Most of the times where I can observe reinforcers in Mr. Dube’s class comes during his lectures. Mr. Dube will often ask questions to the class and call on someone to respond. Additionally, he will have students complete worksheets, and then will ask for volunteers to give their answers. For example, this week they were working on verbs, and he had students write their own sentences and share them with the class. Mr. Dube does a great job of responding to students who participate in class. He gives positive reinforcement to students who participate, regardless of whether or not they are right. When someone answers a question incorrectly, he always thanks them for participating and gently corrects them. When people are right, he is good about not being overly enthusiastic while still validating them for being right. I think that both of these approaches encourage his students to participate more. They don’t feel as much pressure to be correct since he makes sure not to make a big deal out of that, but they also still know that he values them participating. I would say that I lean more towards the cognitive approach when it comes to student learning. It seems like observing outward behaviour can be useful, but not at all enough to explain what is going on in a student’s brain. It seems like cognitive learning is more flexible and it seems easier to take into account things like cultural factors with this approach.

One random story from last week kind of relates to the idea of reinforcers in the classroom. On Monday, a student who regularly skips class was forced by an administrator to be in class for the first time in weeks. He almost immediately asked to go to the nurse to get his medication, and Mr. Dube reluctantly gave him permission, but sent me along with him to make sure the student returned. Even with me there, though, the student took off running as we left the nurse’s office, disappeared around a corner, and left the building out a side door. When I came back alone, Mr. Dube explained that he had a feeling that the student would bolt, but didn’t think he could reject his request to go to the nurse without a real reason. Now, though, Mr. Dube said he could take away the students’ privileges to leave the classroom. This seems like a kind of negative reinforcement.