Praxis II Exam - Education of Young Child: Behavior Management

Aggression
Preschoolers typically demonstrate some aggressive behavior, which tends to peak around age 4. Instrumental Aggression is one basic type: younger preschoolers frequently shout, hit, or kick others to get concrete objects they want. Middle preschoolers are more likely to exhibit Hostile Aggression, i.e. getting even for wrongs or injuries they feel others have done to them. Hostile Aggression occurs in two subtypes: Overt and Relational. Overt Aggression involves physically harming others or threatening to do so, while Relational Aggression involves emotional/social harm, e.g. rejecting/excluding another from a group of friends or spreading malicious rumors about another. Young boys are more likely to engage in Overt Aggression, while young girls are more likely to engage in Relational Aggression. These gender preferences in aggressive behaviors tend to remain the same at all ages if aggression exists. While most young children eventually phase out aggression as they learn other ways of resolving social conflicts, some persist in verbally and/or physically aggressive behavior, causing problems.

Minimizing Aggressive Behavior
While it is normal for preschoolers to exhibit some physical and verbal aggression until they have learned more mature ways of expressing feelings, getting what they want, and settling disputes, there are things adults can do to influence them such that aggressive behavior does not develop into a predominant method of social interaction. Adults set examples for children, and children learn by observing and imitating those examples. Therefore, parents, caregivers, and teachers should not model verbally and/or physically aggressive behaviors such as calling others names, yelling at others, or punishing others’ undesirable behaviors using physical force. Not only should adults avoid disciplining children physically, they should also avoid physically and/or verbally violent interactions with other adults. Social learning theorist Albert Bandura proved that children who viewed violent videos imitated what they observed and engaged in more aggressive behavior, so adults should also prevent young children’s exposure to violent TV programming and video games.

Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice literally means prejudging, i.e. judging someone/something negatively before/without knowing anything about who/what one is judging. Prejudice gives rise to discrimination in that prejudiced ideas motivate unfair, i.e. discriminatory, behaviors toward others. Psychologist Albert Bandura, who developed social learning theory, identified the process whereby children acquire attitudes and behaviors they observe in others, which he named vicarious learning. Children commonly pick up beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors from adults around them, without applying any critical thinking to these. They are often not even aware of the attitudes and beliefs they assume in this way. Thus, they will engage in prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviors without thinking through what they are doing. Though such behavior is not justified, children simply assume it is because of adults’ examples. Thus, adults must carefully inspect their own beliefs and attitudes, as well as what they do and say, because these are what children will imitate.

Prejudicial Thinking
Prejudicial thinking about certain groups of people is uninformed and/or misinformed thinking. It is typically based on fear of the unknown due to lack of knowledge and/or fear due to erroneous beliefs about people. Thus, the best way to dispel prejudice is to provide information where there was none and/or to correct wrong information. When unfamiliar groups become more familiar and when wrong assumptions are corrected, people’s misconceptions are replaced by reality and they become less afraid. For example, children having no experience with people from other racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups are likely to fear these people (as are many adults). Adults can help young children by furnishing them with many opportunities—not just isolated ones—to interact with people from diverse cultural and socioeconomic milieus. For children to experience true learning, which will supersede negative, uninformed first impressions, they must have multiple such social opportunities. School, outside classes, sports, and camp are activities affording such opportunities.

Bullying
Children who are bullied by others are victims of prejudicial thinking and discriminatory actions. Common negative effects of bullying include rage, feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. Left untreated, children with these feelings can develop suicidal ideations and actions as they grow older if bullying persists. When young, children have the additional problem of not yet knowing how to manage their negative feelings caused by others’ aggression or even how to express them. Adults can give them much-needed help by assisting them in articulating their emotions openly but nonviolently. Adults must realize that young children, especially those who have experienced others’ violent treatment, may not recognize that anger can be expressed in any ways other than violent ones. Based on their experience, children may internalize assumptions that they can only act out their anger through self-destructive behaviors. When adults consistently model positive, proactive ways of discussing negative emotions, children observe that more constructive behaviors are possible and learn to adopt these as more effective coping strategies.

Sex/Gender-Role Development
Various theories of development, such as psychoanalytic, behaviorist, cognitive, and social learning, have differing views of why and how children develop sexual/gender identities. To address these differences, psychologists have endeavored to produce some general conclusions about young children’s self-concepts of gender. They find that during preschool ages, children gradually develop concepts of what being a girl or a boy in their culture means. These concepts become clearly articulated and shape their behaviors. Between the ages of 2 and 6, children are in the process of putting together the pieces of these gender concepts. Developing sex-appropriate behaviors and developing categories of gender roles both appear to be influenced by a combination and interaction of biological and sociological variables. Psychologists additionally conclude that children perform some mental matching process enabling them to isolate features they share in common with others, and that young children’s abilities to observe, imitate, and categorize influence their later concepts of sex-appropriate behaviors. By ages 5–6, most children clearly identify with one sex or the other.

