Early Childhood Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Early Childhood Education - Essay Example This paper outlines that according to Pavlov, â€Å"an unconditioned stimulus elicits and unconditional response†. This means that the fact that the sticker tactic was a planned stimulus and was not unconditional, that is why it failed. Alternatively, we can also assume that the reason verbal reprimand by Regan’s teachers failed because the stimulus was not effective enough. Regan did not respond to the sticker strategy because the stimulus was not durable enough to prove beneficial in this context. Regan is one of those kids, who need to develop the sense of pride within them, and this could only be achieved by involving Pavlov’s behaviorism theory, which says that for conditioning a kid’s behavior, strong and unconditional stimuli is more effective. If the sticker strategy was used in another way, like the teachers should have made various stickers symbolizing properly done, not good behavior, or very bad attitude, Regan might have felt more inclined tow ards the right attitude that would garner her well-done sticker. By allowing her to choose the sticker according to her performance, instead of providing her the same sticker every day might have done the trick. To understand the psychological tendency of children is the keystone towards conditioning their behaviors at an early stage. According to Darla Miller, to replace misbehavior with the desired behavior, the focus should be on what the child should do rather than what the child should not do. By redirecting his or her attention to other activities and emphasizing on their effectiveness may prove beneficial in this regard. Just like in the case of Regan, the pinching habit was minimized only Regan realized that Emily was having a problem at painting, so it became an issue of integral importance for her to help Emily out, and her focus shifted from pinching to painting.