Educational Implications Of Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning

Psychology for Teaching Guy R. Lefrancois Classical conditioning, especially of emotional reactions, occurs in all schools, virtually at all times, regardless of the other kinds oflearning going on at the same time. And it is largely through these unconscious processes that students come to dislike schools, subjects, teachers, and related stimuli, or to likethem.

To illustrate, a school subject, assuming that it is new to the student, is a neutral stimulus that evokes little emotional response in the beginning. But the teacher, theclassroom, or some other distinctive stimulus in the student’s immediate environment that is repeatedly associated with the subject may serve as an unconditioned stimulus. Thisunconditioned stimulus might be associated with pleasant responses (a comfortable desk, a friendly teacher) or with more negative reactions (a cold, hard desk; a cold, hard teacher with agrating voice and squeaking chalk). Following successive pairings of the subject (mathematics, for instance) with this distinctive unconditioned stimulus (teacher’s unpleasant voice, and soon), the emotions (attitudes) associated with the unconditioned stimulus may become classically conditioned to the subject. Mathematics will now be associated with the negativeresponses previously linked with the unconditioned stimulus. Put another way, students learn attitudes toward subjects, learning, school, and so on largely as a function of classicalconditioning. Thus, it is entirely possible to teach students mathematics while at the same time teaching them to dislike mathematics. Whereas learning mathematics is likely to involvecognitive processes (and perhaps some form of conditioning as well, particularly if repetitive skills are involved), learning to dislike mathematics may involve mainly classical conditioning.