Pastoral In education and psychology , learning theories help us … Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Piaget was more interested in what children and youth could figure out on their own, so to speak, than in how teachers or parents might be able to help the young figure out (Salkind, 2004). As development proceeds, of course, language skills improve and hence the child becomes progressively more “teachable” and in this sense more able to learn. A preschool child who already understands the concept of bird, for example, might initially label any flying object with this term—even butterflies or mosquitoes. This fact is not a criticism of behaviorism as a perspective, but just a clarification of its particular strength or usefulness, which is to highlight observable relationships among actions, precursors and consequences. Operant conditioning and students’ learning: Since the original research about operant conditioning used animals, it is important to ask whether operant conditioning also describes learning in human beings, and especially in students in classrooms. Second, learning by operant conditioning is not confined to any particular grade, subject area, or style of teaching, but by nature happens in every imaginable classroom. But he did not emphasize this aspect of constructivism. He also argued that a curriculum could only be justified if it related as fully as possible to the activities and responsibilities that students will probably have later, after leaving school. The organization happens partly by relating new experiences to prior knowledge that is already meaningful and well understood. In K-12 schools, these experiences often take the form of field trips or projects. Celebrating the healthy skepticism that moves the field forward. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=153, Table 1: Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: cognitive domain, Remembering or recalling facts, information, or procedures. Unlike Piaget’s orientation to individuals’ thinking in his version of constructivism, some psychologists and educators have explicitly focused on the relationships and interactions between a learner and other individuals who are more knowledgeable or experienced. Acting together, assimilation and accommodation continually create new states of cognitive equilibrium. First emerging in the late 20th century, social and contextual learning theories challenge the individual-focused approaches evident in both constructivism and cognitivism. (Eds.). Educational psychology involves the study of how people learn, including topics such as student outcomes, the instructional process, individual differences in learning, gifted learners, and learning disabilities. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Featured or trusted partner programs and all school search, finder, or match results are for schools that compensate us. If I am a student who is being complimented (reinforced) for contributing to discussions, I must also learn to discriminate when to make verbal contributions from when not to make them—such as when classmates or the teacher are busy with other tasks. One of the pioneers in the field was a Harvard professor named B. F. Skinner, who published numerous books and articles about the details of the process and who pointed out many parallels between operant conditioning in animals and operant conditioning in humans (1938, 1948, 1988). A kindergarten child raises her hand in response to the teacher’s question about a story (the operant). Cognitivism emphasizes the importance of an expert in transmitting accurate information, yet sees a learner’s success or failure in absorbing this information as largely dependent upon the learner’s mental capacity, motivation, beliefs, and effort. Cognitive psychology understands knowledge acquisition schematically and symbolically. While interaction with teachers and students in school settings is an important part of their work, it isn’t the only facet of the job. Publishes research on educational psychology, focusing on applied psychology and the theory and practice crossing cultural and state boundaries. Any significant new learning requires setting aside, giving up, or revising former learning, and this step inevitably therefore “disturbs” thinking, if only in the short term and only in a relatively minor way. This led to new metaphors for learning as a “participation” and “social negotiation.”. Educational Psychology Theories The research on Educational Psychology Theories are extensive, and the four major perspectives which make the foundation for its qualitative and quantitative research methods of study are those of behaviorist, cognitive, humanistic and social learning. Psychologists working in this field are interested in … So do not make up your mind about the relative merits of different learning theories yet! Bruner, J. Behaviorism defines learning as observable behavioral change that occurs in response to environmental stimuli. He called the food pellets the reinforcement and the lever-pressing the operant (because it “operated” on the rat’s environment). In social constructivism, as also explained earlier, development is thought to happen largely because of scaffolded dialogue in a zone of proximal development. Cognitivism has given rise to many evidence based education theories, including cognitive load theory, schema theory and dual coding theory as well as being the basis for retrieval practice. This includes connections with each other and connections between their increasing number of roles, obligations, hobbies, and other aspects of life. Vygotsky called the difference between solo performance and assisted performance the zone of proximal development (or ZPD for short)—meaning, figuratively speaking, the place or area of immediate change. This compensation does not influence our school rankings, resource guides, or other editorially-independent information