Vygotsky, L. (1978). 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. Behaviorism defines learning as observable behavioral change that occurs in response to environmental stimuli. The theoretical differences are related to three ideas in particular: the relationship of learning and long-term development, the role or meaning of generalizations and abstractions during development, and the mechanism by which development occurs. Operant conditioning can encourage intrinsic motivation, to the extent that the reinforcement for an activity is the activity itself. 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. Online psychology degrees are versatile programs, preparing students for a range of careers. (Eds.). Pinpointing the most appropriate learning activities to accomplish this objective remains the job of the teacher-expert (that’s you), but the learning itself has to be accomplished by the student. The selection of behavior: The operant behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. 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. Extinction refers to the disappearance of an operant behavior because of lack of reinforcement. A teacher’s effort to explicitly address the importance of lesson material reflects the impact of social and contextual learning theory. These are cyclical stages that function as an ongoing feedback loop, which in turn allows learners to improve skills and apply new or recent knowledge. Consider the following examples. Gradually the rat would spend more time near the lever and press the lever more frequently, getting food more frequently. Bruner, J. On constructivist epistemology. Ferster, C., Skinner, B. F., Cheney, C., Morse, W., & Dews, D. Schedules of reinforcement. From this social constructivist perspective, learning is like assisted performance (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Prospective college students researching academic programs should consider our ranked lists of schools. Distinguish parts of information, a concept, or a procedure. Like Piaget, Vygotsky believed that children learn actively and through hands-on experiences. Meanwhile, negative stimuli — or “punishments” — discourage the behaviors associated with those stimuli. Motivations, Theories and Research for Educational Psychology Motivation is an internal state that activates, guides and sustains behavior. The culture of education. (1996). Explain why Goldilocks liked the little bear’s chair the best. 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. 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. Today in modern era, education psychology is the foundation of education. List three things Goldilocks did in the three bears’ house. The bad news is that students’ negative behaviors may take longer to extinguish as well, because those too may have developed through partial reinforcement. Social and contextual theories are influenced by anthropological and ethnographic research and emphasize the ways environment and social contexts shape one’s learning. Meanwhile, behaviorist insights underlie many of the teaching methods still used today in homes, classrooms, workplaces, and other contexts. In K-12 schools, these experiences often take the form of field trips or projects. New York: Longman. In addition to knowing what is to be learned, the expert (i.e. 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. Such reasoning is regarded as an outgrowth of years of interacting with the environment very concretely. This page includes the best colleges for psychology in the country. He or she must not only have knowledge and skill, but also know how to arrange experiences that make it easy and safe for learners to gain knowledge and skill themselves. As students gain experience as students, they become able to think about how they themselves learn best, and you (as the teacher) can encourage such self-reflection as one of your goals for their learning. The preschooler who initially generalizes the concept of bird to include any flying object, for example, eventually revises the concept to include only particular kinds of flying objects, such as robins and sparrows, and not others, like mosquitoes or airplanes. Reinforcement was associated with pressing a lever when, and only when, the light was on. A student who used to be reinforced for acting like a clown in class may stop clowning once classmates stop paying attention to the antics. New York: Macmillan. As it turns out, many theories, concepts, and ideas from educational psychology do make it through the “screen” of education, meaning that they are consistent with the professional priorities of teachers and helpful in solving important problems of classroom teaching. In operant conditioning, what is not overgeneralized (i.e. The Student development chapter was appropriate for a course on educational psychology, but may present too much information for more introductory courses. However, teachers’ efforts to balance lectures with activities that encourage mental processing also reflect cognitivist influence. For now, look briefly at just two. Calling on a student to speak, for example, can be a cue that if the student does say something at that moment, then he or she may be reinforced with praise or acknowledgment. This school of thought emphasizes behavior’s learned causes over its biological one; therefore, behaviorism deeply values the ability of education to shape individuals. First, the process is widespread in classrooms—probably more widespread than teachers realize. Walden Two. The psychology of intelligence. The image of the teacher therefore is more one of collaborating with students’ ideas rather than challenging their ideas or experiences. of the Special Interest Group on Teaching Educational Psychology (TEP SIG) sponsored by the American Educational Research Association. Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice, 2nd edition. Rockmore, T. (2005). Discrimination means learning not to generalize. Many teachers try to incorporate multifaceted, experiential learning environments that assist students in forging meaningful connections between abstract and practical concepts. Frequently or only once in awhile? Using a process often called “programmatic instruction,” educators use operative conditioning to reinforce positive and correct negative learnings that often accompany classical conditioning. For convenience these are called psychological constructivism and social constructivism (or sometimes sociocultural theory). Operant conditioning focuses on how the consequences of a behavior affect the behavior over time. She teaches courses in educational psychology and educational research; her research interests focus on how motivational theory can be used to create learning-focused classrooms. As assimilation and accommodation about birds and other flying objects operate together over time, the child does not just revise and add to his vocabulary (such as acquiring a new word, “butterfly”), but also adds and remembers relevant new experiences and actions. Hull’s Deductive Theory. Piaget, J. By placing an emphasis on activities that prompt effective perception and processing, educators can activate the learner’s prior experience, demonstrate a new skill for the learner, ask the learner to practice the skill, and then invite application of those skills in practical scenarios. This fact makes sense, given the nature of public education: to a large extent, teaching is about making certain consequences (like praise or marks) depend on students’ engaging in certain activities (like reading certain material or doing assignments). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Presto! This fact makes the psychological constructivism valuable in its own way, even though it (and a few other learning theories as well) may seem to omit mentioning teachers, parents, or experts in detail. (Ed.). Israel, S. In this view, cognition and learning are understood as interactions between the individual and a situation; knowledge is situated in — and a product of — the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. (Ed.). 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. The experientialist understanding of the learning process as a dynamic feedback loop often shapes how educators plan their lessons. Mental-discipline theories; Naturalistic theories; Apperception theories; Conditioning and behaviourist theories; Cognitive theories; Maturation and readiness theories; Structural theories Classmates sitting around them giggle in response (the reinforcement). Combining elements or parts into a new object, idea, or procedure. They can be confusing because the ideas have names that sound rather ordinary, but that have special meanings with the framework of operant theory. Skinner, B. F. (1948). Novice → Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) ← Expert. These requirements sound, of course, a lot like the requirements for classroom teaching. Sociocultural theory Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is a constructivist theory which emphasises the importance of social interactions and sociocultural factors for learning. For example, constructivist influence shapes the common teaching practice of posing questions or problems and then inviting students to answer and solve them in their own ways. 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. Constructivism is also evident in popular classroom practices, such as having students create their own questions, welcoming multiple points of view and intelligence styles, and using group work as a collaborative learning tool. 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. Whether you think of yourself as a psychological constructivist or a social constructivist, there are strategies for helping students help in develop their thinking—in fact the strategies constitute a major portion of this book, and are a major theme throughout the entire preservice teacher education programs. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. The original research about this model of learning was not done with people, but with animals. Meanwhile, colleges offer undergraduates internships and study abroad programs, and graduate schools often incorporate practicum experiences that allow students to apply what they have learned in other courses. They were popularized during the first half of the 20th century through the work of John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, and others. Dewey, J. 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. Vygotsky made the reasonable proposal that when a child (or novice) is learning a new skill or solving a new problem, he or she can perform better if accompanied and helped by an expert than if performing alone—though still not as well as the expert. Explanations and illustrations of reasons for a lesson typically improve student motivation, helping students visualize or actually practice using this knowledge in practical contexts. In a comment that has been quoted widely (and sometimes disputed), Bruner wrote: “We [constructivist educators] begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” (1960, p. 33). The idea of “democracy,” for example, may be experienced simply as an empty concept. 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. The goal of educational psychology is to create a positive student-teacher relationship. John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner. Gruber, H. & Voneche, J. In classrooms, cues are sometimes provided by the teacher deliberately, and sometimes simply by the established routines of the class. If I am student with Mr Horrible as my teacher, does he scowl every time he is in the classroom, or only sometimes? Even as a beginner, there are times when it is more important to be able to describe how to drive or to cook than to actually do these things. Learning and behavior, 6th edition. Sometimes they are controlled by the activity itself (as in the track team example), or by classmates (as in the “giggling” example). This compensation does not influence our school rankings, resource guides, or other editorially-independent information published on this site. Educational psychology has seen rapid growth and development as a profession in the last twenty years. The following overview summarizes these five major theory groups and outlines the key theorists, definition, history, principles, and applications for each. This article throws light upon the top five theories of learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. The efforts of today’s teachers to connect students’ new and preexisting knowledge aligns with social and contextual learning. (2001). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 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. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Other schools of thought critique behaviorism for underemphasizing biological and unconscious factors, denying free will, equating humans with animals, and overlooking internal learning processes or types of learning that occur without reinforcement. 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. He or his assistants would put them in a cage that contained little except a lever and a small tray just big enough to hold a small amount of food. Thomas Sergiovanni seconds this view, arguing that schools and other communities need to shift toward this approach before they can see substantial improvement. (1960). Skinner observed the behavior of rather tame laboratory rats (not the unpleasant kind that sometimes live in garbage dumps). The lever released a small pellet of food, which the rat would promptly eat. Experientialist David A. Kolb identifies four stages in this learning process: experiencing, absorbing and reflecting on experience, conceptualizing experience, and testing concepts in other situations. These changes allow you to transfer some of your responsibilities for arranging learning to the students themselves. Abstract thinking is possible, according to psychological constructivism, but it emerges relatively slowly and relatively late in development, after a person accumulates considerable concrete experience. Constructivism influences the lesson plan methodologies employed by many teachers today. Rather than measuring learning based on observable behaviors, cognitivists evaluate learning based on a learner’s demonstration of knowledge and understanding. He called such support instructional scaffolding—literally meaning a temporary framework like the ones used to construct buildings and that allow a much stronger structure to be built within it. If a student tells a joke to classmates and they laugh at it, then the student is likely to tell more jokes in the future and so on. 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. Pages: 1187-1189. In more everyday (but also less precise) terms, Piaget might then say that “the child has learned more about birds.”, Exhibit 1 diagrams the relationships among the Piagetian version of psychological constructivist learning. A student who knows few terms for the species studied in biology unit (a problem at Bloom’s knowledge and comprehension levels), for example, may initially need support at remembering and defining the terms before he or she can make useful comparisons among species (Bloom’s analysis level). Learning involves the integration of information into a stored and usable body of knowledge. Key Theories in Educational Psychology 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. Two theoretical perspectives within educational psychology are the cognitive perspective and the behavioral perspective. The dialogue must, of course, honor a child’s need for intellectual scaffolding or a zone of proximal development. These theories emphasize instinctual or inborn needs and drives that influence our behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Select the part of the story where Goldilocks seemed most comfortable. 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. 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. During learning, knowledge or skill is found initially “in” the expert helper. 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. Piaget called each mental representation a schema (all of them together—the plural—were called schemata). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. It begins with the idea that certain consequences tend to make certain behaviors happen more frequently. And there definitely are many times when reflecting on and thinking about teaching can improve teaching itself. Teachers work toward their desired objectives by using external stimuli, explaining and demonstrating a skill or behavior, and then inviting student practice and providing feedback that reinforces the behaviors or skills they wish students to learn or unlearn. Understanding facts, interpreting information. Frequently or rarely? 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. A teacher’s primary responsibility is therefore to provide very rich opportunities for dialogue, both among children and between individual children and the teacher. Bandura posits a reciprocal determinism between environment, personality, and behavior, arguing that these factors influence one another while also shaping learning situations. Behaviorism is a perspective on learning that focuses on changes in individuals’ observable behaviors— changes in what people say or do. Language and dialogue therefore are primary, and development is seen as happening as a result—the converse of the sequence pictured by Piaget. This latter fact may contribute to an impression that sometimes occurs, that operant conditioning is really just “bribery in disguise,” that only the external reinforcements operate on students’ behavior. A kindergarten child raises her hand in response to the teacher’s question about a story (the operant). Robert Slavin. In operant conditioning, the schedule of reinforcement refers to the pattern or frequency by which reinforcement is linked with the operant. Applied behavior analysis for teachers, 7th edition. Young children, for example, can not only engage in science experiments like creating a “volcano” out of baking soda and water, but also discuss and speculate about their observations of the experiment. Guthrie’s Contiguous Conditioning Theory 4. One of the most widely used frameworks for organizing content, for example, is a classification scheme proposed by the educator Benjamin Bloom, published with the somewhat imposing title of Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Handbook #1: Cognitive Domain (Bloom, et al., 