Behaviorism
Summary: Behaviorism is a worldview that operates on a principle of “stimulusresponse.” All behavior caused by external stimuli (operant conditioning). All behavior
can be explained without the need to consider internal mental states or consciousness.
Originators and important contributors: John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, E. L.
Thorndike (connectionism), Bandura, Tolman (moving toward cognitivism)
Pavlov
Skinner
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a worldview that assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding to
environmental stimuli. The learner starts off as a clean slate (i.e. tabula rasa) and
behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. Both
positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability that the
antecedent behavior will happen again. In contrast, punishment (both positive and
negative) decreases the likelihood that the antecedent behavior will happen again.
Positive indicates the application of a stimulus; Negative indicates the withholding of a
stimulus. Learning is therefore defined as a change in behavior in the learner. Lots of
(early) behaviorist work was done with animals (e.g. Pavlov’s dogs) and generalized to
humans.
Behaviorism precedes the cognitivist worldview. It rejects structuralism and is an
extension of Logical Positivism.
Definition
Behaviorism is a theory of animal and human learning that only focuses on objectively
observable behaviors and discounts mental activities. Behavior theorists define learning
as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior.
Discussion
Experiments by behaviorists identify conditioning as a universal learning process. There
are two different types of conditioning, each yielding a different behavioral pattern:
1. Classic conditioning occurs when a natural reflex responds to a stimulus. The most
popular example is Pavlov’s observation that dogs salivate when they eat or even see
food. Essentially, animals and people are biologically “wired” so that a certain stimulus
will produce a specific response.
2. Behavioral or operant conditioning occurs when a response to a stimulus is reinforced.
Basically, operant conditioning is a simple feedback system: If a reward or reinforcement
follows the response to a stimulus, then the response becomes more probable in the
future. For example, leading behaviorist B.F. Skinner used reinforcement techniques to
teach pigeons to dance and bowl a ball in a mini-alley.
There have been many criticisms of behaviorism, including the following:
1. Behaviorism does not account for all kinds of learning, since it disregards the activities of
the mind.
2. Behaviorism does not explain some learning–such as the recognition of new language
patterns by young children–for which there is no reinforcement mechanism.
3. Research has shown that animals adapt their reinforced patterns to new information. For
instance, a rat can shift its behavior to respond to changes in the layout of a maze it had
previously mastered through reinforcements.
How Behaviorism Impacts Learning
This theory is relatively simple to understand because it relies only on observable
behavior and describes several universal laws of behavior. Its positive and negative
reinforcement techniques can be very effective–both in animals, and in treatments for
human disorders such as autism and antisocial behavior. Behaviorism often is used by
teachers, who reward or punish student behaviors.
http://www.funderstanding.com/content/behaviorism
Cognitivism
The cognitivist revolution replaced behaviorism in 1960s as the dominant paradigm.
Cognitivism focuses on the inner mental activities – opening the “black box” of the
human mind is valuable and necessary for understanding how people learn. Mental
processes such as thinking, memory, knowing, and problem-solving need to be explored.
Knowledge can be seen as schema or symbolic mental constructions. Learning is defined
as change in a learner’s schemata.
A response to behaviorism, people are not “programmed animals” that merely respond to
environmental stimuli; people are rational beings that require active participation in order
to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking. Changes in behavior are
observed, but only as an indication of what is occurring in the learner’s head.
Cognitivism uses the metaphor of the mind as computer: information comes in, is being
processed, and leads to certain outcomes.
Jerome Bruner and The Process of Education
Jerome Bruner has made a profound contribution to our appreciation of the
process of education and to the development of curriculum theory. We
explore his work and draw out some important lessons for informal educators
and those concerned with the practice of lifelong learning.
Jerome S. Bruner (1915) is one of the best known and influential psychologists of the
twentieth century. He was one of the key figures in the so called 'cognitive revolution' but it is the field of education that his influence has been especially felt. His books The
Process of Education and Towards a Theory of Instruction have been widely read and
become recognized as classics, and his work on the social studies programme - Man: A
Course of Study (MACOS) - in the mid-1960s is a landmark in curriculum development.
