Behaviorism is a psychological theory that emphasizes the role of environmental events in shaping behavior. It has had a significant influence on the field of education, and has been widely applied in the design of instructional methods and materials.
At its core, behaviorism is based on the idea that all behaviors are learned through conditioning. According to behaviorists, individuals do not possess inherent behaviors or traits, but rather their behaviors are the result of reinforcement or punishment that they have received in the past. This means that behaviors can be changed or modified by manipulating the consequences of those behaviors.
In the context of education, this theory has been applied in a number of ways. One common application is the use of rewards and punishments to shape student behavior. For example, a teacher might give a student a sticker or a small prize for completing a task, or they might take away a privilege as a punishment for misbehaving.
Another application of behaviorism in education is the use of explicit instructions and drills to teach new skills or behaviors. These methods involve breaking down a task or behavior into small steps, and providing students with clear and concise instructions for each step. Repetition is often used as a way to help students learn and retain new information, and feedback is provided to help students understand their progress and areas for improvement.
While behaviorism has been widely applied in education, it has also been the subject of criticism. Some argue that it is overly simplistic and fails to take into account the complex psychological and social factors that influence behavior. Others have pointed out that it can be overly controlling and may not be the most effective way to foster long-term learning or personal growth.
Despite these criticisms, behaviorism continues to be an influential theory in education, and many of its principles and techniques are still widely used in classrooms around the world. It is important for educators to consider the potential benefits and limitations of behaviorism when designing instructional methods and materials, and to consider other approaches that may be more effective in certain contexts.
The Importance Of Behaviorism In Education
Learners are acted upon by their environment, forming associations between stimuli and changing behavior based on those associations. Teachers Role The teacher is the center of instruction in the behaviorist classroom. Skinner and Watson, the two major developers of the behaviorist school of thought sought to prove that behavior could be predicted and controlled Skinner, 1974. Piaget and Vygotsky described elements that helped predict what children understand at different stages Rummel, 2008. Through some further experimentation, researchers discovered that Albert responded with fear when they struck a steel bar with a hammer to produce a shap noise.
Behaviorism
Skinner is best known for the concept of operant conditioning. At first, along with the bell, he would hold up food, causing the dogs to salivate. The two theories of learning discussed are Behaviorism and Constructivism. Details of both theories illuminate the differences and connections between the behavioral and constructivist theories in relationship to how children learn and how their behavior is affected. When creating curriculum, the teachers focus is on results. More recent learning theories, such as constructivism, focus much more on the role of the student in actively constructing knowledge.
His results that animals can learn to press levers and buttons to receive food underpin many different types of animal studies exploring other behaviors and created the modern framework for the assumed similarities between animal responses and human responses Engelhart, 1970. Finding this to be very interesting, Pavlov decided he to determine if an external stimuli such as a bell being sounded would also cause the dogs to salivate. For a more in-depth look at behaviorism in the classroom, please read the following article titled: Behaviorism in the Classroom. Pavlov performed several variations of this experiment, looking at how far apart he could play the tone before the dogs no longer associated the sound with food; or if applying randomization — playing the tone sometimes when feeding the dogs but not others — had any effect on the end results Pavlov, 1927. Pavlov called this learned response a conditional reflex. In general, he found that ratio schedules are more resistant to extinction than interval schedules, and variable schedules are more resistant than fixed schedules, making the variable ratio reinforcement schedule the most effective.
John Watson is remembered as the first psychologist to use human test subjects in experiments on classical conditioning. All of these roles require skill on the part of the behaviorist teacher in order to implement successfully. Psy 270 Week 5 Learning Theory Research Paper 652 Words 3 Pages There are five different types of learning theories, behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, social learning, or constructivism. The dogs learned a new response to a familiar stimulus via stimulus association. Russian physiologist and psychologist, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, is best known for his experiment in which he trained a hungry dog to drool at the sound of a bell. All of them propose various ways through which learning is realized.
