Behaviorism

Origins of behaviorism lay in the Russian psychologist, Pavlov's, work with dogs. At
about the same time as Freud was developing his basic ideas of psychoanalysis in
Vienna, an American psychologist, John Watson, was laying the foundations for the
development of Pavlov's and Freud's work into what was to become a whole new - and
highly influential - school of psychology. Watson argued that the Freudian approach
based on self-observation (introspection) had yielded poor results and that if psychology
was to be considered to be a true science, its data would have to be both observable
and measurable, like Pavlov's. His approach, which was later to become known as
'behaviorism', thus adopted the systematic study of observable behavior as its focus.
Behaviorists argue that nearly all behavior is learned, and that the main function of
psychology should be to seek to discover what the basic laws of learning are. Largely
because of the work of the later American behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner during
the 1950's, behaviorism has had a tremendous influence on educational thinking.

Behavioral psychological theory is based on what is commonly referred to as

stimulus/response or S-R learning. It assumes that learning has occurred if a specific
response is elicited from a learner when he or she is placed in a particular situation and
is given a particular stimulus. Learning of relatively complex behavior can (it is claimed)
be achieved through an appropriate series of stimulus-response situations. At each
stage, the learner must actively participate by performing a set task, after which he or
she is then supplied with immediate feedback in the form of the correct answer. This is
known as successive reinforcement. Skinner also argued that each successive
stimulus-response step should be small enough to ensure that the learner is almost
always correct in their response. Use of these small steps, plus successive
reinforcement, led to what behavioral psychologists believed was an efficient way of
'shaping behavior'. Skinner's original work was with animals, mostly with pigeons. His
later work, which evolved from this, was with humans, and was largely responsible for
triggering the bandwagon programmed learning movement that so dominated
progressive educational thinking during the 1960's and early 1970's. This, in turn, led to
more recent developments such as open learning, distance learning, computer-based
learning and multimedia. Although Skinner's original behavioral model of learning has
since been rejected or at least greatly modified by many educational psychologists, he
has probably had a greater influence on educational thinking than any other
psychologist. Indeed, every teacher who makes use of individualized learning methods
today owes him a very real debt.
Humanistic psychology/approach

Humanistic psychology emerged during the 1950's and 1960's out of a reaction
against the two schools that had dominated psychology up till then - psychoanalysis and
behaviorism. Humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
rejected the psychoanalytical approach as regarding human beings as being little better
then animals, driven and controlled by a bundle of unconscious, instinctive forces. They
similarly rejected the behaviorist approach as regarding people as nothing more than
unthinking products of their environment, shaped and programmed by the patterns of
rewards and punishments that they receive in the course of their lives. Humanistic
psychologists rejected these two models of man in favour of one which emphasized the
uniqueness and essential 'humanness' of every individual person, and concerned
themselves mainly with concepts such as self-fulfilment and actualisation, the
importance of subjective experience, and the development of human values. As an ex-
Freudian, Rogers developed a new, 'client-centred therapy' in which he aimed to give
his patients the self-knowledge and skills needed to find their own solutions to their
problems rather than simply telling them what to do.

Humanistic psychology has had a considerable influence on progressive educational

thinking since the early 1970's, when the early research findings of people like Rogers
started to feed back into educational development. Just as the earlier work of Skinner
led to the programmed learning movement, so the work of Rogers led to the modern
student-centred learning approach. In this, the teacher is no longer seen as an expert
who hands down knowledge and understanding to the student. Rather, the teacher
facilitates learning, first providing the student with guidance on how to learn and then
providing a variety of learning opportunities and experiences through which such
learning can occur. One of the most important manifestations of the student-centred
learning approach has been the dramatic increase in the use of group learning since the
mid-1970's, and the more recent appearance of flexible learning and competence-based
learning. This last attempts to link student-centred learning with behaviourist
reinforcement.

Cognitive psychology/approach

The early behavioural psychologists treated the human mind as a 'black box', being
concerned only with the relationship between the input to the system (the stimulus) and
the output from the system (the response). None of the processes that occurred
between the stimulus and the response were considered to be the legitimate concern of
psychology, since they could not be directly observed. Dissatisfaction with this strict
view, together with an increasing realisation that internal higher-order mental processes
are an important part of psychology, has since led to the development of cognitive
psychology. This is concerned with what actually happens within the mind/brain system
when we think, reason, remember, develop language skills, etc, as well as with how we
process information received from the outside world. Cognitive psychology is currently
having an increasing influence on educational thinking, especially through the
burgeoning field of artificial intelligence and the design of expert systems.

