Attention Phase

The Phases of Social Learning

Teachers as Models

Effective Models

Effective models may be real people, such as teachers, classmates, entertainment ce­lebrities, political leaders, or great athletes, but they don't have to be. Fictional characters appearing in television shows, stories, novels, or cartoons can also be effective models. As a matter of fact, much of the pioneering research on observational learning investigated the effects of the behavior of cartoon charac­ters on the behavior of children. Individuals tend to imitate models who are perceived as competent, powerful, and attractive, as well as those whose behavior is relevant to the observer. Models with whom learners identify can be particularly effective, but to a large extent, a model's effectiveness depends on the degree to which the learner is motivated to learn.

Students learn much in the classroom by observing how their teachers behave, and students whose teachers have been trained in modeling techniques perform better academically than students whose teachers have not received such training. By observing teachers, students learn not only academic skills, such as how to solve algebraic equations or how to pronounce words in a foreign language, but also many important nonacademic behaviors. Students may learn interpersonal skills by observing how teachers interact with students and with other teachers. They may also adopt teachers' attitudes toward a variety of topics, ranging from those related to education and schooling to those extending well be­yond the classroom. Students may even imitate mannerisms their teachers exhibit.

Good teachers are not only effective models; they also constantly keep in mind that their behavior, both intentional and unintentional, can profoundly affect what students learn. Above all, good teachers know how to motivate students to learn. A teacher's responsibility goes beyond just presenting lessons; the teacher is a model for students and can have a profound effect on students' attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.

According to social learning theory, learning by observation occurs in four sequen­tial phases: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Learners must first pay attention to the model's behavior, remember the behavior, practice it, and be motivated to perform. A breakdown in any one of the phases prevents the learner from performing the behavior.

Obviously, learners cannot learn from a model unless they pay attention to what the model is doing. The attention phase consists of two parts: getting the learner's attention and maintaining it.

In most classrooms students may be attending to many different stimuli at any given moment. They may be attending to things they are doing at their desks, to distracting noises in the hall, to what they plan to do after school, or to other stu­dents. To get students' attention, provide a stimulus that is more noticeable than the other stimuli in the classroom.

There is no simple definition of an attention-getting stimulus. Various stimuli may signal to pay attention, depending on the circumstances. If you are teaching a class in which students engage in lots of individual or group activities, such as a science laboratory, a kindergarten, or a gym class, you should establish prearranged signals for paying attention, such as flicking the overhead lights, playing a chord on a piano, or ringing a bell. On the other hand, if you are instructing an entire class of students, you can get their attention simply by saying, "Now I'm going to show you how to...."

One effective way to get students' attention is to use vicarious reinforcement. By praising students who are paying attention, other students who are not attending may be motivated to do so. Although this technique works particularly well with younger students, it may not work with older ones. Older students may regard teacher praise for paying attention as childish and taunt students who pay attention for being "teachers' pets."

To maintain students' attention, you need to provide them with sufficient in­centive to attend. There is no simple way to describe what constitutes a sufficient incentive. Different students are motivated by different incentives. Ideally, students should be motivated to learn for the sake of learning, and for some students this is the case. Other students, however, require other incentives, such as being told that the next examination will cover the material about to be presented.

Retention Phase

During the retention phase, learners encode the observed behavior in memory using verbal cues, mental images, or a combination of both. People can improve their memories by intentionally trying to encode the newly observed behavior, rehearsing the behavior mentally, or actually acting out the behavior.

You will help students learn better if you emphasize important aspects of the behavior you are demonstrating. In the keyboarding class example described earlier, the teacher should highlight the important steps in typing capital letters. It is easier to highlight behaviors comprised primarily of motor skills, such as typing capital letters, than behaviors comprised primarily of cognitive skills, such as solving a long division problem. When demonstrating behaviors consisting of cognitive skills, it is especially important to highlight the critical components. For example, in teaching students to divide 75 into 1,436, solve the problem on the chalkboard and talk through the steps involved. Your verbalization of the steps provides students with a model they can later imitate.

Reproduction Phase

During the reproduction phase, learners actually attempt to perform the behavior. If the behavior is relatively complex, the reproduction phase may last for some time, as learners attempt to produce more and more refined performances. Help students during the reproduction phase by providing corrective feedback. Draw students' at­tention to components of the behavior they are performing incorrectly and demon­strate the correct performance.

Suppose a student who is learning to type capital letters has difficulty in find­ing the "home" keys (a-s-d-f on the left hand, and j-k-1 on the right hand) after pressing the shift key. The keyboarding teacher should provide corrective feedback by pointing out that when pressing the shift key, only the little finger should be removed from its home key. All of the other fingers should remain on their respec­tive home keys.

Give corrective feedback as early as possible to reduce the chances that stu­dents will learn incorrect behaviors. Assume that a student who is attempting to divide 1,436 by 75 correctly decides that 75 goes into 143 once, but then writes 75 under 36 instead of under 43. The student's answer will be incorrect. An effective teacher would not only point out that the student's answer is incorrect, but more importantly, strive to find out how the student arrived at the wrong answer and demonstrate the correct procedure for solving the problem.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29