Teacher hits boy on head to teach psychological theory

A teacher faces a charge of serious misconduct after hitting a student on the head five times to demonstrate the psychology of rewards and punishments.

An Auckland secondary school teacher said he asked his Year 12 and 13 class in 2018 for a volunteer who was willing to accept “physical consequences” in a lesson on the psychological theory of “operant conditioning.”

The teacher then stood behind the volunteer at the front of the class and asked another student to play a game of rock, paper, and scissors with the volunteer.

But he changed the rules, without telling the volunteer. Under the new rules, the student was rewarded with a trowel each time he chose “rock”, but the teacher would hit him on the side of the head with an open hand if he chose “paper” or “scissors.”

A video taken by another student showed the teacher hitting the volunteer on the head five times until the student found out that he had to collect stones. After that, he chose stone each time and was no longer “punished”.

In a separate incident in April 2019, accepted in an agreed statement of fact, the teacher told an Asian student who was eating noodles at a school camp: “You are so Asian.”

“The respondent’s statement made some students uncomfortable,” the agreed statement reads.

“The respondent then said that students shouldn’t worry about that and said something like ‘it’s like an African American calling another an idiot.’ This comment also surprised the students. “

The complaint evaluation committee of the Teaching Council alleges that the incident at the camp was a case of “misconduct”, but that the incident in which the teacher hit the student on the head was a “serious offense”.

Teachers Disciplinary Court Vice President Tim Mackenzie, who presided over a hearing on the case today, said the court had never faced a similar case.

“There is not a case like this. There are other cases of violence where teachers get angry and hit a child or overreact. This is very different,” he said.

University of Victoria education professor Dr. Barrie Gordon, who was called in as an expert witness, said he taught trainee teachers about the risks of physical contact with physical education students, but had never considered the need. to teach them not to deliberately use force as a way of doing it. teaching method.

“In a physical situation like this where a slap is used as part of a teaching situation, it has never occurred to me to teach students not to do that, because it has never even occurred to me to even think about doing that.,” he said.

“I’ve never had a student come up with a lesson plan that involves something like that. That’s out of the question.”

The professor, an experienced teacher at a school that follows the Cambridge International Education (CIE) curriculum, told the court that the psychological theories of Edward Thorndike and BF Skinner were “a huge component” of the course he was teaching.

“One of the things that CIE is very, very particular about is the use of proper terminology,” he said.

“Thorndike’s theory would be one of the most frequently asked questions on a test that they have. It’s a very, very important topic for them to understand how it works.”

He said that he always tried to teach in a practical way so that the students would remember the lesson.

“If we are looking at the levers, I will bring the load bank into the classroom. If we are teaching about power systems, we will do something like arm wrestling,” he said.

“I always try to experiment with my teaching to keep it unique and enjoyable and therefore memorable, because they can remember those things.”

The psychology lesson was in a small class of eight to 10 students and the teacher said that when he asked for volunteers, he hoped that the particular Year 13 student he chose would be the one to raise his hand. He had known this student for several years and was sure that the experiment would not bother him.

“I also knew that he would be a suitable person because of the strength of his personality, how well respected he was among the students,” he said.

“I told him there would be a game that we would play, and that there would be negative physical consequences for any mistakes he made within the game, but that there would be rewards, and it was up to him to find out what and if that was happening.”

The video showed that after several slaps on the head for wrong answers, the teacher asked the volunteer if he was okay and the volunteer reassured him that he was okay before the game continued.

The volunteer himself, who is now a university student, told the court that he was not harmed.

“I also enjoyed the activity. It was something different, something new,” he said.

“The whole purpose was to have a practical exercise to teach the lesson, and I thought it effectively taught me the content that we were expected to learn that day.”

He said the students talked about it a lot after class and “everyone found it funny.”

“I remember we all laughed at that together,” he said.

The court reserved its decision.