Comments on: Blog Challenge: How can counter-conditioning be used to reduce test anxiety?

By: teacherrogers

teacherrogers — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 14:52:00 +0000

Dear Dr. Ormrod,
I truly appreciate your informative response. As I mentioned in my email, your textbook on human learning unveiled many secrets to life. Beforehand, I thought I was a constructivist; now I realize that my teaching philosophy is more of myriad of best practices. For example, I use the behaviorist’s measurable objectives (SMART goals), the sociocultural cooperative learning, as well as the cognitivist’s self-regulated learning. In fact, I need to rewrite my teaching philosophy on this blog to better reflect my new understanding of human learning. At this point, I’m not sure which learning theory dominates my core beliefs, as I just started my first year of graduate studies in instructional design.

By: J. Ormrod

J. Ormrod — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:26:09 +0000

Generalizing a bit from recent research findings, I think that behaviorist techniques (including counterconditioning) are most productive when combined with techniques based on more cognitivist approaches. For example, a strict classical conditioning approach would involve exposing a student to test-like situations (stimuli) in conjunction with other, non-anxiety-arousing stimuli (e.g., a generally relaxing environment or, better still, a learning environment that has consistently been associated with success rather than failure). But it also helps to teach students the knowledge and skills they need to be successful on tests—not only testwiseness skills (such training has only a small effect) but also knowledge/skills in the domain being assessed (math, reading, whatever). Cognitivist approaches provide more guidance about how to do such things.

By: teacherrogers

teacherrogers — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:53:38 +0000

Hi Martin! How are you? I’m glad you want to give my challenge a try. I look forward to your response.

By: Martin Wininger

Martin Wininger — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:49:11 +0000

Interesting idea. I’ll have to give this a little thought and get back to you…