McKenna Williams is a reflective teacher. She has noticed an increasing number of students not completing their independent seatwork in language and spelling. She expects students to take responsibility for working independently while she works with small reading groups. Now she wonders whether she should start allowing students to work together in pairs or trios rather than continuing to require them to work quietly on an individual basis. Her common sense tells her that she should continue to require quiet individual work. Her colleague Cal Sitton disagrees. He allows his students to work in pairs.
McKenna respects her colleague Cal and knows he has more experience teaching than she does. But she doesn't want to mirror his teaching without reason or evidence that his strategies are more effective. How might she research this question in her own classroom and produce evidence to support one approach over another?
Suggested Response: McKenna might conduct her own action research in her classroom. Action research involves systematic observations or tests of methods to improve teaching and learning. Her question might be to find out whether students learn more when they work in pairs or when they work independently. It might be to find out whether more students complete the assignments.
For her observations or tests, McKenna could try pairing students for seatwork. She needs to give students guidelines and procedures to follow. She can compare the results of students' work over a period of time. She might compare the number of completed assignments she had with her old approach to the number of completed assignments with the new approach. She might also compare grades on specific tasks such as spelling tests, writing assignments, or worksheets. She would need to set up her study to answer her questions about effectiveness of the two approaches. Is more learning taking place when students work in pairs?
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______is defined as the removal of specific amounts of positive reinforcement contingent upon the occurrence of a particular behavior.
a. exclusion b. contingent observation c. response cost d. extinction
As Jane reads about General Custer's last stand, she pictures him as he must have looked, with long blonde hair and a full mustache, riding tall and proud on the open plain just before he was attacked. Considering what psychologists have learned about the effectiveness of visual imagery, we can predict that Jane will:
A) Get confused by the vividness of her visual image. B) Remember the information better than she might otherwise. C) Store the information in her working memory rather than in her long-term memory. D) Remember her image without any loss of detail for a year or longer.
In each of the following situations, a person is learning through either reinforcement or punishment. Classify each situation as involving one of these four consequences: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, presentation punishment, or removal punishment. Then explain why you chose the answer you did.
a. Because Danielle fails her math class, she is taken off the school dance squad. b. Joe always does his homework assignments as soon as he gets them so he won't have to worry about them anymore. c. Lisa and Fran are giggling together in the back of the classroom. Their teacher scowls at them. They are embarrassed and shut up. d. A teacher finds that by yelling at her students when they get too rowdy, they will settle down and be quiet for a while. (Focus on what is happening to the teacher.)
A variable that measures the effect that manipulating another variable has is known as:
A. A predictor variable B. An independent variable C. A dependent variable D. A confounding variable