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… An Experimental Life Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” For most of my adult life I have … We don’t know the path, but have to base our journey on what we do know or have intuitions about. We don’t know how certain adventures or their absence will affect us and the only way to find out is to try them and see…or not. The outcomes … fullest, keeping my eyes open to both intended and unintended effects in this grand experiment. And then redesign and try again. … Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” For …
… because we learn not only what to do, but also what doesn’t work, or what doesn’t work as effectively. It often is said that there is no substitute for experience, and experience is what we gain with trial-and-error learning. Rule-governed learning is valuable because it saves time – we benefit from the … a rule has come about in the absence of establishing a history of other behavior on the way to a solution. When a solution fails, there is no previous history of responses to resurge, so the development of a new solution may be slower to occur. In …
… for performance, in this case, the material learned over the course of the academic year. Establishing these goals raises two related questions: Are teachers using what the science of learning has shown to be the most effective teaching … shown in the interior blocks: A skilled teacher and an academically skilled student are a dynamite combination - a no brainer. Even an academically skilled student in the hands of a less-skilled teacher probably will have a good outcome, … students in the school or system, they will either bring down the average score to the point that the school or system fails to meet its target average score, or, if the achieving children are sufficient in number, the average score will be …
… Semper Fi “Always faithful” is a message not only for members of the United States Marines but also for anyone involved in changing behavior. … are most effective when they immediately follow the targeted response. When this happens, the reinforcement procedure is said to have good fidelity or integrity. A simple experiment with pigeons illustrates the point. When reinforcers are … The behavior of the elementary school student and the employee are both determined by the fidelity with which the available rewards are made contingent on targeted behavior, behavior that has been selected because of its potential value to …
… Fair Words Butter No Parsnips I ran across this quaint old expression recently in an 1839 novel by British writer Frances Trollope (the mother of Victorian novelist Anthony … for you trivia fans). Though it was my first encounter with the expression, its meaning was clear: you can say whatever fair words you like, but without action those words are for naught. It is an old-fashioned way of saying “talking the talk, …
… skill sets can be learned and are almost always exhibited by effective leaders. Really effective problem solvers do certain things that put them into a better position to succeed regardless of the challenges they encounter. Introduction “What … don’t really have an effective solution, you might even worsen a problem. We call that impulsivity. Conversely, if you fail to try anything at all because you don’t have a solution, the problem will almost certainly worsen and expand to additional issues. Inaction rarely fixes things. Effective problem solving is a balance of taking …
… objectives). Odiorne was asked by a client to evaluate the performance of his marketing vice president, who the president said was not making the grade and nothing he had tried with him had worked. Odiorne then asked the president what he wanted … the president’s responses on 3x5 cards. Odiorne went into the vice president's office, and the vice president immediately said he knew he was in trouble, but nothing he did satisfied the president. When he asked if Odiorne knew what the president wanted, he said he did, pulled out the cards, looked at them and asked “Where is the men’s room?” as he dropped them on the vice …
… and Chief Operating Officer of M&T Bank, discusses how his organization moved away from a focus on the performance appraisal process to one of building a system for managing people performance. By implementing a behavioral approach to the … and Chief Operating Officer of M&T Bank, discusses how his organization moved away from a focus on the performance appraisal process to one of building a system for managing people performance. By implementing a behavioral approach to the …
… a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door ." Although that was not really what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, this common expression survives today and catches his meaning. But is it really true? We all seem to want better … get beyond the basics. I wasn’t alone, apparently, because there were thousands of jokes at the time about our general failure as a culture to learn the ins and outs of programming the VCR. Learn enough to make a one-time recording and then … can the teacher of the new technology target the appropriate level. Assessing before intervening also provides a baseline against which learning and performance changes can be assessed. Introduce change in small steps . Here the lesson is that …
… Just a Kiss Or is it? What makes things the same and what makes them different? When I say “a kiss” or “she kissed me,” certain images are conjured up. What is conjured, however, may vary hugely. A kiss given by a grandparent to grandchild is quite … because a worker was negligent it calls for different remediation than if the accident occurred because of equipment failure or a manufacturing flaw in the product or material that was the source of the accident. Given these differences, it … in trying to determine how to manage the behavior. Attempts to manage behavior at a topographical level seem doomed to failure. It becomes a matter of “one solution for all problems,” which just can’t work out satisfactorily for either the …