The Importance Of Bandura's Social Learning Theory

According to me learning is the way of getting new knowledge or modifying existing knowledge and skills. Learning can bring change in an individual. Learning starts from birth. As we grow watching our parents we adapt or learn their habits. We observe our parents and we try to behave in similar ways. According to Bandura’s social learning theory, children learn social behaviour through watching the behaviour of adults (Hoffnung et al., 2013). The child is more likely to act in the same way as their parents. It can be because of their experience of getting rewards or through the observation of adults. Children might learn to handle conflict by throwing tantrums, arguing and fighting because that is how their parents act. On other hand children

I always asked my mum if I could help her in the kitchen. One day I cooked food in my pretend kitchen. I acted like my mum. I served pretend food to my dad. My dad praised me in the same way as he did for my mum. I was felling great as I was trying everything to get that complement from my dad. I didn’t realise when my habit of getting compliment turned into my interest of cooking food. As I grew older I started helping mum in the real kitchen. As we discussed in Bandura’s social learning theory, role modelling and reinforcement played important role in my learning of cooking. Seeing my mum cook and being praised for her yummy food encouraged me to cook. My mum and dads positive behaviour helped me to learn cooking skills with fun. As I have positive impact of observation and rewards on my learning, I’m using same strategy for my daughter. I encourage her through role modelling. I use different learning styles to make her learn

Selby Markham, 2004) learning styles are innate preferences of individual as to how they prefer to go about the process of learning. According to this statement my favorite method to learn are visual and auditory over other methods. It helps me to understand better and quicker. It makes my learning process easier in the beginning of the task.

The tasks design and environment influence my learning. The importance of task, choice of task, quality of task, time, and resources influence my learning. Good guide and organized way of doing things helps me to finish my task quicker. For example if I am getting enough time and resources and make a plan for a task, it helps me to bring quality in particular task.

The task environment has strong influence on the children’s learning. This is supported by Piaget’s conception of intellectual development that the children develop their own concepts through active engagement with the environment. Piaget 1896 – 1980 as cited in postulated that human beings have basic organization and adaptation tendency.