Learning and Teaching Behaviorism Essay

Submitted By mitchum1997
Words: 645
Pages: 3

Behaviourism
Behaviourism is an approach that says that behaviour is learnt like Pavlov and his dog he conditioned his dog how to react to a certain stimulus. Skinners theory of negative reinforcement will also apply in education as if something bad is happening then it can be stopped if there was something there to counteract it.
In education the teacher is the one who is teaching behaviour to their students.
An example of skinners theory of negative reinforcement within education could be if a child has done something wrong then something may be taken away from them such as golden time at the end of week where all the children can have fun and games but the child who has done something wrong then they won't be able to participate in that. This could make the child think again when they may be doing something wrong because they will know that they won't be able to enjoy themselves at the end of the week because they have been misbehaving. A positive reinforcement could be getting a sweet or a prize at the end of the week for being good, this can motivate others in the class to behave more so they can get a prize.
In higher education it can be more difficult to get student to behave with sweets and prizes so to them it may be as simple as doing a good pice of work it can make them more motivated to do well so they may want to pay attention more in class and not misbehave so they can get the best possible grade.

Humanistic approach
Humanistic educators believe that grades are irrelevant and that only self-evaluation is meaningful. Grading encourages students to work for a grade and not for intrinsic satisfaction. Humanistic educators disagree with routine testing because they teach students rote memorization as opposed to meaningful learning. They also believe testing doesn't provide sufficient educational feedback to the teacher. Humanistic educators believe that both feelings and knowledge are important to the learning process. Unlike traditional educators, humanistic teachers do not separate the cognitive and affective domains. This aspect also relates to the curriculum in the sense that lessons and activities provide focus on various aspects of the student and not just rote memorization through note taking and lecturing.

Social learning theory has numerous implications for classroom use.
Students often learn a great deal simply by observing other people.
Describing the consequences of behavior is can effectively increase the appropriate behaviors and decrease inappropriate ones. This can involve discussing with learners about