Fostering Learning Through Reinforcements & Attitude Change Strategies

Throughout a program of instruction there needs to be continuous or intermittent reinforcements. These reinforcements are what cause the operates (responses) to be learned by the learner. Reinforces can be either rewards (positive) or punishment (negative). However, negative reinforces have the greatest effect when they are discontinued. Reinforces do not always have to be verbal. For example, head nods, a form of gestures communicate positive reinforcement to learners and indicate that you are listening.

In the appendices you can find a guideline for preparing a workplace skills plan.

The guidelines present a six step procedure for the preparation of workplace skills plan. According to Jeff Sacht these six step are :

1. Develop an occupation classification matrix,
2. Populate the occupation classification matrix,
3. Establish the company's skill development, this is an important step which identifying specific skills development needs in the context of the company's strategic business plan.
4. Define education and training required for achieving the strategic skills developments priorities,
5. Define the quality assurance measures for each of the planned education and training activities, in this stage it is required to describe the quality assurance measures that will be used for each of the planned education and training activities.
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Although there are a variety of definitions, most seem to center around the notion that it involves measuring people, issues, objects, etc. along a dimension ranging from positive to negative.

This "measurement" has two components:

• cognitive and
• affective (values & beliefs).

Our beliefs and values are combined with our cognitive component; thus, two components (affective and cognitive) give us our long range or persistent measurements for dealing with the world (Bootzin, 1983).

While a person may have the competency to perform a task, that does not mean he or she will have the desire (attitude) to do so correctly. In other words, competencies give us the ability to perform, while attitudes give us the desire to perform.

Attitudes change with various events in a person's life. These emotional changes also vary in length of time. "Each human emotion mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the challenges of living and reproducing in the cognitive niche. Some challenges are posed by physical things, and the emotions that deal with them, like disgust, fear, and appreciation of natural beauty work in straightforward ways. Others are posed by people. The problem in dealing with people is that people can deal back.

The emotions that evolved in response to other people's emotions, like anger, gratitude, shame, and romantic love, are played on a complicated chessboard, and they spawn the passion and intrigue that misleads the Romantic" Steven Pinker - How the Mind Works (1997) p. 374). There are four main methods used for changing attitudes in performance interventions:

Exposure Effect:

This technique uses simple "experiences" to start the attitude formation by exposing a person to a concept, object, or person a number of times.

And normally this is done through "positive" experiences as "negative" experiences require disgust, pain, or fear. For example, if we want a person to display a smile, then the employee's peers, supervisors, and leaders, need to consistently display real smiles.

Reinforcement:

This concept is based upon "classical conditioning" and "operant conditioning. " Classical conditioning are involuntary reflexes, while operant conditioning is based upon voluntary behavior. For example, we use classical conditioning by making classrooms attractive and non-threatening.

While operant conditional is based upon the premise that people repeat a behavior that has desirable results, for example, when a learner produces a genuine smile, then a compliment, prize, grade, etc. is given.

Persuasive Communication:

The advertisement industry is based upon this technique. For example, Camel cigarettes used information, such as how they use a superior tobacco blend, in combination with "Joe Camel," to show how "cool" they are, to persuade people through both their cognitive and emotional sides to buy their product.

This technique is based upon three main characteristics: source, message, and audience. E. g, the source - how believable and likable you are, the message - content and style, and audience - educational level, other attitudes. To go back to our smile example, we might show pictures of employees using their smiles in the course of their duties. We might also include some real experiences in how their "genuine interest" produces a memorable experience. 4. Changing Viewpoints: Although discussions mainly work through our cognitive side, we have to remember that almost everything we do is based upon our emotions.

Epictetus wrote, "Men are disturbed not by things but by the views which they take of them. " So you might start a discussion by asking how their feeling are linked to their thoughts. A simple example for training customer service might be to ask them what feelings and thoughts produce a smile? How are these feelings and thoughts interconnected? Next, ask them to take the viewpoint that they are happy when working with customers. Ask them what their feelings and thoughts would be. Finally, have them do a role play of working with a customer with this new viewpoint.