Skinner came up with the theory that operant conditioning is a change or changes in behavior which are the result of an individual's response to events or stimuli that can occur in the environment. When a stimulus or response pattern is reinforced, the individual is conditioned to respond. Reinforcement is the key element in Skinner's stimulus-response theory. (Theory into Practice, p.2) A reinforcer is anything that strengthens the desired response. In the case of a teaching a third grade class, the reinforcer can be praising the students, which would be a positive reinforcer. Negative reinforcers can be punishing a student for acting out in class, by not allowing the student to have recess with the rest of the students who behaved. Teaching children in the third grade brings many opportunities to use operant conditioning. A teacher could make the students answer questions and arrange the most difficult questions in a certain order so that the response is always correct and a positive reinforcement is given to the students. Also, the teacher could give positive reinforcement for students who behave well in class, such as verbal praise or good grades. Negative reinforcement may be that a student who has not finished their homework, be made to finish the homework in class after school with the teacher. Then the student learns through negative reinforcement that it is important to do homework for class. Behavior that is positively reinforced will happen over and over since the students will come to the realization that doing homework and listening in class equals a good grade.
Pavlov termed classical conditioning as a realization of associations between events that occur in a person's environment. Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus. First, an unconditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus.