Running Header: BEHAVIORISM CASE STUDY 1 EDCI 531 Case Study Assignment Example #1, Behaviorism Monica Giannobile Purdue University BEHAVIORISM CASE STUDY 2 1 Description 2 ABC Learning is an after-school tutoring program for students in grades 3-8. It runs from 3 4-8 p.m. and is held in the community rooms of four libraries across Austin, Texas. It’s free for 4 parents to enroll their students in the program and the tutoring services are provided by 5 volunteers from the community, along with a program staff consisting of a full-time director and 6 three part-time program coordinators. The director and coordinators are trained in education, but 7 volunteers are not required to have an education background. The program supports its 8 volunteers by providing an onboarding session during which they receive resources about basic 9 tutoring practices. Additionally, a trained program specialist is onsite during each tutoring 10 session to provide support as needed. 11 Each enrolled student receives one hour of tutoring from the same volunteer each week 12 during a school semester. At any given time during program hours, there are 4-8 tutoring 13 sessions being held simultaneously within each library community room. At the outset of each 14 semester, the tutor and student agree to a set of behavior rules for participating in the tutoring 15 session, such as being respectful of others and agreeing to pay attention. They also jointly 16 develop a set of learning objectives to guide their work throughout the semester. 17 The program is experiencing a few problems. Despite the rules established at the outset, 18 some students are not engaged in the tutoring sessions. For example, they forget to bring their 19 homework to the session, don’t engage with their tutor’s questions or, in the worst cases, are 20 disruptive of others in the tutoring area. Despite the initial training and onsite support available 21 to them, tutors are frequently ill-equipped to manage such student issues. It’s often hard for them 22 to recall the appropriate strategy in the moment as they’re working with students. Also, the 23 onsite program coordinator is often distracted due to the need to manage so many volunteers and BEHAVIORISM CASE STUDY 3 24 simultaneously. Additionally, in many cases, tutors and learners set goals for the semester that 25 they are unsuccessful in meeting. Potential causes of this include rarely referring to their 26 objectives from the beginning of the semester or the tutor not being knowledgeable enough in 27 how to guide students toward their objectives. For example, a student may set out to improve his 28 or her grade in social studies. When that doesn’t occur despite the student’s efforts in the tutoring 29 sessions, it results in discouragement for both the student and the tutor. 30 Reflective Questions 31 • How might behavioral principles be applied in this situation to strengthen desirable 32 behavior and weaken undesirable behavior for students? For tutors? 33 • How might behavioral principles be applied in this situation to help both students and 34 learners acquire new behaviors? 35 • How might behavioral principles be used to maintain desired behavior once it’s 36 established? 37 • From a behavioral perspective, what are the potential negative impacts of punishment? 38 Are any of those negative impacts present in this example? 39 Potential Solutions 40 In this situation, behavioral tactics for strengthening or maintaining desired behavior are 41 minimal for both students and volunteers. For students, reinforcement could be used to 42 strengthen and maintain adherence to the tutoring behavior rules which, from a behavioral 43 perspective, could also be called a group contingency (Driscoll, 57). 44 One way to strengthen student adherence to the group contingency could be for the 45 program coordinators to establish a token economy at the beginning of each year (Driscoll, 46 57). For the first half of the semester, students could earn tokens from their tutors regularly as BEHAVIORISM CASE STUDY 4 47 a reward for adherence. At the halfway point, they’d be able to trade tokens for a prize from a 48 toy chest filled with items of interest to the students like stickers, books or small toys. This 49 would allow students to receive positive reinforcement continuously, which is necessary to 50 strengthen a response (Driscoll, 49). While continuous reinforcement is needed to establish a 51 behavior, it is not needed to maintain that behavior (Driscoll, 49). To this end, for the second 52 half of the semester, the program coordinator could announce an adjustment to the token 53 system. Instead of earning tokens continuously, the students would only be eligible to earn 54 one token at the end of each tutoring session. That token could be used as admission to a 55 pizza party planned for the end of the semester. In this way, the coordinator would be 56 maintaining the behavior using what Driscoll (2005) describes as the behavioral principles of 57 a fixed interval reinforcement schedule (50) and a response-cost reinforcement strategy (43). 