Intelligence . A concept which does not fit neatly into any of the above perspectives of
psychology but which has profound implications for educational practice is the idea of
intelligence, whereby verbal, numerical, reasoning and spatial skills can be measured
to give a quotient of a person's ability. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is supposedly normally
distributed amongst the population, and is the concept that ostensibly justifies selection
at both secondary school and university level.

Gagné's hierarchy of learning

In 1956, the American educational psychologist Robert M. Gagné proposed a system of

classifying different types of learning in terms of the degree of complexity of the mental
processes involved. He identified eight basic types, and arranged these in the hierarchy
shown in Figure 1. According to Gagné, the higher orders of learning in this hierarchy
build upon the lower levels, requiring progressively greater amounts of previous learning
for their success. The lowest four orders tend to focus on the more behavioural aspects
of learning, while the highest four focus on the more cognitive aspects.

increasing complexity

Figure 1 : Gagné's hierarchy of learning:

Let us now take a closer look at Gagné's eight categories of learning.

1. Signal Learning. This is the simplest form of learning, and consists essentially of the
classical conditioning first described by the behavioural psychologist Pavlov. In this, the
subject is 'conditioned' to emit a desired response as a result of a stimulus that would
not normally produce that response. This is done by first exposing the subject to the
chosen stimulus (known as the conditioned stimulus) along with another stimulus
(known as the unconditioned stimulus) which produces the desired response naturally;
after a certain number of repetitions of the double stimulus, it is found that the subject
emits the desired response when exposed to the conditioned stimulus on its own. The
applications of classical conditioning in facilitating human learning are, however, very
limited.

2. Stimulus-response learning. This somewhat more sophisticated form of learning,

which is also known as operant conditioning, was originally developed by Skinner. It
involves developing desired stimulus-response bonds in the subject through a carefully-
planned reinforcement schedule based on the use of 'rewards' and 'punishments'.
Operant conditioning differs from classical conditioning in that the reinforcing agent (the
'reward' or 'punishment') is presented after the response. It is this type of conditioning
that forms the basis of programmed learning in all its various manifestations.
3. Chaining. This is a more advanced form of learning in which the subject develops
the ability to connect two or more previously-learned stimulus-response bonds into a
linked sequence. It is the process whereby most complex psychomotor skills (eg riding
a bicycle or playing the piano) are learned.

4. Verbal association. This is a form of chaining in which the links between the items
being connected are verbal in nature. Verbal association is one of the key processes in
the development of language skills.

5. Discrimination learning. This involves developing the ability to make appropriate

(different) responses to a series of similar stimuli that differ in a systematic way. The
process is made more complex (and hence more difficult) by the phenomenon of
interference, whereby one piece of learning inhibits another. Interference is thought to
be one of the main causes of forgetting.

6. Concept learning. This involves developing the ability to make a consistent

response to different stimuli that form a common class or category of some sort. It forms
the basis of the ability to generalise, classify etc.

7. Rule learning. This is a very-high-level cognitive process that involves being able to
learn relationships between concepts and apply these relationships in different
situations, including situations not previously encountered. It forms the basis of the
learning of general rules, procedures, etc.

8. Problem solving. This is the highest level of cognitive process according to Gagné.
It involves developing the ability to invent a complex rule, algorithm or procedure for the
purpose of solving one particular problem, and then using the method to solve other
problems of a similar nature.

Jean Piaget

In 1969, the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget presented a somewhat

different model of learning, analyzing it in terms of the various stages of human
development rather than in terms of basic types of learning. According to Piaget, a child
goes through four distinct intellectual stages between birth and adulthood, as shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2 : Piaget's model of cognitive development

Let us now look at these various stages in more detail.

