Learning, Knowledge and Human Development MOOC’s Updates

Metacognition on Behavior: A Mindful Reaction to Stimuli

Sir B.F. Skinner menioned that if the cause of behavior is not known, it is attributed to "free will." If the cause of behavior is known, it cannot be attributed to anything else. So, when students behave in an unacceptable way, it is either students are consciouly misbehaving or unconsciously misbehaving.

My primary students are homogenous in terms of behavior and every day is like warfare. I have to keep my eyes on my students at the same time teach, check, do administrative works. But, I find it interesting what causes them to misbehave. So I have set consequences on misbehavior. When a certain student has his/her first warning for misbehaving, I just call his/her name and tell him/her what he/she should do. For second warning, I come near to ceratin students and tell them what they should do. For last warning, I call the students' name or come near to them, tell them what they should do and obeserve students until I somehow come up to an understanding what causes them to misbehave.

The common cause of students' misbehavior in my class is being bumped accidentally or intentionally. When a student get bumped by a classmate, they start to pick a fight and I have observed that they have the same reaction even if bumping was by accident. So, I thought that my students have a generalization on getting bumped accidentally or intentionally.

Imagine if students includes in their thinking the consequence before acting from a stimuli or reflects on the cause of his/her reaction from the stimuli, as teachers, it will be easier to manage a class at the same time there is development of independence on what's acceptable and not accpetable actions.

  • Erika Rodriguez