Aside from the "Did you Know" video, my other big take-away/ah-ha moment/what I'm still grappling with is how to reconcile my background in special education, specifically the heavy behaviorist approach with what I'm learning now about Piagetian/Vgyotskyian theories of learning. If our ideal educational environment is one in which learns are self-motivated and internally driven to learn and complete tasks, how does behavior modification fit in? For 3 months, I worked as a paraprofessional in a sub-separate PDD ABA classroom, which is a straight behaviorist approach to education. Reinforces are strictly external (although a few of our students were able to communicate through limited speech, gestures, or use of a communication book, and could choose what they wanted their reinforcer to be) and the whole focus and emphasis is on modifying and learning concrete behaviors, which can then, ideally, be generalized into additional settings and locations.
In my job as a learning specialist, a large portion of my day is spent working with students with social/emotional impairments, and subsequently modifying behaviors as outlined in their IEPs. How, then, can I reconcile these very divergent points of view, and really meet the needs of my students? Now what!?
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