1. Sensorimotor stage. This is the stage when babies learn to differentiate between
themselves and objects outside their bodies. They learn that external objects exist, even
though they are not continuously recorded by the senses, and eventually develop an
awareness that a familiar object (such as a rattle) remains 'the same object' regardless
of changes of location and orientation. They also start to develop basic ideas about
cause and effect (eg, that their rattle makes a pleasing noise whenever they hold it and
move their hand). Piaget calls these first ideas which babies develop about how to deal
with their world action schemas. Throughout the sensorimotor stage, the baby remains
totally egocentric, being completely incapable of taking anyone else's needs or interests
into account.

2. Pre-operational stage. During the first two years or so of this stage, the child
remains highly egocentric, being intrinsically incapable of looking at situations from
other people's points of view. It also tends to classify objects in terms of a single
dominant feature, so that if A is like B in one respect, it must also be like B in other
respects too. From about four upwards, the child starts to be able to think in terms of
classes, to see relationships between objects, and to handle basic number concepts,
but remains essentially intuitive, since it may not be aware of what the classification and
ordering systems involve. During the later years of this stage, the child progressively
develops the concepts of conservation of mass (by about 5), weight (by about 6) and
volume (by about 7). The child also starts to become progressively less egocentric - a
process known as decentring -and to develop a sense of right and wrong, although it
tends to believe that its way of thinking what is right and what is wrong will automatically
be shared by everyone else.

3. Concrete operational stage. During this stage, the child develops the ability to
classify objects by several features and to think logically about objects and events. It
must, however, be exposed to practical examples in order to understand the differences
between such objects and classes, since it cannot yet think in abstract terms. During
this stage, the child progressively acquires the ability to use logical operations such as
reversibility (in arithmetic), classification (organising objects into hierarchies of classes)
and serration (organizing objects into ordered series, such as increasing size). The child
also continues to become progressively less egocentric, and to develop a progressively
more sophisticated sense of right and wrong.

4. Formal operational stage. From around puberty, children become progressively

more adult-like in both their behaviour and their ways of thinking. They develop the
ability to think conceptually and abstractly, so that they can work out things in their
heads, without having to see or handle the actual objects. They also acquire the ability
to formulate and test hypotheses, and develop a progressively more adult world view
and sense of morals.
Kolb's experiential cycle

D.A. Kolb

Research has shown that all ages of learner tend to learn much more effectively if they
are actively involved in the learning process rather than simply being passive
receivers of instruction. Thus, in recent years there has been a progressive move away
from traditional, teacher-centred expository instruction towards student-centred
experiential learning of one form or another. One of the most influential figures in this
movement has been the American educationalist D.A. Kolb, who, in 1984 presented a
cyclical model of experiential learning. This is shown in simplified form in Figure 3.

Figure 3 : Kolb's experiential learning cycle

Let us now see what each stage involves in practice.

Stage 1 : Planning the next learning experience. Kolb believes that the learner must
be involved in the planning of the learning experience if experiential learning is to be
fully effective. This can be done in a variety of ways, eg through action planning or
preparing a learning contract. The former may involve nothing more than jotting down a
set of things to do, or discussing the proposed procedure with the instructor. In either
case, it is useful for individual learners to set their own objectives for inclusion in the
action plan. If a formal learning contract is used, this should be drawn up using a
standard check list, and should be agreed with the instructor before it is implemented.

Stage 2 : The actual learning experience. Kolb maintains that learners should
become actively involved in the exploration of the learning experience if they are to get
the most out of it. This can again involve drawing up a check list of things that the
learner should try to do, eg active observation of what is going on, producing a log or
record of some sort, and formulating appropriate questions.

Stage 3 : Reflecting on what happened. This is generally acknowledged to be the

most difficult stage of the Kolb cycle, but is probably the most crucial of all. Students
and practitioners should reflect on what they learned, how they learned it, why they
learned it, whether the learning experience could have been more effective, and so on.
Discussion of these reflections with one's instructor can prove extremely helpful, as can
discussion with one's peers - either informally or at a formal debriefing session of some
sort.

Stage 4 : Studying the theory. This is a stage that is very often left out of experiential
learning programmes, but is again extremely important if the learners are to gain the
maximum possible benefit from such programmes. The main object of this stage is to
link the actual learning experience with the theories that were meant to underpin it,
and/or with a greater understanding of the theories that the learning experience was
designed to illustrate. Again, discussion with one's instructor can prove extremely
helpful during this stage of the Kolb cycle, as can discussion with one's fellow learners.