This past week I learned about how habits are created, followed, and broken. I also spent time exploring how habits relate to learning and learning theories such as behaviorism, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning.
Prior to the reading that I did from Charles Duhigg’s book, “The Power of Habit”, I never realized how prominent habits are in our daily lives. I used to think of habits as the things that we consciously choose to adopt, whether good or bad; things like going to the gym every day, or biting your nails. However, habits can also be used by professional football teams to make their reaction time quicker on the field, or by marketing agencies to get customers hooked on a product as part of their cleaning routine. Habits follow what is called the habit loop. They are initiated by a cue, which can be anything from smelling food to waking up in the morning. After the cue is the routine – this is the part that people typically think of when they think of a habit. The routine is the behavior that takes place after a cue occurs, such as going to get a snack, or scrolling through your email on your phone. The final piece of the habit loop is the reward, and this the reason that leads you to perform the habit again and again. The reward could be something like happiness, or a sense of relief. There is another piece of the habit loop that really drives it to take place over and over, and this is the craving. It is the feeling that you NEED the reward, therefore you need the habit loop to take place. The craving is what marketing teams rely on the most when they make their food loop more appetizing, or blow fans to spread the scent of their candles around the venue. The habit loop also closely relates to theories of learning like classical conditioning and behaviorism. The most common example used in classical conditioning is Pavlov’s dog experiment, where dogs learned to associate the sound of a bell with getting food, so they began to salivate whenever they heard the bell sound. They were hearing the cue and automatically anticipating the reward, even if the food wasn’t actually present. Operant conditioning is similar to classical conditioning, except it reinforces a behavior that is not instinctual. In thinking about the classroom, habits, conditioning, and behaviorism play a major role in the daily function of the classroom. Teachers spend a lot of time at the beginning of the school year setting up routines and procedures that students will follow to keep things running smoothly. Eventually, these routines happen without students or teachers even thinking – they become habits. If you were to ask my students why they start setting up their reading spots when they hear a certain song, or why they begin to clean up when another song comes on, they would probably say it’s just what they do. This is something that I am particularly aware of when I have to write plans for a substitute. All of the things that have become habit for me and my students have to be written out so that the cues are still present when I am gone. As a Kindergarten teacher, I spend a lot of time focusing on the habits that my students are building. I pay attention to how they form letters, what reading behaviors they possess, and how to react to the emotions of others. I have to be hyperaware of the cues that are present in school so that I can help them perform routines that will lead to positive rewards and they will not have to work to re-form these habits later.
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