More recently Bruner has come to be critical of the 'cognitive revolution' and has looked
to the building of a cultural psychology that takes proper account of the historical and
social context of participants. In his 1996 book The Culture of Education these arguments
were developed with respect to schooling (and education more generally). 'How one
conceives of education', he wrote, 'we have finally come to recognize, is a function of
how one conceives of the culture and its aims, professed and otherwise' (Bruner 1996: ixx).
Jerome S. Bruner - life
Bruner was born in New York City and later educated at Duke University and Harvard
(from which he was awarded a PhD in 1947). During World War II, Bruner worked as a
social psychologist exploring propaganda public opinion and social attitudes for U.S.
Army intelligence. After obtaining his PhD he became a member of faculty, serving as
professor of psychology, as well as cofounder and director of the Center for Cognitive
Studies.
Beginning in the 1940s, Jerome Bruner, along with Leo Postman, worked on the ways in
which needs, motivations, and expectations (or 'mental sets') influence perception.
Sometimes dubbed as the 'New Look', they explored perception from a functional
orientation (as against a process to separate from the world around it). In addition to this
work, Bruner began to look at the role of strategies in the process of human
categorization, and more generally, the development of human cognition. This concern
with cognitive psychology led to a particular interest in the cognitive development of
children (and their modes of representation) and just what the appropriate forms of
education might be.
From the late 1950s on Jerome Bruner became interested in schooling in the USA - and
was invited to chair an influential ten day meeting of scholars and educators at Woods
Hole on Cape Cod in 1959 (under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and
the National Science Foundation). One result was Bruner's landmark book The Process of
Education (1960). It developed some of the key themes of that meeting and was an
crucial factor in the generation of a range of educational programmes and experiments in
the 1960s. Jerome Bruner subsequently joined a number of key panels and committees
(including the President's Advisory Panel of Education). In 1963, he received the
Distinguished Scientific Award from the American Psychological Association, and in
1965 he served as its president.
Jerome S. Bruner also became involved in the design and implementation of the
influential MACOS project (which sought to produce a comprehensive curriculum
drawing upon the behavioural sciences).
The project involved a number of young researchers, including Howard Gardner, who
subsequently have made an impact on educational thinking and practice. MACOS was
attacked by conservatives (especially the cross-cultural nature of the materials). It was
also difficult to implement - requiring a degree of sophistication and learning on the part
of teachers, and ability and motivation on the part of students. The educational tide had
begun to move away from more liberal and progressive thinkers like Jerome Bruner.
In the 1960s Jerome Bruner developed a theory of cognitive growth. His approach (in
contrast to Piaget) looked to environmental and experiential factors. Bruner suggested
that intellectual ability developed in stages through step-by-step changes in how the mind
is used. Bruner's thinking became increasingly influenced by writers like Lev Vygotsky
and he began to be critical of the intrapersonal focus he had taken, and the lack of
attention paid to social and political context. In the early 1970s Bruner left Harvard to
teach for several years at the university of Oxford. There he continued his research into
questions of agency in infants and began a series of explorations of children's language.
He returned to Harvard as a visiting professor in 1979 and then, two years later, joined
the faculty of the new School for Social Research in New York City. He became critical
of the 'cognitive revolution' and began to argue for the building of a cultural psychology.
This 'cultural turn' was then reflected in his work on education - most especially in his
1996 book: The Culture of Education.
The process of education
The Process of Education (1960) was a landmark text. It had a direct impact on policy
formation in the United States and influenced the thinking and orientation of a wide
group of teachers and scholars, Its view of children as active problem-solvers who are
ready to explore 'difficult' subjects while being out of step with the dominant view in
education at that time, struck a chord with many. 'It was a surprise', Jerome Bruner was
later to write (in the preface to the 1977 edition), that a book expressing so structuralist a
view of knowledge and so intuitionist an approach to the process of knowing should
attract so much attention in America, where empiricism had long been the dominant
voice and 'learning theory' its amplifier' (ibid.: vii).
Four key themes emerge out of the work around The Process of Education (1960: 11-16):
The role of structure in learning and how it may be made central in teaching. The
approach taken should be a practical one. 'The teaching and learning of structure, rather
than simply the mastery of facts and techniques, is at the center of the classic problem of
transfer... If earlier learning is to render later learning easier, it must do so by providing a
general picture in terms of which the relations between things encountered earlier and
later are made as clear as possible' (ibid.: 12).
