Although reading
about theories is quite dry it is interesting how between the dryness I catch
myself drifting away from the reading and connecting the theories to my life or
a friends life. So, although it is dry it is undoubtedly interesting.
I
found the theory on operant conditioning to be the most interesting concept for
me. It is also possibly one of the more relevant to one of my passions of
coaching. Operant conditioning is the idea of a response to an action or
behavior will encourage or discourage the behavior from happening again. The
two tools for doing so is reinforcement or punishment. There are two types of
reinforcement, positive or negative. Positive reinforcement is giving praise or
an award for the good behavior. Negative reinforcement is rewarding the
behavior by taking away someone perceived as negative. Punishment can be to
take away or give something perceived as negative to discipline for the poor
behavior or action done.
I
find this very pertinent to my work because I am not only teaching correct
actions in coaching but trying to find other ways to engrain this good actions
into my athletes brains. Of course I praise when someone does something well
and let people know when something is not done well but I think it would be
interesting to try and take it to another level. Have a rewards system in place
without making my athletes feel like they are in kindergarten again. I have
thought about offering something to people who have mastered a skill or
performed a personal best. The only problem is I am coaching college-aged
adults, what is it I could entice them with that they could just go get
themselves like candy?
I
guess what peaks my curiosity the most about this topic is how I can relate
this possibly valuable tool to the athletes I work with. I especially wonder
how I can implement this without the use of punishment but focusing only on reinforcement.
This is an interesting idea Karis, applying operant conditioning to a real life scenario. What do you coach? I wonder if some other type of award would work (besides candy), like a gift card? Although that might end up getting too expensive. It's a good idea though, using this type of conditioning for sports. In regards to your comment about not using punishment, I am curious about this too. I expect there are some parents out there who try not to use punishment on their children and I wonder how effective it is. I can imagine it would be difficult.
ReplyDeleteI coach Pole Vault for Western Washington University and for Bellingham Parks and Rec. It is really interesting the thought of using no punishment when raising children. I don't have any children but I used to raise Guide Dogs for the Blind and when I fish started there were corrections or punishments and now they raise the dog 100% positive reinforcement. It's pretty cool!
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