Re: behaviorism and attendance

[Paul Brandon]

As a behaviorist, I'm struck by how much of this thread is concerned with how to coerce/compel attendance vs. a functional analysis of attendance requirements.

We (in these United States) require attendance in elementary and secondary schools because an educated populace is regarded as a public benefit, so students are required to learn whether they want to or not. This is in turn enforced by public tuition funding which is usually contingent upon student attendance.

We're approaching this situation in postsecondary education, but I'm not sure that this is a good trend (extending universal public education by another two/four years).

As Jim Clark pointed out, we can approach the control of the behavior of attending classes from two directions:

1. We can impose an arbitrary contingency such as points towards a grade or pop quizzes (these may have other functions as well). This assumes that either:
a. Attendance has some value in and of itself, or
b. Attendance is a necessary condition for learning and thus
its compulsion is justified.

2. We can rely on natural contingencies -- those inherent in the behavior itself and not requiring someone's planned intervention. Again, there are two categories:
a. Making attending reinforcing in its own right
(lectures as 'dog-and-pony shows' -- see "PowerPoint").
b. Assuming that attendance has or will acquire conditioned reinforcing
properties through its association with better class performance
and grades.
or through a general conditioned reinforcing value of learning
(acquiring new behavior has become a generalized conditioned
reinforcer because it has been paired with many other reinforcers.

Personally, I go with the second function.
Since I use a PSI unit/master system, I don't lecture anyway.

On a personal note (ancient history) I did once do well in a class without attending.
Graduate statistics!
We were using the Hays text (first edition, I believe).
Bill Hays was on the faculty, but not teaching the course because of department politics. I found that the lectures were just confusing me and taught myself the material from the text, showing up only to take tests and get them back.
Hopefully this is not a typical situation for _this_ list!

--
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *

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