58 For volunteers who need to learn how to apply tutoring best practices, a potential solution 59 that makes use of behavioral principles might be to split the initial onboarding training into a 60 series of modules that are delivered at the rate of one per week over the first half of the 61 semester. Volunteers would need to put the principles from each module into place during 62 their tutoring sessions each week and then relay their experience to the program coordinator, 63 who could either validate or correct the volunteer, then provide praise and award him or her 64 permission to move to the next week’s module. At the end of the semester, the volunteers 65 could receive a certificate of training completion. The praise and certificate would be 66 example of positive reinforcement (Driscoll, 37) of the desired behavior. This behavior might 67 be maintained during the second half of the semester by allowing the tutor to set 68 collaborative goals with the student and then providing an addition to the training certificate 69 each time the tutor is able to help a student meet the goals they established together. BEHAVIORISM CASE STUDY 5 References Driscoll, M.P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education. Running Header: SCHEMA THEORY CASE STUDY 1 EDCI 531 Case Study Assignment Example #2, Schema Theory Monica Giannobile Purdue University SCHEMA THEORY CASE STUDY 2 1 Description 2 ABC Learning is an after-school tutoring program for students in grades 3-8. It runs from 3 4-8 p.m. and is held in the community rooms of four libraries across Austin, Texas. It’s free for 4 parents to enroll their students in the program and the tutoring services are provided by 5 volunteers from the community, along with a program staff consisting of a full-time director and 6 three part-time program coordinators. The director and coordinators are trained in education, but 7 volunteers are not required to have an education background. The program supports its 8 volunteers by providing an onboarding session during which they receive resources about basic 9 tutoring practices. Additionally, a trained program specialist is onsite during each tutoring 10 session to provide support as needed. 11 The program is experiencing a few problems. One key problem is that, in many cases, 12 tutors and learners set goals for the semester that they are unsuccessful in meeting. One reason 13 for this is that, in some cases, the tutor is not knowledgeable enough about either education 14 practices or a content area. As such, they struggle to guide students toward their objectives. For 15 example, one sixth-grade student expressed to a tutor that she wanted to set a goal of 16 understanding the human reproductive process as outlined in her sexual education course. The 17 tutor checked with the trained program specialist to make sure this was an appropriate topic, and 18 was advised to proceed independently. The tutor then asked the student to share her course 19 textbook, which included a number of diagrams showing the various components of human 20 sexual organs. Based on this – and on personal memories of learning about sexual reproduction 21 through novels – the tutor decided on a course of action involving completing biology diagrams 22 from the student’s textbook and reading excerpts from a fictional young adult novel about dating. 23 Despite completing these activities, at the end of the semester, the student remained confused BEHAVIORISM CASE STUDY 3 24 about the reproductive process and did not improve her grades in her sexual education course at 25 school. 26 Reflective Questions 27 • In the scenario described, does the tutor have enough information to ascertain the 28 learner’s mental model of sexual reproduction? If not, what actions can the tutor take to 29 determine the student’s mental model? 30 • Human sexual reproduction is an uncomfortable topic of discussion for most people. Is it 31 likely that this impacted the mental model of the student? If so, why and what are some 32 ways to mitigate the impacts? 33 • How might the tutor go about developing a pedagogical or conceptual model that’s 34 specific to the student and her goals? 35 • Why do you think working with the textbook diagrams and young adult novel excerpts 36 failed to help the student achieve her goals? 37 Potential Solutions 38 In this situation, the program coordinator and tutor could have worked jointly to develop 39 a plan of action, rather than leaving the tutor to determine a plan of action independently.