Readiness for learning. Here the argument is that schools have wasted a great deal of
people's time by postponing the teaching of important areas because they are deemed 'too
difficult'.
We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually
honest form to any child at any stage of development. (ibid.: 33)
This notion underpins the idea of the spiral curriculum - 'A curriculum as it develops
should revisit this basic ideas repeatedly, building upon them until the student has
grasped the full formal apparatus that goes with them' (ibid.: 13).
Intuitive and analytical thinking. Intuition ('the intellectual technique of arriving and
plausible but tentative formulations without going through the analytical steps by which
such formulations would be found to be valid or invalid conclusions' ibid.: 13) is a much
neglected but essential feature of productive thinking. Here Bruner notes how experts in
different fields appear 'to leap intuitively into a decision or to a solution to a problem'
(ibid.: 62) - a phenomenon that Donald Schön was to explore some years later - and
looked to how teachers and schools might create the conditions for intuition to flourish.
Motives for learning. 'Ideally', Jerome Bruner writes, interest in the material to be
learned is the best stimulus to learning, rather than such external goals as grades or later
competitive advantage' (ibid.: 14). In an age of increasing spectatorship, 'motives for
learning must be kept from going passive... they must be based as much as possible upon
the arousal of interest in what there is be learned, and they must be kept broad and
diverse in expression' (ibid.: 80).
Bruner was to write two 'postscripts' to The Process of Education: Towards a theory of
instruction (1966) and The Relevance of Education (1971). In these books Bruner 'put
forth his evolving ideas about the ways in which instruction actually affects the mental
models of the world that students construct, elaborate on and transform' (Gardner 2001:
93). In the first book the various essays deal with matters such as patterns of growth, the
will to learn, and on making and judging (including some helpful material around
evaluation). Two essays are of particular interest - his reflections on MACOS (see
above), and his 'notes on a theory of instruction'. The latter essay makes the case for
taking into account questions of predisposition, structure, sequence, and reinforcement in
preparing curricula and programmes. He makes the case for education as a knowledgegetting process:
To instruct someone... is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather, it is to
teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. We
teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to
think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the
process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process not a product. (1966: 72)
The essays in The Relevance of Education (1971) apply his theories to infant
development.
The culture of education
Jerome Bruner's reflections on education in The Culture of Education (1996) show the
impact of the changes in his thinking since the 1960s. He now placed his work within a
thorough appreciation of culture: 'culture shapes the mind... it provides us with the toolkit
by which we construct not only our worlds but our very conception of our selves and our
powers' (ibid.: x). This orientation 'presupposes that human mental activity is neither solo
nor conducted unassisted, even when it goes on "inside the head" (ibid.: xi). It also takes
Bruner well beyond the confines of schooling.
Conclusion
Jerome S. Bruner has had a profound effect on education - and upon those researchers
and students he has worked with. Howard Gardner has commented:
Jerome Bruner is not merely one of the foremost educational thinkers of the era; he is also an
inspired learner and teacher. His infectious curiosity inspires all who are not completely jaded.
Individuals of every age and background are invited to join in. Logical analyses, technical
dissertations, rich and wide knowledge of diverse subject matters, asides to an ever wider orbit of
information, intuitive leaps, pregnant enigmas pour forth from his indefatigable mouth and pen.
In his words, 'Intellectual activity is anywhere and everywhere, whether at the frontier of
knowledge or in a third-grade classroom'. To those who know him, Bruner remains the Compleat
Educator in the flesh... (Gardner 2001: 94)
http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/ (21 July 2009)
Constructivism
A reaction to didactic approaches such as behaviorism and programmed instruction,
constructivism states that learning is an active, contextualized process of constructing
knowledge rather than acquiring it. Knowledge is constructed based on personal
experiences and hypotheses of the environment. Learners continuously test these
hypotheses through social negotiation. Each person has a different interpretation and
construction of knowledge process. The learner is not a blank slate (tabula rasa) but
brings past experiences and cultural factors to a situation.
NOTE: A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should
never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct
knowledge for themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching)
with a theory of knowing. Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from
the learner’s previous knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to
a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.
Vygotsky’s social development theory is one of the foundations for constructivism.