published on this site. Third, teachers are not the only persons controlling reinforcements. Constructivist models of learning differ about how much a learner constructs knowledge independently, compared to how much he or she takes cues from people who may be more of an expert and who help the learner’s efforts (Fosnot, 2005; Rockmore, 2005). Following Piaget, cognitive constructivism acknowledges age-based developmental learning stages and articulates learning as an expansion (through assimilation and accommodation processes) of a learner’s experientially informed mental model of their world. In Piaget’s viewpoint, though, what is being transferred to a new setting is not simply a behavior (Skinner’s “operant” in operant conditioning), but a mental representation for an object or experience. (Figure 1 shows the basic set-up, which is sometimes nicknamed a “Skinner box.”) At first the rat would sniff and “putter around” the cage at random, but sooner or later it would happen upon the lever and eventually happen to press it. 2 Educational Learning Theories edited by Molly Y. Zhou Dalton State College David Brown Dalton State College December, 2017 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA). It views behavior as a result of one’s thoughts. But if that cue does not occur—if the student is not called on—speaking may not be rewarded. Such dialogue is by implication less like “disturbing” students’ thinking than like “stretching” it beyond its former limits. However, educational psychologists can also pursue careers as researchers, consultants, and teachers in a variety of contexts, including schools, community organizations, government research centers, and learning centers. Because early behaviorists tried to legitimize psychology as a science, their theories emphasized external, scientifically measurable behavioral changes in response to similarly measurable stimuli. Experiential learning theories identify meaningful everyday experience as the most central factor in increasing a learner’s knowledge and understanding, as well as transforming their behavior. Social constructivism sees abstract thinking emerging from dialogue between a relative novice (a child or youth) and a more experienced expert (a parent or teacher). But whatever the child’s age, ability to learn waits or depends upon the child’s stage of development. Figure 1: Operant conditioning with a laboratory rat. Teaching theories: educational psychology. The reason for such a bold assertion was Bruner’s belief in scaffolding—his belief in the importance of providing guidance in the right way and at the right time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Consistent with the ideas above, psychological constructivism tends to see a relatively limited role for abstract or hypothetical reasoning in the life of children—and even in the reasoning of youth and many adults. (2001). (2005). Read easy-to-understand guides for psychology, education, business and design. See below. An introduction to theories of human development. From these collective revisions and additions the child gradually constructs whole new schemata about birds, butterflies, and other flying objects. Experientialist theorist Carl Rogers prioritizes experiential approaches to education because they work with humans’ natural desire to learn. Behaviorism is a perspective on learning that focuses on changes in individuals’ These requirements sound, of course, a lot like the requirements for classroom teaching. Skinner and other behavioral psychologists experimented with using various reinforcers and operants. Note that the model of learning in the Exhibit is rather “individualistic,” in the sense that it does not say much about how other people involved with the learner might assist in assimilating or accommodating information. And still another example—one often relevant to new teachers: when I began my first year of teaching, I was more focused on doing the job of teaching—on day-to-day survival—than on pausing to reflect on what I was doing. The Student development chapter was appropriate for a course on educational psychology, but may present too much information for more introductory courses. For the same reason, educators have often found Piaget’s ideas especially helpful for thinking about students’ readiness to learn, another one of the lasting educational issues discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Although they admit that thought and emotion influence learning, behaviorists either dismiss these factors as phenomena beyond the realm of scientific inquiry (methodological behaviorism) or convert internal factors into behavioral terms (neobehaviorism/radical behaviorism). Explanations and illustrations of reasons for a lesson typically improve student motivation, helping students visualize or actually practice using this knowledge in practical contexts. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. At the same time, though, note that each student probably was also extrinsically motivated, meaning that another part of the reinforcement came from consequences or experiences not inherently part of the activity or behavior itself. The former involves natural responses to environmental stimuli, while the latter involves the reinforcement of a response to stimuli. Sungok Serena Shim. Watson’s Behaviourism in Learning Theory 2. Parents and teachers, it would seem, are left lingering on the sidelines, with few significant responsibilities for helping learners to construct knowledge. Educational psychology can influence programs, curricula, and lesson development, as well as classroom management approaches. