Behaviorism1

=Curriculum Exemplifying Behaviorist Instructional Features =

[|Cornerstone Curriculum]
  The Cornerstone Curriculum uses Behaviorism to create meaningful math instruction. Their curriculum is based on the theories of B. F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov. Cornerstone’s math program, “Making Math Meaningful”, uses two approaches to implement their behaviorist instruction. The two approaches are “The Look-Say System” and “Drill and Practice”. These approaches portray the students as passive learners just as the Behaviorist theory does.

__The Look-Say System__- This approach is simple. A child sees a math fact and repeats it over and over until he/she passively memorizes the fact. This does not necessarily teach a child to think mathematically, but most math curriculums use this technique to help students memorize math facts. This system uses drill and practice to teach instruction.

__Drill and Practice__- This approach is a technique based on the Look-Say System. Once the student is taught a specific skill, there are many practice problems to complete to help the student memorize the skill. John Saxon introduced Incremental Instruction. This is associated with Drill and Practice by breaking math skills into pieces and teaching them individually. Then, students passively practice each skill over and over until they are memorized. The amount of math problems are eventually decreased to introduced another skill. Incremental Instruction simply spreads Drill and Practice out over a longer period of time to allow the student to memorize a specific math skill. This method is also used to train animals.

 Cornerstone Curriculum understands that some people view their methods as treating children like animals. However, they approach their curriculum from a Biblical perspective as well. They want to treat students as individual creations of a personal God. Therefore, it is important for students to understand the process of math and think critically about those processes. To commit these processes to memory and to help students understand each step, drill and practice is often necessary. If a student understands the complete process, then the amount of drill and practice should be reduced. Sometimes it takes a great amount of drill and practice if a student does not understand the reasoning behind a math process.

 These approaches show Behaviorist instructional features in multiple ways. The practice of many repetitions to commit skills to memory is related to the Behaviorist perspective. Behaviorism is based on the principle that behavior can be explained without considering internal mental states or consciousness. When committing math facts to memory, a student automatically knows the answer. The student does not have to think about or consider what the answer may be. This is a stimulus-response because the student automatically can give an answer from memory.