Originators and important contributors: Vygotsky, Piaget, Dewey, Vico, Rorty, Bruner
vygotsky
Keywords: Learning as experience, activity and dialogical process; Problem Based
Learning (PBL); Anchored instruction; Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD); cognitive apprenticeship (scaffolding); inquiry and discovery learning.
.
http://www.learning-theories.com/ (21 July 2009)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki (21 July 2009)
Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Born March 20, 1904
Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
Died August 18, 1990 (aged 86)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality American Fields
Psychologist
Institutions
University of Minnesota
Indiana University
Harvard University Alma mater Hamilton College
Harvard University
Known for
Behavior analysis
Operant conditioning
Radical behaviorism
Verbal Behavior
Operant conditioning chamber
Influences
Charles Darwin
Ivan Pavlov
Ernst Mach
Jacques Loeb
Edward Thorndike
William James
Ivan Pavlov
Born September 14, 1849
Ryazan, Russia
Died February 27, 1936 (aged 86)
Leningrad, Soviet Union
Residence Russian Empire, Soviet Union
Nationality Russian, Soviet
Fields Physiologist, psychologist, physician
Institutions Military Medical Academy Alma mater Saint Petersburg University
Known for Classical conditioning
Transmarginal inhibition
Behavior modification
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1904)
Cognitivism.
During the 1960s, discontent with the inadequacies of behaviourism another school of thought
was developing besides the behavioural thinking, the cognitive aspects. The behaviourist
perspective could not easily explain why people attempt to organise and make sense of the
information they learn. One example includes remembering general meanings rather than word
for word information. Among learning psychologists there emerged a growing realisation that
mental events or cognition could no longer be ignored
Cognitive psychologists share with behaviourists the belief that the study of learning should be
objective and that learning theories should be developed from the results of empirical research.
However, cognitivists disagree with the behaviourists in one critical aspect. By observing the
responses that individuals make to different stimulus conditions, cognitivists believe that they can
draw inferences about the nature of the internal cognitive processes that produce those responses.
Many ideas and assumptions of cognitivism can be traced back to the early decades of the
twentieth century. Of all theories, the theories of Jean Piaget of Switzerland are the ones that have
provided psychology with very elaborated account of developmental changes in cognitive
abilities.
Jean Piaget (1896-1980).
Jean Piaget was one of the most influential cognitive psychologist. He was a student of biology
and zoology and learnt that survival requires adaptation. Therefore he viewed the development of
human cognition, or intelligence, as the continual struggle of a very complex organism trying to
adapt to a very complex environment. According to Piaget´s theory, human development can be
outlined in terms of functions and cognitive structures. The functions are inborn biological
processes that are identical for every one and stay unchanged throughout our lives. The purpose
of these functions is to construct internal cognitive structures. The structures, in contrast, changes
repeatedly as the child grows (Vasa, R., Haith, M.M., Miller,S.A.,1995, p.,33).
Piaget emphasises on two main functions; one is organisation (or equilibrium). Organisation
refers to the fact that all cognitive structures are interrelated and that any new knowledge must be
fitted into the existing system. It is the need to integrate the new information, rather than adding
them on, that force our cognitive structure to become more elaborate.
The second general function is adaptation. Adaptation refers to the tendency of the organism to
fit with its environment in ways that promote survival. It is composed of two terms; assimilation
and accommodation.
Assimilation is the tendency to understand new experience in terms of existing knowledge.
Whenever we come across something new, we try to make sense of it, built upon our existing
cognitive structures.
Accommodation occurs when the new information is too complex to be integrated into the
existing structure - this means that, cognitive structures change in response to new experiences
(Spencer, K., 1991,p.,175).
Piaget did many experiments on children’s way of thinking and concluded that human beings go
through several distinct stages of cognitive development. Each stage involves the acquisition of
new skills and rest upon the successful completion of the preceding one.
The first stage is the sensorimotor, (0-2year). Until about four months of age, the infant can not
differentiate itself from the environment. Gradually the child learns to distinguish people from
objects and that both have an existence independent of their immediate perception. This stage
draws it name, sensorimotor, from that the child learns mainly by touching objects, manipulating
them and physically exploring the environment. By the end of this stage the child understands
that its environment has distinctive and stable properties.