Combating Cultural Stereotypes and Discrimination
When children experience stereotyping of and discrimination against their cultural group, adults can counter these negative reflections on the group by correcting erroneous opinions they have heard. By giving children plenty of examples of positive accomplishments by members of their group, they convey cultural pride, affording children a sense of empowerment. Adults should consistently model positive, constructive, and no-violent methods of addressing prejudice for children. If prejudice proves ongoing, caregivers and teachers must assertively advocate on behalf of children and their cultures to shut down prejudicial sources. If they hear young children furthering cultural stereotypes they have absorbed, adults should immediately correct their statements and behaviors, explaining why certain words and actions harm others and are unacceptable. Extended discussions with young children are important for putting prejudice into perspective and context to help them understand it. Adults can also apply behavioral methods, such as associating prejudicial behaviors with consequences (e.g. losing a privilege or gaining work) and providing related learning activities to prevent repeated instances.

Using Historical Contexts, Correction, and Real-Life Examples to Address Prejudicial Attitudes
Because many prejudicial attitudes exist in our society on both individualized and institutionalized levels, it is all too easy for children to absorb and emulate them. When children who have been victims of prejudice learn they were attacked not as individuals, but members of a group, this does not eliminate negative effects, but can help them see it in a different perspective. Adults can place prejudice and discrimination in their historical contexts so children realize they are not lone victims but part of a larger group. Correcting false beliefs, as in Albert Ellis’s Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy and other forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy, can be applied by adults’ pointing out the irrational, flawed thinking involved and supplying examples contradicting that thinking. For example, if children have been influenced to think certain groups are less intelligent or lazier than others, adults can show them examples of many members of those groups with outstanding achievements in society. They can do this through book/video biographies, personal anecdotes, and introductions to living people.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Behavior
Genetic and environmental influence a young child’s risk of displaying antisocial behaviors. Research into factors influencing early childhood behavior identifies both genetic variables and environmental ones, like corporal punishment, affecting young children’s propensities toward antisocial behavior. Children experiencing more corporal punishment display greater behavior problems; children at greater genetic risk also do. However, boys at higher genetic risk for behavior problems who also experience more corporal punishment exhibit the most antisocial behavior. Therefore, both genetic risk factors and corporal punishment significantly predict preschoolers’ antisocial behavior. Additionally, the nature-nurture interaction of genetic risk factors and environmental punishment is statistically significant for young boys but not young girls. Such evidence shows that environmental learning is not wholly responsible for antisocial behavior: genetic variables predispose some young children to antisocial behaviors more than others.

Behaviorist Learning Theories
Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with dogs proved that when a stimulus evoking a reflexive response—drooling at the taste of meat—was repeatedly paired with an unrelated/“neutral” stimulus—a bell ringing—dogs came to associate the unrelated stimulus with the original response and drooled on hearing the bell without tasting meat. This proved generalizable to humans. Edward L. Thorndike’s experiments with cats also applied to humans. Thorndike introduced the Law of Effect: we are more likely to repeat behaviors receiving desirable consequences. This set the stage for B. F. Skinner’s later work. John B. Watson maintained that because inner states cannot be observed or measured, only observable outer behaviors should be used in psychology and learning. Skinner experimented with operant conditioning, wherein behaviors are trained and shaped through manipulating their antecedents/preceding stimuli and consequences/following stimuli. He expanded behaviorism into a comprehensive theory, including detailed rules for teaching new behaviors and modifying behavior (behavior modification).

Positive and Negative Reinforcement and Positive and Negative Punishment
In behaviorism, reinforcement means strengthening the probability a behavior will be repeated. Skinner used the terms positive vs. negative to mean introducing vs. removing, not good vs. bad. Therefore, positive reinforcement is introducing something rewarding immediately after a behavior. When a child’s behavior is rewarded, s/he will repeat it to obtain repeated rewards: Johnny gets a treat or praise for putting away his toys; he will do it again. Negative reinforcement is rewarding by removing something unwanted: Johnny dislikes noisy crowds at preschool. One day he wakes up earlier, is taken to preschool earlier, finds it quieter and less crowded; he will want to get up and arrive earlier again. Positive punishment is introducing an aversive consequence for a behavior: Johnny refuses to put toys away; his parents then make him clean up the entire room; he is less likely to repeat the refusal. Negative punishment is removing a desirable stimulus: Johnny refuses to put away toys; his parents prohibit watching TV; he is less likely to keep refusing.

Behavioral techniques include positive reinforcement, introducing rewarding stimuli for emitting desired behaviors; negative reinforcement, removing unwanted stimuli for emitting desired behaviors; positive punishment, introducing aversive stimuli for unwanted behaviors; and negative punishment, removing desired stimuli for unwanted behaviors. Research has found positive reinforcement the most powerful of all these. One reason is that people are highly motivated by rewards. Another is that all behaviors meet needs; punishment suppresses certain behaviors, but then other behaviors must emerge to fill the same need. If a child misbehaves to get attention, even scolding/other punishment can constitute attention. But if rewarded for more appropriate behavior to get attention, like asking an available adult or peer for interaction, the child meets the attention need while replacing a maladaptive behavior with an adaptive one. Another reason is punishment’s limitations: preschoolers may stop misbehaving after one teacher’s punishment, but not with another teacher; punishment not applied consistently loses its effect. Also, punishment can cause resentment, anger, defiance, or fearfulness in young children.