From a behavioral view of learning, I would define mastery as
successfully answering questions on an exam. A behaviorist would not be as
interested in what is actually going on inside the student’s head as she would
be in the student’s behavior, i.e. the answers he wrote down. The test would be
seen as a stimulus, and the student’s given answers as the response.
From a social cognitive view of learning, I would define mastery in the same way as from a
behavioral viewpoint. However, I would be more aware of what learning might be
going on in the student’s mind that is not immediately reflected in the exam
scores. Students miss math questions for a variety of reasons. I feel that a
strict behaviorist would be interested with only whether the student had the
right or wrong answer, while a cognitivist might be more interested in why the student answered like he did. A
cognitivist might realize that even though a student’s answer was wrong, he had
made progress in learning to solve the problem.
Students in my classes are juniors and seniors, just as in my
case study. For a majority of the students, grades are an important secondary reinforcer.
Although grades in my classes are based solely on what a student demonstrates
that he understands, not on his behavior, students are quickly conditioned to
learn that certain behaviors will lead to non-mastery of the material, and
hence bad grades. So, although I am not directly administering the punishment,
there is a presentation punishment
going on. The student’s unfocused, off-task behavior decreases when he sees
that it is leading to an undesired bad grade. Of course, this only works if the
student cares about his grade.
I don’t understand how self-efficacy is related to the
students’ misbehavior. I don’t doubt that most students think they have the
ability to behave appropriately. They just don’t want to.
As for self-regulation, maybe I could encourage the
disruptive students to do a little self-monitoring. Maybe they just aren’t
aware of how disruptive they are being to others.
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