This weekend I read an interesting article In The New York Times, Students Learn From People They Love, that reminded me the discussion we had in the last class about the relevance of the social relationships in the modification of one’s behavior. As the title suggests, Brooks explain how emotions pervades the process of learning. Something that caught my attention from this article and could contribute to the explanation of why environmental changes are (sometimes) effective in modifying others’ behavior is the fact we can synchronize our brains (brainwaves) with others; this might affect our social behavior. I say sometimes because we tend to use the same rule to measure everyone regardless of their individual differences (their historical background), which is not correct from the perspective of operant learning. So, in line with this idea of synchronization, it is possible that ignoring students’ misbehaviors is effective for some cases not only because it corresponds to a change in the environment and, therefore, a modification in the contingencies of their behavior, but also because students share something (maybe values or interest) with their teachers. If students have a positive relationship with their teachers, they may easily synchronize themselves with their teachers and pay attention and care about things that their teachers value. This synchronization facilitates the co-regulation among the parties of the social relationship. So, when the teacher ignores the student’s misbehavior, the student might behave differently in order to synchronize herself with her teacher and, therefore, maintain a positive relationship with him.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
The effectiveness of reinforcement in learning environments depends on the quality of social relationships
This weekend I read an interesting article In The New York Times, Students Learn From People They Love, that reminded me the discussion we had in the last class about the relevance of the social relationships in the modification of one’s behavior. As the title suggests, Brooks explain how emotions pervades the process of learning. Something that caught my attention from this article and could contribute to the explanation of why environmental changes are (sometimes) effective in modifying others’ behavior is the fact we can synchronize our brains (brainwaves) with others; this might affect our social behavior. I say sometimes because we tend to use the same rule to measure everyone regardless of their individual differences (their historical background), which is not correct from the perspective of operant learning. So, in line with this idea of synchronization, it is possible that ignoring students’ misbehaviors is effective for some cases not only because it corresponds to a change in the environment and, therefore, a modification in the contingencies of their behavior, but also because students share something (maybe values or interest) with their teachers. If students have a positive relationship with their teachers, they may easily synchronize themselves with their teachers and pay attention and care about things that their teachers value. This synchronization facilitates the co-regulation among the parties of the social relationship. So, when the teacher ignores the student’s misbehavior, the student might behave differently in order to synchronize herself with her teacher and, therefore, maintain a positive relationship with him.
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Johana, I think there has been research done which sow that students who feel close to their teachers are more likely to take on their beliefs and values, and thus I think you make in interesting point that perhaps ignoring a behavior signals to the student a misalignment between their values and the teachers values, and if they have a close relationship, they will want to correct that misalignment. It is an interesting idea that speaks to the importance of relationships in the classroom as we spoke about last class.
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