Journal 2:

One of the concepts presented in the chapter was reinforcement. I believe that both positive and
negative reinforcement can contribute to a success of an individual and in this case, students. As
Driscoll stated that behavior is more likely to reoccur if it has been rewarded, or reinforced. I
believe that is true; when I was a big sister, I worked with a fourth grade student who was behind
in his math skills. Something about math scared him; by working with him throughout the school
year, we got his math skills to a higher level. We set goals on what we wanted to achieve
throughout the school year. It took patience and lots of reinforcement to get him to learn how to
multiply and divide. Eventually throughout learning his multiplication tables, I would give him
verbal positive reinforcement and when we hit a milestone, I would reward him with an item like
a new reading book or school supplies. I found that the positive reinforcement worked well with
him because he was getting attention from me and that eventually he was going to get a prize. I
feel like I used both fixed interval schedules and fixed ratio schedules with the student that I was
working with because he got a verbal reinforcement each time he did something write, but once
he hit one of the established goals, he got a prize. Reading this chapter, gave me an explanation
as to what I was doing in the past, I had no idea that these techniques were established and how
they could implement behavior like reinforcement, shaping and chaining. From this I found that
students need to be provided with conditioned reinforcement and both positive and negative
reinforcement to get students to succeed. Furthermore, I believe that punishment can help alter
students behavior, but eventually learned helpessness can occur which can hinder a students
success because they believe they are not good enough or cant do the things that other students
can do. I think punishment can be rarely used, only in certain circumstances, but I dont believe
that students should always be punished in front of their classmates because I feel like that can
contribute to embarrassment that could lead to learned helpnessess, as well. Along with
achieving student success, I think shaping and chaining can go along ways to helping students
succeed and reinforcement can be provided and give students the confidence to participate and
do better in school. http://www.ldonline.org/article/6030/ I chose this website because I liked
how in detail it talks about reinforcement and provides examples as well. It also introduces new
concepts that relate to positive and negative reinforcement and provides how to do reinforcement
and you can modify behavior.
Dolezal, D.N., Weber, K.P., Evavold, J.J., Wylie, J., & McLaughlin, T.F. (2007). The effects of a
reinforcement package for on-task and reading behavior with at-risk and middle school students
with disabilities. Child and Family Behavior Therapy, 29(2), 9-25.

I chose the article The Effects of a Reinforcement Package for On-Task and Reading Behavior
with At-Risk and Middle School Students with Disabilities. This article looks at how
reinforcement was used with several middle school students who were performing below average
in reading. It was found that when reinforcement was used that students reading were higher
than when there was no reinforcement involved. I believe this article is a great article show how
reinforcement plays a role in student success, but the research only studied several students, I
think that studying only a small number of students is not sufficient enough to generalize
findings to a small population. Also, I think other academic subjects should be tried out because
the results of reinforcement can vary by academic subject.