Learning Theories:
Learning theories are an organized set of principles explaining how individuals acquire, retain, and recall knowledge. By studying and knowing the different learning theories, we can better understand how learning occurs. The principles of the theories can be used as guidelines to help select instructional tools, techniques and strategies that promote learning. It can be viewed in terms of motivation and implications of teaching.
1. Behaviourism
Behaviourist teaching methods have proven most successful in areas where there is a “correct” response or easily memorized material. New behaviours or changes in behaviours are acquired through associations between stimuli and responses. Behaviourism theorists believe that knowledge
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First is observational learning. Where is the first place you go when you want to learn something new? My guess is YouTube. Social Learning Theory says that we learn through observation. This can take the form of someone physically demonstrating a behaviour or task or describing a task verbally. Video and audio in eLearning are powerful methods for re-creating this experience. Virtual classroom technology takes this one step further by allowing real-time teacher presentation, commenting, and …show more content…
Learners need to have a motivation for learning. Social Learning Theory suggests that motivation can originate from being rewarded or punished, as when we are in a similar situation, we will imitate or avoid the behaviour based on our past experience. Adding gamification principles to eLearning is a great way to inspire through reward. There’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get people talking; this could include office leader boards to encourage learner-to-learner communication. Fourth is state of mind. In social learning theory, the state of mind is also crucial to learning. Bandura states that it’s not only external reinforcement that affects learning and behaviour, but internal reward known as intrinsic reinforcement is also important. Internal reinforcement comes with feeling good after successfully performing a task or behaviour, leading to a sense of accomplishment and increased self-confidence. In eLearning, setting challenging activities and learning checks can provide intrinsic reinforcement. You could also provide learners with a personalized certificate of achievement, downloaded at the end of the course, or another form of recognition or
Reece & Walker states the behaviourism is teacher centred and relies upon the expectation of the provision of a stimulus to produce a response however, ‘students are often seen as passive’. Therefore, without a stimulus there would be no response and is only visible externally. The teacher provides the stimulus for a response to occur, resulting in a change of behaviour that can be measured.
Students become more engaged in lessons when he/ she is interested. Using the previous example about my small teachers excitement to use the chromebook showed his level of motivation. Also during this lesson, he was very interested in watching the videos their teacher allowed them to watch.
Annie, a fifth-grade student in Mr. Keller's class, is being quiet and sullen for the fifth day in a row. "I just can't do this writing stuff," she finally says in an appeal to Mr. Keller. "I'm not a good student. Give me P.E. or art over this stuff any day!" If we apply Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory in her comment "I just can't do this writing stuff" how does Bandura's theory help us to understand Annie? According, the Social Cognitive Theory of Albert Bandura which combines both behavioral and cognitive philosophies to form his theory of modeling, or observational learning states that human personality is an interaction between the environment and a person's psychological processes. With this interaction humans are able to control their behavior through a process known as self-regulation (Woolfolk, 2013, p. 400). He also assures that some factors like environment and personal experiences can encourage behaviors such as Annie, why? Because, in her case, it seems that Annie’s school achievement and personal interest in writing are not interacting; in addition, Annie may lack of motivation and reinforcement in her life that can be the cause of her frustration in writing. Consequently, she prefers school subjects like PE or art that she thinks, she will be successful. Woolfolk (2013) says that humans “may acquire a new skill or behavior through observation, but we may not perform that behavior until there is some motivation or incentive to do so” (p. 402). Therefore, the lack of motivation, feedback, modeling, and effort can be a few reasons why Annie seems to discourage about her writing skills.
Behaviourism is a theory of learning which suggests that all behaviours are obtained as a result of conditioning...