The next stage is called the pre-operational (2years-7years). This is the stage when the child
acquires a mastery of a language and becomes able to use words to represent objects and images
in a symbolic fashion. Piaget terms this stage pre-operational because children are not yet able to
use their developing mental capabilities systematically. At this stage children are egocentric,
which means that the child has the tendency to interpret the world exclusively with its own
position. The child does not understand, for an example, that others see things and objects from a
different perspective from their own. During this phase of development the children have no
general understanding of categories of thought that adults take for granted, ideas such as
causality, speed, weight or number.
The third stage is the concrete operational period (7years-11years). During this period children
master abstract, logical notions. They are able to handle ideas such as causality without much
difficulty, and they are fit to carry out the mathematical operations of multiplying, dividing and
subtracting. By this stage children are much less egocentric.
The fourth stage is called the formal operational period (11+). During adolescence, the
developing child becomes able to comprehend highly abstract and hypothetical concepts. When
faced with a problem, children at this stage should be able to review all possible ways of solving
it and go through them theoretically in order to reach a solution.
According to Piaget, the first three stages of development are general, but not all adults come to
the formal operational stage. The development of formal operational thought relies in part on the
process of schooling. Adults of limited educational achievement tend to remain to think in more
concrete terms and retain large traces of egocentrism (Giddens, 1994).
The educational interest of Piaget´s work lies firstly in this procedure he used to make
educationists aware of the child’s thought processes and the conditions under which intellectual
structures are established at different ages.
There are four principles that are most often cited in Piaget´s theory regarding to education. The
first is the important of readiness. This principal follows from his emphasis on assimilation.
Experience, educational or otherwise, does not simply happen to a child; rather it must always be
assimilated to current cognitive structure. A new experience can only be of any value if the child
can make sense of it. Teaching that is far away the child’s level is unlikely to be useful.
The second principle concerns the motivation for cognitive activity. Educational content that is
either to advanced or too simple is unlikely to be interesting. The educational subject has to be
slightly beyond the current level of the child so that it provides experience familiar enough to
assimilate however challenging enough to provoke disequilibrium.
The third is the awareness of what level the child has reached and the information of what it can
be expected at that level and what not. Piaget´s studies often identify steps and sequences through
which particular content domains are mastered. It is therefor possible not only to determine were
the child is but also to know the natural next steps for development.
The final principle is more functional. It concerns Piaget´s emphasis on intelligence as an
action. In his view education should be build on the child’s natural curiosity and natural tendency
to act on the world in order to understand it. Knowledge is most meaningful when children
construct it themselves rather than having it imposed upon them (Vasa,R.,
Haith,M.M.,Miller,S.A.,1992).
The experience in acquiring a new knowledge through action allows two different kinds of
knowledge to develop, the physical experience and the logico-mathematical experience. Physical
experience produces knowledge of the properties of the objects acted upon. Logicomathematical experience result in knowledge, not of the objects, but of the actions themselves
and their results.
From physical experience, one would gain knowledge of the weight of objects; or the fact that,
other things being equal, weight increases as volume increases, and so on. When speaking of
logico-mathematical experience the point is that even the highest forms of abstract reasoning
have their origin in action (Donaldson, 1987).
The aim for education, according to Piaget, is to make individuals who are critical, creative and
inventive discoverers. So the major part of the child’s learning relies on active experimentation
and discovery. The active classroom has been associated with the term progressive teaching,
where pupils are in active role, learning predominantly by discovery techniques, with emphasis
on creative expression. Subject matter tends to be combined, with the teacher performing as a
guide to educational experiences and encouraging cooparitive work. External rewards and
punishments are seen as being unimportant, and there is not so much concern with traditional
academic standards and testing (Spencer, 1994).
As a biologist Piaget tended to look at development more from the physical change and the
readiness for each stage to develop any further. Another perspective in the cognitive movement
was from those who saw the connection between the environment and the child development in a
constructive way, and Jerome Burner’s ideas are those that are well known.
http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/cognitiv.htm
JEAN PIAGET
EDWARD THORNDIKE
IVAN PAVLOV
B.F SKINNER
SIGMUND FREUD
ERIK ERIKSON
http://images.google.com.my/imgres