Case Study: Was It Destiny To Move Westward

The two lessons that I picked from the Smithsonian History Explorer are called “Was It Destiny to Move West?” and “Is the President the Most Important Person in Government?” (Smithsonian). Both lessons adhere to the C3 Framework standard promoted by the website. Based on this framework, the Behaviorism concept of teaching is applied to both lessons. According to Surgenor, “The concept of reinforcement (of something positive following an event to increase its likelihood of occurring again) is evident at all educational levels, from the smile of approval in early years to the awarding of credits and degrees at the higher levels (Jordan, Carlile, & Stack, 2008)” (Surgenor 2). Since the C3 Framework prides itself in asking critical questions to
Now specifically looking at the behaviorist approach to teaching as it can relate to the lesson of Western Migration. According to the “behaviorist approaches to teaching” the material must be broken up into small units (Surgenor 5). For the Western Migration lesson, the topic is broken into three questions. Question 1 asked, “What factors influenced westward expansion?”; the second question asked “What new technologies influenced westward expansion?” and the third, “What conflicts arose from the westward expansion?” (Smithsonian). Since there are three different questions, it gives the educator “the opportunity to give frequent feedbacks: after each question has been analyzed and answered by the students (Surgenor 5). In a similar way, the President lesson also features three different questions where the positive reinforcement can be used. The three questions are “What does the president do?”, “What do leaders do?” and “Can the president solve every problem?” (Smithsonian). Again, the frequent reinforcement of positive behavior can be applied in this lesson after each question is answered (Surgenor