1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Bruner, J. In most of them the operant behavior tends to become more frequent on repeated occasions: These examples are enough to make several points about operant conditioning. Assimilation is therefore a bit like the idea of generalization in operant conditioning, or the idea of transfer described 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). New York: Copley Publishing Group. In both the psychological and social versions of constructivist learning, the novice is not really “taught” so much as simply allowed to learn. Constructivist theories take a learner-centered approach, in which the teacher serves as a guide — rather than the source of — the student’s learning. Social constructivism — associated with Vygotsky’s emphasis on social context — posits that students learn naturally through a process of discovery. Teachers and volunteers have maintained this … Educational psychology can influence programs, curricula, and lesson development, as well as classroom management approaches. Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Robert Mills Gagne, Marriner David Merill, Charles Reigeluth, and Roger Schank. 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. At most it might be misconstrued as an oversimplified, overly concrete idea—as “just” about taking votes in class, for instance. Although Dewey himself did not use the term constructivism in most of his writing, his point of view amounted to a type of constructivism, and he discussed in detail its implications for educators. (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. Departing from the comparative emphasis of behaviorists, cognitivists see human beings as rational creatures quite different from animals. Note that in all of these examples, focusing attention on behavior instead of on “thoughts” may have been desirable at that moment, but not necessarily desirable indefinitely or all of the time. See below. 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. Third, teachers are not the only persons controlling reinforcements. How we think. Explore and learn 100+ theories here. This framework often is called social constructivism or sociocultural theory. A seventh-grade boy makes a silly face (the operant) at the girl sitting next to him. 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. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Someone who has played very little chess, for example, will probably compete against an opponent better if helped by an expert chess player than if competing against the opponent alone. 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. Educational Psychology, Volume 40, Issue 10 (2020) Editorial. Behaviorist learning theories first emerged in the late 19th century from the work of Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov. Educational psychology involves the study of how people learn, including topics such as student outcomes, instructional procedures, personal differences in learning, gifted learners or learning disabilities. At any given time, cognitive equilibrium consists of an ever-growing repertoire of mental representations for objects and experiences. If the expert is skilled and motivated to help, then the expert arranges experiences that let the novice to practice crucial skills or to construct new knowledge. First emerging in the late 20th century, social and contextual learning theories challenge the individual-focused approaches evident in both constructivism and cognitivism. A teacher can facilitate the learning process by engaging students through an experience, but they cannot control exactly what students learn from that experience. Rogers posits that humans are more likely to learn and retain information when they participate actively in the learning process. Skinner called the changes in the rat’s behavior an example of operant conditioning, and gave special names to the different parts of the process. Even older youth are thought to reason in this way much, or even all of the time. 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. EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Educational psychology is the study of how people learn. (2005). Key concepts about operant conditioning: Operant conditioning is made more complicated, but also more realistic, by several additional ideas. This was because part of what reinforced their behavior was the behavior itself—whether it was making faces, running a mile, or contributing to a discussion. 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. In this regard the expert is a bit like the coach of an athlete—offering help and suggesting ways of practicing, but never doing the actual athletic work himself or herself. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. A child who is usually very restless sits for five minutes doing an assignment (the operant). Decide whether Goldilocks was a bad girl, and justify your position. 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. 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). Positive stimuli — or “rewards” — create positive associations between the reward and a given behavior; these associations prompt one to repeat that behavior. Behaviorist models of learning may be helpful in understanding and influencing what students do, but teachers usually also want to know what students are thinking, and how to enrich what students are thinking. For this goal of teaching, some of the best help comes from constructivism, which is a perspective on learning focused on how students actively create (or “construct”) knowledge out of experiences. For another example: when I reached the point in life where I began cooking meals for myself, I was more focused on whether I could actually produce edible food in a kitchen than with whether I could explain my recipes and cooking procedures to others. Conditioning with a laboratory rat behavior to similar behaviors is called generalization sense of the comments above indicate, and. Development as a result of one ’ s thoughts selection of behavior: the ). … educational psychology theory into practice by Robert E Slavin, 1977 the first set of theories focuses changes! 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