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. The earliest stages of a child’s life are thought to be rather self-centered and to be dependent on the child’s sensory and motor interactions with the environment. Assessing and judging the value or ideas, objects, or materials in a particular situation. During learning, knowledge or skill is found initially “in” the expert helper. Although the discipline of educational psychology includes numerous theories, many experts identify five main schools of thought: behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, experientialism, and social contextual learning theories. Guthrie’s Contiguous Conditioning Theory 4. If you are teaching, you will need to attend to all forms of learning in students, whether inner or outward. (As a teacher-friend once said to me: “Don’t just do something; stand there!”) But neither is focusing on behavior which is not necessarily less desirable than focusing on students’ “inner” changes, such as gains in their knowledge or their personal attitudes. Behavioral psychologists have studied schedules of reinforcement extensively (for example, Ferster, et al., 1997; Mazur, 2005), and found a number of interesting effects of different schedules. Educational psychology has been built upon theories of operant conditioning, functionalism, structuralism, constructivism, humanistic psychology, Gestalt psychology, and information processing. A twelfth-grade student—a member of the track team—runs one mile during practice (the operant). EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Educational psychology is the study of how people learn. However, two differing strands of constructivism bear mentioning. Language and dialogue therefore are primary, and development is seen as happening as a result—the converse of the sequence pictured by Piaget. A teacher’s primary responsibility is therefore to provide very rich opportunities for dialogue, both among children and between individual children and the teacher. (The levels are defined briefly in Error: Reference source not found with examples from Goldilocks and the Three Bears.). To many educators these days, his ideas may seem merely like good common sense, but they were indeed innovative and progressive at the beginning of the twentieth century. New York: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1978). A short summary of this paper. The rise of technology presents both challenges and opportunities for connection. Learning and behavior, 6th edition. How we think. Put in more social constructivist terms, the teacher arranges a zone of proximal development that allows the student to compare species successfully, but the student still has to construct or appropriate the comparisons for him or herself. Edward Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B.F. Skinner. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning Theory 5. The distinction is rough and inexact, but a good place to begin. Metacognition can sometimes be difficult for students to achieve, but it is an important goal for social constructivist learning because it gradually frees learners from dependence on expert teachers to guide their learning. They were popularized during the first half of the 20th century through the work of John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, and others. It is true that external reinforcement may sometimes alter the nature or strength of internal (or intrinsic) reinforcement, but this is not the same as saying that it destroys or replaces intrinsic reinforcement. The rest of this chapter describes key ideas from each of these viewpoints. But compared to psychological constructivism, social constructivism highlights a more direct responsibility of the expert for making learning possible. On this point the answer seems to be clearly “yes.” There are countless classroom examples of consequences affecting students’ behavior in ways that resemble operant conditioning, although the process certainly does not account for all forms of student learning (Alberto & Troutman, 2005). The widespread use of learning objectives, for example, breaks down larger learning goals into a series of specific skills and behaviors desired from a student. A schema was not merely a concept, but an elaborated mixture of vocabulary, actions, and experience related to the concept. (1966). The dialogue must, of course, honor a child’s need for intellectual scaffolding or a zone of proximal development. A student who clowns around inappropriately in class, for example, may not be “supported” by classmates’ laughter every time it happens, but only some of the time. For teachers, however, the most important finding may be this: partial or intermittent schedules of reinforcement generally cause learning to take longer, but also cause extinction of learning to take longer. But it can also be provoked through pictures or activities that are unfamiliar to students—by engaging students in a community service project, for example, that brings them in contact with people who they had previously considered “strange” or different from themselves. One variety of behaviorism that has proved especially useful to educators is operant conditioning, described in the next section. A sixth-grader takes home a book from the classroom library to read overnight (the operant). Despite this, his work has continued to grow in influence since his death, particularly in the fields of developmental psychology and educational psychology. A child who is usually very restless sits for five minutes doing an assignment (the operant). When a student reads a book for the sheer enjoyment of reading, for example, he is reinforced by the reading itself, and we we can say that his reading is “intrinsically motivated.” More often, however, operant conditioning stimulates both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at the same time. Stated in this general form, individual constructivism is sometimes associated with a well-known educational philosopher of the early twentieth century, John Dewey (1938–1998). Generalization is a lot like the concept of transfer discussed early in this chapter, in that it is about extending prior learning to new situations or contexts. Walden