinforcement should not be a punishment as this will increase the probability of the bad behavior occurring. Rather negative reinforcement should do away with a consequence that the student does not like. For example, if students score 80 percent or more, they do not have to take the final exam.

Punishment decreases the frequency of an unwanted behavior. In fact, punishment is highly effective in getting rid of unwanted behaviors. For instance, students who fight are immediately sent to the principal or if students do not do their homework, they will have to stay back after school in the detention room.

Extinction is the process where the expected response to a behavior is withheld. For instance, when a child misbehaves, he could be made to sit in the corner all alone and thereby is separated from the group. Here the expected response would be scolding from the parents but is deprived of it.