Um Modelo de Tomada de Decisão (MTD) para ensinar Conceitos e Princípios da Análise do Comportamento para alunos de graduação

Abstract

The instructional design (ID) is an area that brings various contributions to education since it can help instructional developers and teachers to build educational plans and models, describing all the teaching activity organization. Despite ID has its origins in the behaviorism, it is not frequent the intersection between the ID and the use of Behavior Analysis in teaching processes. Given the complexity of teaching Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), what would be called tact or abstract concepts, and the ID contribution, the present study had the objective of evaluate the effects of a Decision Making Model (DMM) about the content choice, the sequencing of objectives, the teaching criteria selection and the instructional procedures for the teaching of basic concepts and principles to licentiate degree students. This DMM is summarized in 13 steps: (1) necessity evaluation and resume analysis; (2) rereading of old texts and new texts about the specific concepts to be tested; (3) hierarchy adjustment of concepts and principles; (4) rewriting the concept and principles analysis; (5) types of learning and adjustment of new teaching objectives; (6) adjustment of learning criteria; (7) adjustment of teaching procedure; (8) adjustment of storyboard; (9) building of teaching activities; (10) test in the evaluation and content platform by experts; (11) adjustment in the activities and platform (Moodle); (12) application of the pilot study (test with students); (13) changes in the work based in the tested students data. As result, still during the analysis of concepts and principles about Behavior Analysis, theoretical controversies and divergences were found in relation to what define them. These theoretical controversies were evidenced according to the Behavior Analysis expert’s evaluation, signaling to the necessity of choosing what must be taught in this field in a systematic and solid way. Another relevant aspect concern to the high number of students that were considered unfit in the School Performance Test (SPT). This data is pertinent because it concerns to students that attend to a major which reading and writing proficiently is a basic prerequisite. The developing of HOTS, mainly in the research, can be compromised by the lack of these skills. Lastly, with the unenforceability of testing the 16 concepts and principles, the present study implemented a pilot model only about the concepts of organism and environment in the Moodle platform with three licentiate degree students. The matching to sample (MTS) and simultaneous discrimination procedures (questions with drag-and-drop) were used in four teaching activities and on-line tests for the teaching of relations involving name (A), definition (B) and example (D). The relations AB and AD were trained in the teaching phase; the relations BA, DA, BD and DB were tested in the arbitrariness activity; the emergency of AB, AD, BA, DA, BD and DB were verified in the conceptual test. Broadly speaking, the data showed that although the participants have reached the learning criteria in all phases, there may be a partial emergency of the taught and tested relations. Despite that, in the post-test evaluation, two participants presented a performance increase in the tests involving questions about Behavior Analysis and all three participants presented a performance growth in all six applied probes. These data suggest that there was some generalization of response, of topography and of antecedent stimulus about questions involving the concepts of organism and environment, although there was no instructional correspondence between what was trained (multiple choices questions) and the question format present in these tests (open questions). Considering the comments that emerged from the implementation of this pilot study, more conclusive and effectives results about this DMM will depend on the application of new research in the area.