Virtuous Cycle of Higher Grades

I mentioned in my last post that Bjork presents ways to make knowledge transference an integrated part of learning. He also alludes to conditioning as one of the things that can get in the way of learning.

In psychology, one of the basic principles of learning is shaping. Using shaping, you can get a bear to ride a bike (not anymore, but it used to be done all the time). How shaping works is you provide a reinforcement (reward) for behaviors that are close to the behavior you want. Once that behavior becomes commonplace, you change the criterion for when the reinforcement is given to something that is closer to the behavior you want. This cycle continues until the behavior you are looking for is there. In our example, you give the bear treats when it goes near the bike. Once the bear associates the bike with treats, you only give them a treat when they touch the bike. Then you change the criterion to picking the bike up, and on, and on… Pretty soon (or maybe it takes a long time) you have a bear riding a bike.

What does this have to do with teaching?

Behavioral scientists have shown that all organisms (including us) respond to conditioning techniques. Shaping is a conditioning technique that can happen with or without intent. Whether we want to or not, we find ourselves in a shaping cycle with our students every time we deal with an assessment. You set an assessment to provide a learning opportunity for your students, and their performance on that assessment comes back to shape your behavior as a teacher. If your students do well on their assessment, there is positive reinforcement provided to them for achieving the learning outcomes you set (they get good grades). As greater numbers of your students achieve your desired assessment outcomes, you receive positive reinforcement through feedback from students, feedback from colleagues etc that says you are doing a great job. In many institutions, student feedback is made public and plays a direct role in promotions and tenure. That is a powerful reinforcer. All of us want to do well.

As a result of this powerful reinforcement cycle, your teaching and assessments end up being tailored to what the students excel at, and they excel at the assessments you set so they can do well and you (and they( receive positive reinforcements). What we end up doing is maximizing performance, not maximizing learning. In order to maximize learning, difficulties (desirable difficulties as Bjork refers to them) must be introduced so that students can learn rather than perform.

Our whole education system is designed to maximize performance during a short time period (assignment) or at a single moment in time (exam) rather than promote learning.