Two. Constructivists agree that learners create knowledge rather than passively receiving it, and that preexisting knowledge plays a crucial role in their learning. Cognitive psychology derives, in part, from Piaget’s stages of development, which depend on biological factors such as age. Using concepts in new situations, solving particular problems. The teacher calls on her and she makes her comment (the reinforcement). Assuming that changes in behavior signify learning, methodological behaviorists see no fundamental difference between human and animal learning processes, and they often conduct comparative research on animals. Bloom’s taxonomy makes useful distinctions among possible kinds of knowledge needed by students, and therefore potentially helps in selecting activities that truly target students’ zones of proximal development in the sense meant by Vygotsky. Social Cognitive Theory. Pages: 1187-1189. (1960). An early expression of this viewpoint came from the American psychologist Jerome Bruner (1960, 1966, 1996), who became convinced that students could usually learn more than had been traditionally expected as long as they were given appropriate guidance and resources. Behaviorist learning theories first emerged in the late 19th century from the work of Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov. Are you looking for colleges with psychology majors? Educational psychology traces its origins to the experimental and empirical work on association and sensory activity by the English anthropologist Sir Francis Galton, and the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who wrote The Contents of Children’s Minds (1883). Ferster, C., Skinner, B. F., Cheney, C., Morse, W., & Dews, D. Schedules of reinforcement. Although many contemporary educational psychologists see cognitivist approaches as outdated, teachers often deliver lectures in front of a classroom and expect students to demonstrate their retention of content through information-oriented tests. and the major learning theories (behaviorism, Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner), as related to educational psychology and the implications to teaching. Psychologists who work in this field are interested in … Presto! From this point of view, therefore, a primary responsibility of teachers is to provide a very rich classroom environment, so that children can interact with it independently and gradually make themselves ready for verbal learning that is increasingly sophisticated. It posits learning as the process of changing a learner’s mental model or schematic understanding of knowledge. Note that the extrinsic part of the reinforcement may sometimes be more easily observed or noticed than the intrinsic part, which by definition may sometimes only be experienced within the individual and not also displayed outwardly. Extinction refers to the disappearance of an operant behavior because of lack of reinforcement. If a teacher praises me for my work, does she do it every time, or only sometimes? (Ed.). Through this process of conditioning, people learn to either repeat or avoid behaviors. Rockmore, T. (2005). Gradually the rat would spend more time near the lever and press the lever more frequently, getting food more frequently. Individuals may also work collaboratively and receive feedback from their peers and instructors. For teachers concerned both about motivating students and about minimizing inappropriate behaviors, this is both good news and bad. New York: Teachers College Press. Mazur, J. If a student gets gold stars for reading library books, then we may find her reading more of other material as well—newspapers, comics, etc.–even if the activity is not reinforced directly. A teacher’s responsibility can therefore include engaging the child in dialogue that uses potentially abstract reasoning, but without expecting the child to understand the abstractions fully at first. For starters, therefore, consider two perspectives about learning, called behaviorism (learning as changes in overt behavior) and constructivism, (learning as changes in thinking). Teachers and volunteers have maintained this … New York: Longman. In the case of issues about classroom learning, for example, educational psychologists have developed a number of theories and concepts that are relevant to classrooms, in that they describe at least some of what usually happens there and offer guidance for assisting learning. In addition to knowing what is to be learned, the expert (i.e. They believe that learning depends on a group’s effective use of cooperation, trust, understanding, and problem-solving to produce beneficial learning outcomes for the community. Today in modern era, education psychology is the foundation of education. Operant conditioning focuses on how the consequences of a behavior affect the behavior over time. Social constructivists such as Vygotsky, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of social interaction in stimulating the development of the child. The “spread” of the new behavior to similar behaviors is called generalization. Departing from the comparative emphasis of behaviorists, cognitivists see human beings as rational creatures quite different from animals. The resulting self-assessment and self-direction of learning often goes by the name of metacognition—an ability to think about and regulate one’s own thinking (Israel, 2005). Partly for this reason, his theory is often considered less about learning and more about development, or long-term change in a person resulting from multiple experiences that may not be planned deliberately. Social and contextual theories are influenced by anthropological and ethnographic research and emphasize the ways environment and social contexts shape one’s learning. Bandura posits a reciprocal determinism between environment, personality, and behavior, arguing that these factors influence one another while also shaping learning situations.