In the operant model, you may recall, a behavior being learned (the “operant”) increases in frequency or likelihood because performing it makes a reinforcement available. The description in that chapter focused on behavioral learning, but the same operant model can be transformed into an account of motivation. The most common version of the behavioral perspective on motivation is the theory of operant conditioning associated with B. Operant conditioning as a way of motivating That is where behaviorist approaches to motivation can help. It is important to invest the extra time and effort for such students, but while a teacher is doing so, it is also important for her to guide and influence the students’ behavior in constructive directions. In these cases discerning the student’s inner motivations may take more time and effort. Consider a student who is still learning English, or who belongs to a cultural community that uses patterns of conversation that are unfamiliar to the teacher, or who has a disability that limits the student’s general language skill. In other cases, the problem may not be limited time as much as communication difficulties with a student. If a student asks a lot of questions during discussions, for example, is he or she curious about the material itself, or just wanting to look intelligent in front of classmates and the teacher? In a class with many students and a busy agenda, there may not be a lot of time for a teacher to decide between these possibilities. But the multiple demands of teaching can limit the time needed to determine what the behaviors mean. Certainly teachers see plenty of student behaviors-signs of motivation of some sort. Sometimes the circumstances of teaching limit teachers’ opportunities to distinguish between inner motivation and outward behavior. Before getting to them, however, we encourage you to consider the advantages of a behaviorist perspective on motivation. We will explain some of these later in this chapter. How can a student do something without some sort of feeling or thought to make the action happen? As we will explain, this very question has led to alternative models of motivation that are based on cognitive rather than behaviorist theories of learning.
The two are considered the same, or nearly so.Įquating the inner and the outward might seem to violate common sense. When it comes to motivation, this perspective means minimizing or even ignoring the distinction between the inner drive or energy of students, and the outward behaviors that express the drive or energy. In its most thorough-going form, behaviorism focuses almost completely on what can be directly seen or heard about a person’s behavior, and has relatively few comments about what may lie behind (or “underneath” or “inside”) the behavior. This is the perspective of behaviorism, which is a way to think about the learning process. Sometimes it is useful to think of motivation not as something “inside” a student driving the student’s behavior, but as equivalent to the student’s outward behaviors.
0 kommentar(er)
