How Can Teachers Use Operant Conditioning? - Ed Psych Insight Ep. 4

by Brett D. Jones, PhD, Professor at Virginia Tech
• Find more info on pages 132+ in the book Essentials of Educational Psychology - tinyurl.com/Ed...
• Website: www.brettdjone...
• Book: Motivating Students by Design
--- Free PDF tinyurl.com/Mo...
--- Print book tinyurl.com/Mo...
• Twitter: / brettdjones
• TH-cam: / brettdjones

[@ChuckvLewis]

How would this work in a high school classroom? Usually instruction time is from bell to bell. rewarding them with using their cell phones for 10 min prior to the bell as a reward, is considered part of classroom instruction?

[@BrettDJones]

Operant conditioning has been used in many ways by high school teachers, both intentionally and unintentionally. Your example is one way that it can be used. Of course, it would only be effective if allowing phone use changed the behavior you wanted to change. I assume you're thinking that it could be used to increase their engagement with class activities: If you pay attention and do your work, you will get to use your phone at the end of the class. If engagement increases, then the phone use would be serving as a positive reinforcement. I'm not saying that teachers should do this, I'm just saying that it is an example of operant conditioning. Ideally, students would be engaged for other reasons, but that's the topic of my other videos. Also, the long-term effects of this strategy would have to be monitored. For example, does giving them 10 minutes of phone use make them feel controlled/manipulated (reducing their perceptions of empowerment) and/or make them angry with the teacher? If so, maybe the cost is not worth the benefit. Good teachers monitor the entire motivational climate (all MUSIC model variables) when considering which strategies to use and how they're working to achieve the desired outcomes. Thanks for asking!

[@ChuckvLewis]

@@BrettDJones WOW thank you for that well thought out answer!

[@ChuckvLewis]

@@BrettDJones Good morning. Cell phones are not allows during instruction time. I'm still navigating through all of the ed. psych courses to get the best fit!