Learning Log Chapter 10

What:

• Social Cognitivism is a mix between Behaviorism and Cognitivism.

• Learning is an internal process that may or may not lead to a behavior change.

• Reinforcement has a whole knew role in Social cognitivism.

• In social cog vicarious reinforcement is introduced into a teacher’s tool box of behavior management. Vicarious reinforcement is where one child’s behavior will increase when another child is reinforced for the same behavior. An example of this is proximity praise.

• Modeling is another important aspect of Social Cog

  • Example: Bobo doll experiment. In this experiment the Bobo doll was played with by an adult while children observed. One group of children had an adult model violent behavior when this group of children was introduced to the Bobo doll they were very violent with the doll and got even more violent then the model. A second group of children observed an adult playing nicely with the doll and did not get overly violent with the doll.

  • People follow models. They especially can learn academic skills, aggression, and interpersonal behaviors.

• Another important part of Social cog is Self regulation

  • When we behave in a particular way we observe how our environment reacts—reinforcing some behaviors and punishing others.

  • The following type of techniques arise when self regulating.

  • Goal setting

  • Conferencing

  • Self instruction

  • Self evaluation

  • Self contingency

So What: Knowing that people’s peers can effect what students think and how they behave can be used to a teacher’s advantage, especially when it comes to classroom management. One type of social management technique is a social contract where a group is rewarded or punished based upon individual behavior. But it’s also important to note that when children are expecting a reward and they don’t get it it takes on the form of a punishment. When we promise something we need to follow through unless we change the conditions later on.

Modeling can be used a technique to help students achieve more in their studies or behavior better. An observer can acquire new behaviors; increase or lessen certain behavior based upon the reinforcement a model received. Students may also display more frequent behavior after seeing someone else not get punished for it.

Self regulation is another very important tool for people coming out of social cog. To help children with this we need to remember that students need to be cognitively able to achieve goals, they need to motivated, students expectations need to be realistic, and students need high efficacy to make things happen.

Now What: Knowing what I do about social cognitivism there are a number of things I need to implement in my classroom. Knowing that models are important in children’s behaviors, I need to choose good models to expose children too. It would be especially good to expose students to successful models from diverse cultural backgrounds and to models who have become successful despite disabilities.

I also need to give students challenging tasks and communicate confidence in students’ abilities to achieve that task. I may sometimes need to adjust task difficulty to students’ existing self –efficacy levels then gradually increase the challenge. Show students how students of similar ability have, with reasonable effort succeeded on a task

It’s important that children do not compare them selves with others it’s better that they compare themselves to themselves. It’s better to Minimize student awareness of classmate’s performance levels.

Self regulation is a very important principal to teach in the classroom. It can be promoted by encouraging students to set their own goals and monitor their own progress. Giving children a chance to learn on their own can be rewarding. Giving students assignments where they have a lot of room to choose their own topic, use of time etc. Show students how to use checklists etc. Being a good model of self regulation and asking students to evaluate their own performance.