Albert Bandura Research Paper

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Albert Bandura was born in December of 1925. Bandura was born and raised in Mundare in Alberta, Canada. The town Bandura grew up in was tiny, in fact, it was so small that there were only two teachers responsible for teaching the entire high school curriculum. As we will come to see Bandura believed in fortuitous events shaping one's path in life and how he ended up studying psychology was just that. Commuting to school with classmates that were enrolled in early morning classes, Bandura decided he might as well take a psychology class offered during that time and fell in love with psychology. Bandura graduated from British Columbia and then earned his masters and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Over the course of his career Bandora wrote …show more content…

Plasticity refers to an individual's ability to be flexible and learn in a multitude of environments. While he recognized that direct learning through personal experience was one way to learn he put more emphasis on vicarious learning. Vicarious learning occurs through the observation of those around us, including their attitudes and behaviors. In addition he did not believe as Skinner did, that behavior must be reinforced, he believed that vicarious learning could occur from observing the behavior of someone else being reinforced. For example, children with special needs are often placed in integrated learning environments in order to aid their development. The child with special needs will learn from their typical peer role models appropriate behaviors and see their behaviors being positively reinforced. The goal is to have vicarious learning occur and for the child with special needs to learn the positive behaviors of their peers; this is known as modeling. Modeling is taking the vicarious learning of through cognitive process applying it to personal behavior …show more content…

The four core features of agency according to Bandura were forethought, intentionality, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness (Feist, J., Feist, G., & Roberts, 2013, p.492). Intentionality means that because the individual has agency they can plan for their future and their actions will reflect their intentions. From experience develops forethought, which is the ability to predict outcomes of behaviors and set goals for the future based on desired outcomes. Self-reactiveness is about recognizing goals and monitoring progress towards the goals (Feist, J., Feist, G., & Roberts, 2013, p.492). Self-reflectiveness acknowledges the fact that will agency people can evaluate themselves and understand their motivations and values in life. Agency is an important part of the social cognitive theory because it acknowledges the control an individual has over

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