Karen Schmitz’s Updates

Update 1: Skinner, Pavlov, and Conditioning for Decision Making

Decision-making and behavior responses have long been a compelling concept to me. That being said, I believe students to be perhaps more nuanced that dogs hearing bells and associating with food as classical behaviorist Pavlov proved possible. As with skinner, he distilled decision making as such that it is rooted in environmental stimuli and experiences which can dictate one’s action—almost subconsciously. While I believe that “nurture” certainly is integral to one’s decision-making, I am not well-versed in psychological tenets enough to believe “nature” can be completely discounted. In my own teaching career, there are many students from a range of backgrounds, parenting structures, and early-childhood environments with very similar inclinations almost inexplicably. As it pertains to decision-making, I have had success with students with whom I connected with most, regardless of their propensities. As I work through the Skinner theory of conditioning being all-encompassing for purposes of determining or even predicting decision-making and student behaviors, I think his archetype is one which is actually much more fluid than it might be construed at first glance. All in all, students and human beings in general, even if conditioned a certain way, can be re-conditioned given the proper techniques of reward, restriction, and reinforcement. In a sense, conditioning is an ongoing process related to one’s environment and treatment one receives from other humans, whether it be peers, those in the home, teachers, authorities, etc. Teachers and those in the school must make an effort to outweigh negative external stimuli and conditioning to foster student growth and positive behaviors by reinforcing a school environment which is safe, secure, encouraging, and inclusive. Ultimately, that is the role of the teacher in a behaviorist framework.