Behaviourism and Special Populations
Autism:
"Students with autism have atypical social and language development and engage in stereotypical behaviours. They often exhibit aggressive behavior toward themselves and others. Many times children with autism have difficulty with change. Although autism is not curable, behavioural modification has been shown to be an effective teaching methodology. Behavioural theory says that behaviours can be shaped using rewards and punishment. Consistently rewarding a student for exhibiting a desired behaviour increases the likelihood that the behavior will be exhibited again. Punishment of undesired behaviour has the same potential to reduce unwanted behavior."
(Dowd, M. 2014)
For more resources on Autism and learning follow this link:
Positive Behaviour Support:
"Positive Behavior Supports (PBS) is a research-based, function-based method for eliminating unwanted behaviors and replacing them with pro-social skills. PBS employs some of the tenets of behaviorism in that students are taught to observe how to use appropriate classroom behaviors. Students are taught to listen for a verbal stimuli such as, "Put your toys away." The teacher models putting toys away and the students practice. When a student does not follow the model, he receives a response from the teacher to try again. Students are taught to judge their own success or failure in responding to teacher requests."
(Dowd, M. 2014)
For more resources on Positive Behaviour Supports follow this link:
Challenging Behaviours:
"Behavioural strategies for addressing challenging behaviours in the classroom include: shaping, fading, prompting and modeling. One behavioural approach for dealing with challenging behaviours is called the ABC. The "A" refers to identifying the antecedent to the behaviour--what happened right before a behaviour occurred. The "B" refers to behaviour and identifying, in detail, what behaviour followed the antecedent. The "C" refers to consequence, or what happened when the behaviour occurred. Using the ABC approach to behaviour management helps a teacher know what causes a behaviour (antecedent or stimuli) and what consequence(s), or response, reinforced the behaviour."
(Dowd, M. 2014)