Do you think motivation is completely on the teacher or does it depend on the student? If so, what is more effective, positive or negative reinforcement?
Motivation is an internal drive, some people do not need to be pushed because they have it on their own, yet others need to be pressed. If people need to be pushed I feel like it is jointly on their family members, bosses, friends, and teachers to help give them that boost.
If a teacher wants to give their students a lift to cooperate in class, a behavioral intervention is one of the most ethical and easiest ways to go about it. I first want to make clear the differences between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment, because there seems to be some confusion. Both types of reinforcement strengthen behavior and punishment weakens it. Positive reinforcement is when a stimulus is added in order to increase behavior. It is a common misconception to think of negative reinforcement as a "bad" type of reinforcement; negative does not refer to quality. The key word for negative reinforcement is "escape." When an adverse stimulus is presented, a person engages in the desired behavior in order to escape the undesired stimulus. A general example of negative reinforcement is when your car beeps until you put your seat-belt on. You put your seat belt on in order to escape the beeping. Nagging, complaining, and whining are verbal forms.
Punishment is the process of providing consequences for a behavior that decrease its frequency. Yelling is a type of punishment, more specifically called "reprimand." Punishment has many other forms, one is "response cost" this is when someone has to give up something as a form of punishment, a common example is a parking ticket (you have to give money). Another type of punishment is “overcorrection” this is when you have a person fix what they have done wrong and also repeatedly engage in the correct behavior on top of that. The last two types are "time out", and “physical punishment” which I think are both self-explanatory.
If a teacher wants to go the behaviorist route to motivate students the type of reinforcement or punishment used depends on the situation. If students are talking amongst themselves there are many types of ways to handle it using behaviorist techniques. You could go the punishment route by yelling (reprimand) or giving a detention (response cost). You could also go the negative reinforcement route by having an annoying sound be played every time the students act up. As soon as they are quiet, turn the sound off. After repeated pairings, in theory, they will no longer display that behavior. In order to use positive reinforcement in this situation you would have to wait until they display desirable behavior (being quiet) in order to thank them for shutting up (not in those words, of course). Every form has its place and with any situation you could devise plan behavior interventions and then choose which fits the situation the best.
Question: Behavior analysis is one tool to get students to cooperate in a classroom. Yet, does cooperating and doing what educational society wants of you necessarily mean that you are motivationally driven?
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