Question

Put It in Writing Activity: Imagine that you have just been hired as the principal of a high school where students’ attendance and test performance has been poor and the dropout rate has been high. At a meeting with your teachers, you explain that the principles of classical and operant conditioning could be used to improve the situation.

Write a page describing how these principles could be used to increase students’ class attendance, study skills, and test performance.

Be sure to label all the concepts and principles you use (such as “conditioned stimulus,” “positive reinforcement,” “conditioned response,” “discriminative conditioned stimulus,” “shaping,” and the like)

Answer 1

Classical conditioning and operant conditioning can be applied in a classroom setting to improve student performance. Here are a few examples of how it can be applied.

Operant conditioning can be used to reinforce positive behaviour. The teachers can set goals for the class collectively and offer a reward for completion of the said goal. For instance, say a teacher wants every student in their class to turn in their assignment on time. For students that submit the assignment on the due date, the teacher gives them a Target gift card. The teacher can gradually increase the number of assignments that would warrant a gift card. In this situation, the gift card is the conditioned stimulus and the timely submission of assignments is the conditioned response.

Classical conditioning can be used for increasing class attendance. The teacher can offer a gift card to all students who attend the class regardless of their participation in the class in question. Here again, the conditioned stimuli are the gift card and the conditioned response is attending the class.