Greetings Leo!
I have been silent on the LO list for some time, but I have been
participating through actively listening, reading and thinking. I have
been following the postings on School as a Learning Experience with great
interest.
I am curious - have you tried to formally apply any of the behavioral
principles in your teaching (I am referring to the posts that I wrote 6-12
months ago regarding behavioral psychology and its correspondences with
entropy production, emergences and learning )?
It seems that you are - at least tacitly. Several of your comments shared
your discomfort with the negative reinforcement paradigm that is dominant
in most school settings. Using The Push to move another's behavior may
produce rote learning, but never authentic learning. Only The Pull of
positive reinforcement can do this. Your instinct to shy away from the
use of punishment, stern/harsh language, and other means to push behavior
also indicate to me that you are at least tacitly applying your knowledge
of behavioral principles.
I am also encouraged by your sensitivity to the individuals in the class.
At has made some excellent suggestions, like the one recommending that the
class be parceled into smaller groups with local "teachers". One of the
rules about the effective application of positive reinforcement is that
you can only reinforce an individual contingently - it is not possible to
do this with a group of any size. With a group, the precision necessary
for effective reinforcement is not possible. This makes your job a large
one, especially with as many kids as you have in each class, and as many
classes as you have. However, there are no shortcuts through this.
The appeal of negative reinforcement is that it gets results immediately
(less observable chaos and disorder in the form of disruptive behavior in
the classroom), and it requires much less precision to apply (you can
create an undesired outcome that everyone wants to avoid fairly easily),
but the free energy that maintains this organization comes from outside of
the system (usually from you, the teacher), and spontaneous organization
will never result. This is why authentic learning will never result - the
students are not focused on learning, they are merely trying to
avoid/escape a negative outcome. Stick with negative reinforcement and
immergence is imminent.
At any rate, I just wanted to encourage you - from what I have been
hearing, you are doing just fine, and you are learning alot. Even in your
short time with the class, you will have made an impact.
Happy Holidays,
Jon Krispin
--"Jon Krispin" <jkrispin@prestolitewire.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>