The process of improving performance all at once is shaping

Many things which we learn to do are performed badly on the first attempt. Over a period of time and with practice, we come, if all goes well, to a level of performance more acceptable to ourselves and/or to external judges of our performance. The process of moving from unskilled to skilled performance may involve behaviour shaping. Shaping involves the use of successive approximations to the desired standard.

Shaping takes place in our skill in driving a car (the unshaped beginning behaviour leads some teachers to choose a very large open area such as a vacant parking lot for the first lesson), printing letters between the lines, production of mathematical proofs, or writing books (many skilled authors claim to be continually learning and improving their style).

A swimming teacher had the students stand in the water at the shallow end of the pool. The first thing the class was asked to do was to cup some water in their hands and bring the water to their faces. That action was the first approximation to swimming although it doesn't look at all like swimming. The next approximation was to have the students bend at the waist and take their faces to the water. Then the students bent a little further so the front of their upper bodies dipped into the water. A face-down float was the next thing to practice. Then students floated with arms and legs extended. This was followed by kicking the legs and stroking with the arms. At this point students were able to propel themselves through the water. Further shaping resulted in refining the stroke and learning to turn the head to get a breath of air.

Starting from an action which did not look much like swimming, students progressed through a series of actions which came closer and closer to actual swimming. That is the nature of behaviour shaping. At each step along the way, the teacher gave verbal reinforcement to encourage the students. Of course, in the later stages of the learning, the natural reinforcer of actually being able to swim became much more important than any verbal encouragement.

The way in which a baby learns to walk can be analyzed in behavioural terms as an example of behaviour shaping even though the parents may be totally unaware of behaviour shaping principles. A baby moves through a long succession of behaviours which lead to the ability to walk. At each stage or approximation, parents get excited and no doubt reinforce the child's new skills such as rolling over or sitting up. Once the child is able to do these things reliably, parents are no longer thrilled by them and so they do not comment on them or reinforce those behaviours. Parents seem to have built-in detectors for spotting new things which their children can do. When baby starts trying to stand, the parents pay attention. When baby moves about hanging onto furniture, there is more excitement. Eventually, baby puts a foot out as if stepping away from furniture. That usually catches parents' attention. When the baby actually takes a step or two without support, parents provide a lot of verbal reinforcement. Although the thrill wears off for the parents and they stop enthusing over every step, the baby has acquired a sort of power in being able to locomote. Thus the baby is naturally reinforced by exercising the newly developed skill of walking to move about and explore the environment.

Some guidelines for behaviour shaping are:

1. Identify approximations - this is often surprisingly difficult for an expert to do, but it is important. If you can't recognize approximations to the desired behaviour, you will have a hard time knowing what student behaviour to reinforce.
2. Start where success can occur - many students fail to learn because they can't get started. The initial expectations are too high so the students can never get any reinforcement.
3. Reinforce success/ignore failure - the point of behaviour shaping is to build a behaviour. This can usually be done most effectively by concentrating on what is right about the performance so far.
4. Gradually raise criterion for success - we don't want students to get locked into low levels of performance. The point is not just to make them feel good about what they are doing, but to move them to high levels of competence. How quickly more may be demanded of students will likely vary widely from student to student.
5. Withdraw external reinforcement - let natural reinforcers take over. We don't want students to become permanently dependent on external reinforcement. Most things worth doing provide positive experiences when they are done well. The sooner students can experience the natural reinforcers, the better.

Common errors in attempted behaviour shaping are:

1. Reinforcing behaviour which you do not wish to strengthen
2. Reinforcing a retrograde step
3. Failing to reinforce an improvement

The major error made in behaviour shaping in schools is making the steps too large from one skill level to the next.

Some errors are commonly made in identifying instances of behaviour shaping:

• not all learning involves behaviour shaping. Shaping is only one of many ways of learning. Some things we learn just by being told about them or watching someone else do them. Shaping always involves a progression from an unskilled state to a skilled state through a series of approximations.
• not all procedures which involve steps involve behaviour shaping. Following a checklist involves steps but may have nothing to do with behaviour shaping. For instance, learning to bake a cake by following a recipe involves a series of steps, but no or very little behaviour shaping. In shaping the behaviour is slowly changing from one form to another. In following a recipe or checklist we are just putting a series of somewhat unrelated behaviours together because they produce some desired outcome. Each behaviour remains unchanged.
• although it is not strictly speaking an error, 'more of the same' makes a poor example of behaviour shaping. For instance, a teacher may want a particular student to spend more time working on assigned tasks and less time talking. The teacher could watch the child and reinforce every time the child spent more time on task than before. This is a sort of shaping, but the behaviour doesn't change in any very visible way except to become more extended in time. Try to find stronger examples of shaping where the behaviour changes in form as the shaping progresses, as in the swimming example.
• notice that in shaping it is the behaviour that changes, not the reinforcement. Some people mistakenly believe that in shaping the reinforcement used must be constantly changing. This is almost never necessary. To qualify as behaviour shaping, it is necessary that what a person does is changing to become more like some desired terminal behaviour.
• the order in which a skill is performed may not be the right order in which to learn it. It is tempting to decide that because when I do something I first do A, then B, then ... that if I want to teach someone else to do the same thing I should first teach that person to do A, then B, then ... At times this may be appropriate, but often it is not. Most people do not begin to learn to fly an airplane by learning to start the engine. Most in-plane flight training begins in the air. An instructor gets the plane going and into the air. Then the student takes over and learns to control the plane. The student begins by learning how to keep the plane in straight and level flight. Then turning, climbing and descending will be learned. At some point the student will have to learn to start the plane, to taxi it and to take off, but just because they are done first in flying, they need not be taught first.

A school example of the same thing comes from learning to write. A teacher may believe that before you write something you should make an outline. However, no matter how firmly the teacher believed it, the teacher would not teach outlining before teaching youngsters how to form letters and words. It wouldn't make sense. In fact, young children can't understand outlining because the only way they can think of writing is by starting at the beginning and continuing until they get to the end. Who needs an outline for that? Later they will recognize that there are other ways to set out their ideas. Then outlining may be of some value. So even though students may eventually begin their writing by constructing an outline, outlining is a poor choice as the first skill to teach children who are learning to write.

A student teacher provided me with a sequel to the above example. He had developed a reasonable proficiency in writing. He earned high grades in composition in high school. His procedure was to sit down and write. For him, it worked. In a university English class he encountered an instructor who insisted that students outline their essays before beginning to write. The outline had to be submitted along with the essay. When the student tried this procedure, his composition grades dropped like a rock. After three disastrous essays he finally solved his problem. He went back to his old procedure of just writing without an outline. When he was finished, he constructed an outline to fit the essay. His grades returned to their normal high level.

What is the process of improving performance all at once?

What is an example of shaping?

What is shaping used for?

What is shaping in learning?