Behavioral theories are very significant, but the social learning theory by Albert Bandura is one of the most valuable and influential theory out of them all. The social learning theory analyzes how humans learn through observing other people’s attitudes and behaviors. Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany and he was the founder and conductor of the Nazi Party. Accordingly, Adolf Hitler is related to the social learning theory because his actions were related with his life struggle. Many people wonder why Hitler killed so many innocent lives and the reality is that no one will ever know, but the social learning theory by Albert Bandura can help people briefly understand why humans perform cruel and inhumane behaviors. This theory does not excuse nor does it permits Hitler’s malicious behavior, but it provides a psychological view to his unnatural actions. Adolf Hitler was the main cause of World War II and the Holocaust; he was responsible for about 11 million deaths and approximately 1 million were children. During the Holocaust the Nazis focused on executing the Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and disabled people. Moreover, Hitler also conducted the concentration camps, labor camps and extermination camps. In the camps Hitler kept as prisoners anyone who acted against him in any way and he also kept Jews. The concentration camp mainly forced people to do hard labor and slowly they would die of starvation, infections or murder; in the other hand, extermination camps were used to kill an immense cluster of people instantly. Also, Hitler permitted doctors that were part of the Nazi Party to performed medical experiments to the prisoners without their consent, basically the prisoners were used as lab rats and then they ...
Teaching theories are as much part of the classroom as the student and the teacher. The effect individual theories have on an environment depends how they are incorporated within the classroom in addition to the influence they have had on the curriculum construction. This essay will briefly look at how motivation theory, cognitive and social cognitive theory along with constructivism have impacted on education and the classroom.
Behaviorism revolves around the measurable and observable characteristics of human behavior, and is based off of the principle that behavior is a result of stimulus-response associations. The purpose of this learning theory is using conditioning in order to acquire a desired behavior. Once understood, the use of behaviorism can be an effective tool in the classroom for educators to use.
Schunk, D. H. (2000) Learning theories. An educational perspective. (3rd ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Akers and Sellers (2013) has stated that social learning theory is an expanded theory of differential association processes and improves it with differential reinforcement and other principles of the behavior theory. They added classical conditioning (the sharpening of involuntary reflex behavior); discriminative stimuli (internal stimuli that lead to signals for behavior); schedules of reinforcement (rewards and punishment ratio following behavioral feedback); and other theories of behavior (Akers & Sellers, 2013).
The purpose of Chapter two is to review literature related to the major variables within the study. Two literature reviews were conducted. The first literature review examined the retention rates and low standardized test scores on Students taking Middle School Math. This follows the purpose of the conceptual framework, the Keller’s ARCS model(1987). Here, there will be literature related to inform the study that is related to the research design, intervention design, and measurement instruments. Lastly there will be a section on the Conceptual Framework.
Personal examples of a behaviorist style of instruction are based on the widely renowned theory by B.F. Skinner, which in the classroom can be summarized by reinf...
Behaviorism is a learning theory or a developmental theory that measures observable behaviors that are produced by the learner’s response to stimuli. On one end of the spectrum behaviorism is known as an attitude. At the other end, it is known as a doctrine. According to the behavioral views of human development, behaviorists argued that to focus attention on unobservable constructs, such as emotions, thoughts, or the unconscious, was an unscientific approach.(Craig & Dunn, Ex.: 2010)
Section 2 - With reference to one theory of how people learn, discuss how knowledge is being acquired by learners in your session.
The main instance that I use behaviorism in my classroom is through positive reinforcement. I praise, praise, praise my students all day. Students who are such young learners receive much motivation when they hear praise and specific praise at that. It allows them to be eager to please their teacher and provides a sense of self-accomplishment. In my classroom, I also use a treasure chest, reward coupons and PBIS reward money as major components of positive reinforcement. At the beginning of the year, I teach my students my classroom expectations and that I expect the best from them. This includes all of their daily work, including journal writing, morning work, etc. My students know what my desired outcome is. Student’s behavioral efforts are measured and collected on a weekly basis through a behavior chart. Their assignments are measured on accuracy and completeness in order to help them recognize the importance of their effort in finishing an assignment. I utilize a rubric on many of my assignments in order to help them achieve their best. Their meeting certain standards on their weekly behavior chart allows them to receive
Behaviorism is the point of view where learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships. Behaviorists agree that an individual’s behaviors is a result of their interaction with the environment. Feedback, praise and rewards are all ways people can respond to becoming conditioned. The focus is on observable events instead of events that happen in one’s head. The belief that learning has not happened unless there is an observable change in behavior. “The earliest and most Ardent of behaviourists was Watson (1931; Medcof and Roth, 1991; Hill 1997). His fundamental conclusion from many experimental observations of animal and childhood learning was that stimulus-response (S-R) connections are more likely to be established the more frequently or recently an S-R bond occurs. A child solving a number problem might have to make many unsuccessful trials before arriving at the correct solution” (Childs, 2004).