Vargas Teaching Theory Analysis

Question one

What are your ideas of teaching? How does that compare with or contrast to Vargas’ perspective?

Answer

My ideas of teaching is to have a positive impact on my students in terms of their cognitive domain, affective domain and psychomotor domain. As a professional teacher, I understand that students have different learning styles and that is why my ideas of teaching and method of delivering instructions focuses on student center basically the 4Cs (collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity). I want students to have freedom of expression which gives room to open discussion and creativity. This boost their level of confidence and ability to express themselves out there any time. And finally, my Ideas of teaching is to challenge my students, watch them grow to their full potential, develop together for the betterment of everyone.

Comparing my ideas of teaching with Vargas’ perspective, Vargas (2013) “believes teaching is not just presenting to an empty class” and we both have similar ideas on how teaching should be basically by knowing the students better, work on their behavior in every area and finally she doesn’t think knowing “the subject matter is a major factor on how students feel or perceive change in their attitude” (p. 5). Which I totally I agree with her on this.

Question two

Briefly summarize Skinner’s perspective as it relates to behavior

Answer

Skinner, B.F. believed that the environment is a major determinant of behavior. Skinner’s perspective people have consistent behavior pattern because they have kinds of response tendencies (Vargas, 2013). He made a discover that “most behavior is not the reaction to a stimulus that it depends upon its effect on the immediate environment. Vargas also stated in her book that Skinner believed that “it was the consequences of individual actions and not antecedent stimulus that determined what the animals did. He called the behavior operant” (p. 8).

Question three

What is your interpretation of Behavior Analysis? Support your answer with detail from the text.

Answer

My interpretation of behavior analysis is that it is a natural science that seeks to understand the behavior of individuals. Vargas (2013) explained that “behavior analysis is a discipline based on the science first discovered by B.F. Skinner and the practices of operant conditioning have spread to all areas of behavior including animal training, business, clinical work, health and teaching”. It is the science of behavior of humans and non-humans (p. 9).

Question four

How can the discussion “What is a Cause” (page 21), help the classroom teacher?

Answer

The discussion “what is a cause” will help the classroom teacher to focus on conditions or events on which an event or behavior depend on (Vargas, 2013). It will help teachers to learn and adopt strategies to improve behavior. Also “what is a cause” discussion on p. 21 will help teachers to know more about dependent and independent variables. With this, teachers will know more about the number of problems, assignment completed by the students. It will help them to sense what could be responsible for a behavior to identify functional relations between the behavior.

And finally, the way the next generation behave will determine a country’s future more than any other resources within its borders (Vargas, 2013, p. 3). She believes “teachers are expected to teach more while they receive more difficult students” (p. 4). It is important to understand behavior of these students, it is very important to find the variables responsible for these behaviors. Vargas stated that “Finding the “causes” becomes a search for functional relations among all the contingencies that occur in a setting” (p. 22). This is exactly “what is a cause” discussion explained in details on page 21 of the text which will help the teachers a lot.

Question five

What new information did you find in chapter 2? Please explain.

Answer

The new information found in chapter 2 of the text behavior analysis for effective teaching is the functional relation which is a systematic relationship between dependent and independent variables. Independent variable explained as circular explanation or explanatory fiction which is a statement that has the form of an explanation, but in which the “cause” essentially restates the behavior to be explained while a mentalistics explanation relies on activities of a hypothesized mind to explain behavior (Vargas, 2013, pp. 22-23).

Chapter 2 tries to explain more about Independent variables which buttress more points on behavior which can be circular or mentalistics.

Question six

What did you already know about Pavlov and his theory? After reading about Pavlov in chapter 3, what did you learn about his theory?

Answer

What I knew about Pavlov and his theory was that he was the one who discovered respondent conditioning and he believed that respondent behavior is controlled by a stimulus. But after reading about him from the text, I learnt that Pavlov’s discovery was titled conditional reflexes instead of respondent conditioning (Vargas, 2013). The principle involves respondent behavior which occurs in response to a specific stimulus as part of a reflex. He believes reflexes consist of specific physiological reactions to a specific stimulus (pp. 8-9).

What I learnt about his theory as a professional teacher is to be a good observer and a good researcher because it was due to his ability to research and observe that made him noticed something surprising about his dogs salivating before the food was put into their mouths. This is where his investigation began. As a teacher, we must research and observe what different behaviors of students must do with their learning.

Question seven

Define the Criticism Trap? Have you ever played a role in the criticism trap? Explain.

Answer

Vargas (2013) defined Criticism trap as a situation where criticizing a behavior you dislike or you wish to decrease seems to work because it temporarily decreases or stop the behavior, but criticizing it strengthens the behavior so that it occurs more frequently in the future.

Yes, I had played a role. This happened to me and my wife with our little son at age 2. Anywhere we are going out, he’s always excited to follow us but one thing he does is wearing his shoes or slippers the wrongly. After this, we will criticize him always for wearing his shoes wrongly, then he corrects himself and does it again and again. One day we realized criticizing him to correct him didn’t work for him, so we adopted a method to correct him. Any time he wears his shoes wrongly, we will calmly correct him and once he does that, we tell him “good boy” or “that’s my boy” and since then, he wears his shoes correctly and never wears them wrongly.

What we learnt from the situation above is that we should praise imperfection and reward approximation the behavior we are looking for. And it’s working till now.

Question eight

How can teachers use the information found in chapter 3?

Answer

As a teacher, let’s start from the criticism trap, we shouldn’t criticize ourselves too much because in the long run, you will find yourself criticizing your students. We should learn to use praise frequently and use criticism relatively infrequently especially in the classroom. With these, we won’t have problems with students.

Another information here is punishment. Teachers must know the consequence of punishing a child because punishment has a bad effect on the punisher as well as on the recipients of the treatments (Vargas, 2013, p. 51).

References

Vargas, J.S. (2013). Behavior analysis for effective teaching (2^nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.