I intend to use motivation in my future career by rewarding those I work with when they successfully complete a task. I will likely reinforce them verbally if it is an adult that I am working with. If I work with children I would be more inclined to reward them with something physical, such as candy. I will use different assessment techniques to assure that patients are completely able to finish tasks I assign them. Also, different assessment techniques will allow them and I know that they will be successful in speaking when I am not present. Using goals and objectives in my career will allow my patients and I to see how well they are progressing. This will also give us a time frame to see if they are on track, behind, or ahead of their goals! Knowing this may encourage them or let them know we need to practice more for them to be successful. When I talk to my patients about their goals I will also talk to them about what they are learning. This way, students can tell me what they have learned and how. Doing so will allow learner-centered learning to take place. I can use the overall method of Backward Design to frame what the objectives and goals for patients are and what I want them to be able to accomplish by the end of therapy. Then, I will be able to decide how to assess them based on those goals and when to reward them for completing a goal or objective!

I have created an example lesson plan (below) of Backward Design for a fourth grade class learning the states, their capitals, a little of geography, and the 13 colonies. First, I created the goals for students. Then, I listed what I wanted students to be able to understand and questions students should be able to answer by the end of the unit. Next, I created assessments and activities that would show whether or not students understood and were learning the desired content. Finally, I created a learning plan as to how I want to go about having students learn the content that will ultimately allow them to be able to accomplish the desired goals. This is how Backward Design is created: by setting goals, deciding how to assess that students have reached those goals, and then coming up with a lesson plan to teach the curriculum. Using Backward Design to create my lesson plan was helpful because I knew what the final goal was at the beginning, therefore I could work backwards to make sure that every activity done and assessment created will help reach the final goals. I really enjoyed this aspect and found it helpful in knowing that everything I was doing would serve a purpose in reaching the final goals!

The behaviorist perspective of learning sees learners as passive and simply responding to stimuli. The cognitive perspective of learning says that learner’s process, store, and retrieve information, which they will then use later. Behaviorists also believe that the instructor shapes the way a child acts through reinforcement. This is different from Cognitivists who believe that the instructor provides the environment for children to learn and develop.

It is important to apply both of these perspectives of learning to instruction, especially as a future speech therapist, because individuals both with their therapy and in everyday life can use these theories. By reinforcing a behavior, which goes with the behaviorist theory, you can have a patient increase the chance of becoming successful in reaching their goals. By using the cognitive theory, patients can learn information on how to help them articulate words better, store that information, and then retrieve it if they are struggling.

As for limitations of these approaches, the cognitive approach is limiting because it takes the human brain and reduces it to the idea that it simply processes things as memory and attention. It limits the brain, and person, to small parts and does not look at it as a whole unit working together. Humans are more complex than the theory gives credit for. The behaviorist approach does the opposite of the cognitive approach. It looks at humans as, for a lack of a better word, needy. A person needs rewards or punishment to be successful. It focuses very highly on nurturing the person to make them successful in learning.

Personally, I reside more with the behaviorist perspective of learning. I often find that people do well if they have rewards or punishments. Sometimes, simply processing information and storing it may not be enough. Learners may need to complete extra assignments to remember the information. Having points for completing the assignment usually means that students will be more likely to do the extra work. This way, they will be able to retrieve the information easier.

I can see myself applying the things I have learned in this module in a few different ways. First, I can reward my patients when they have done something successfully, even if this is with a simple congratulations or good job. Also, what I have learned has allowed me to understand that people do process and learn things differently and I need to take that into consideration when I am working with patients. Some people may be able to store things simply and easily while others may need more nurturing. I will have to evaluate my patient and decide how to work with them best based on their needs.