Reinforcing Positive Behaviors in School

Reinforcing Positive Behaviors in School Children: Cognitive Psychology Article Review

The philosophy of cognitive psychology stresses the need for teachers to use cooperative learning techniques when teaching students, to foster the student's sense of empowerment over the learned material and to build a community of learning and support in the student's peer group. Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that team students in small groups with different levels of ability, using a variety of student-teaching and learning activities to improve the students' understanding of a subject. Wilson-Jones & Caston, 2004, p.1) Involving the student's peer group rather than teaching in a dictatorial manner creates a more positive and democratic environment within the classroom and creates a class with a sense of a common need to achieve learning objectives.

This sense of self-efficacy is important for all students, but especially older elementary school children poised on the brink of young childhood, when they are still gaining a foothold in simple academic and social skills, but who have not yet entered adolescence. Cognitive psychology stresses that amongst elementary school children in particular, because of the developmental process of children, collective learning experiences are important, to raise the children's sense of social confidence and self-esteem. In children of this age group, peers can act as teachers within groups, as well as reinforcements in the learning process. Parents can also be solicited as teachers, and reinforce lessons learned at school, so they remain part of the process as well and contribute to the collective environment of learning at home.

One positive use of collective learning was chronicled in the December 2004 edition of The Journal of Instructional Psychology. A study entitled "Cooperative Learning and its Effect on African-American Males," investigated how cooperative learning promoted the academic success of elementary African-American males in grades three through six in a rural school in Mississippi. (Wilson-Jones & Caston, 2004, p.1)

The techniques of the study were qualitative in nature. The researchers gathered data through face-to-face interviews with sixteen African-American boys over the course of a three-month period during the childrens'2002-2003 academic school year. This was a very limited sampling, albiet with a very specific focus group. All of students were regular education students between the ages of eight and thireen years old. (Wilson-Jones & Caston, 2004, p.1)

The study asked what influenced this group of student's success and commitment to school? The interviewers concluded that the collective societal influence of school and home was key in fostering the children's desire to learn. While other factors were also influential, such as the relative literacy level of the primary caretakers of the child, overall peer and parental attitude to learning, and the willingness to foster such learning in social as well as individual classroom environments played a key factor in student success. The study was said to reinforce findings of the book Black Children: Their Roots, Culture and Learning Styles (Hale-Benson 1982) that indicated that students of color have unique cognitive and learning styles from those of other cultures.