Carey Bassett EDAT 6115

      No one appreciates fundamental understanding of behavioral and social theories of learning more than a struggling Pre-K teacher! That is where I found myself my second year of teaching. I wish I had read this particular chapter in 2014 when I was searching for behavior interventions for several students. Frustration and ineffectiveness were my middle name.      An understanding of reinforcements and punishments would have helped me in my most challenging year of teaching. My biggest weakness, after years of experience and reflection, was giving up too soon on a reinforcement and not recognizing that removal of the student from the environment was actually a reinforcement. If I had only known how extinction bursts worked, I would have been very successful in overcoming behavioral challenges. As soon as the extinction burst would begin, I would discontinue the reinforcement because the behaviors were so detrimental to the learning environment ...

       This week's reading led me to reflect on how my early undergraduate education still shapes my current teaching practices. Piaget, Vygotsky, and even Bronfenbrenner bare influence on many aspects of daily practices in education. Piaget's work influences reliance on continuums of learning progression while Vygotsky's theories stress the importance of meeting students in their current ability, and Bronfenbrenner focuses on all the various influences on child development.     Because of Piaget's work about predictable stages of child development, many educators including myself rely upon or create our own continuums of progress within a standard or skill. It is evident that students follow a continuum at different rates but in almost invariably the same order. This understanding helps educators such as myself predict the progression we need to guide students toward and relatively where the student stands currently in relation to mastery. Vygotsy's w...