Learning and development involve behaviourism and the social constructivism. Behaviourism has several approaches to learning, which are classified into different types that include social learning theory, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning theories. These theories play their own roles in the understanding the learning development and give a major influence on the school. The classical conditioning is a reflective learning mechanism in which the stimulus acquires the ability to suggest a response that had been initially suggested by another stimulus according to (Goubert et al, 2011, pp.167-174).
The classical conditioning is not a voluntary behaviour rather it is based on an automatic or reflective response. For instance, the subject, which can be the human beings or animals, can acquire the behaviour that they did not want to exhibit through a training or through a temporary motivation that leads into a temporary response.
Concisely, another behaviourism learning is the operant conditioning invented by B.F Skinner, who attained that one, should focus on the observable or external causes of a behaviour who was supported by Walker (2017). The operant conditioning process attempts to modify the behaviour by invoking a negative or positive support to the participant. In this process, a link is established between the particular behaviour and the anticipated consequence through operant conditioning.
Contrary to the classical conditioning, the operant conditioning is a voluntary process where the participants get to understand the consequences of observing a particular behaviour or the consequences of foregoing the expected behaviour (Blackman, 2017). For instance, this can be observed in a school set up where the students are awarded points for behaving well in class as a form of a positive support that will influence others to change their behaviour. Another example is a restraining order for leaving the class during the break for students misbehaving in class as a form of a negative punishment that would help to maintain order in class.
Moreover, another behaviourism learning theory is the social learning theory. Allan (2017) acknowledges that people can learn a different behaviour through watching and observation of a certain performance related to a certain behaviour. It is also referred to as observational learning, which is mostly exhibited in children as their main source of learning as they heavily rely on observation and imitation to acquire new behaviour. For instance, Bandura did an experiment with the Bobo Doll regarding the social learning theory (Bandura, 2018, p.63).
An adult was included in the experiment who was to be very aggressive towards the doll as the children observe. Afterwards, Bandura allowed the children play in a closed room with the doll. Surprisingly, the children were observed to do the exact thing the adult did to the doll as they aggressively acted towards the doll the same way the adult did. However, after the experiment, it was able distinguish the three basic observational learning models. These included a Live Model, which involves an actual person performance a particular behaviour. A verbal model of instructions explained by (Debiec and Jacek, 2017, pp.546-555), where the details and descriptions of a certain behaviour are clearly outlined, and a Symbolic Model that includes a real or virtual character that demonstrates a certain behaviour through literature such as books, articles, and electronic materials such as the radio and the television among others.
Additionally, Bandura helped to understand that not all the external behaviour could be observed and learned successfully. He also claimed that learning cannot always result in automatic behavioural changes and that the modelling process has steps to be observed for the social learning process to be effectively successful supported by (Backhouse et al., 2017, pp.7-22). The first step is attention. The social learning theory dictates that for a person to learn, they must pay attention and avoid any form of distraction for the learning from the model be successful. The next step is retention of the newly acquired behaviour. This is important, as it would enable the participant to observe the behaviour without the need to go back to the model for observation once again.
The third step was identified as the reproduction step. This is to help the participant to demonstrate the behaviour after observing and retaining it. Finally, the last step is motivation, which helps to repeat the behaviour or maintain a certain expected trait in the human behaviour over a given period or permanently. Moreover, this is where the support and punishment are brought in to reinforce the expected mode of behaviour (Pansini et al., 2018). This is what behaviourism entails, it is based on conditioning and most importantly, that comes from other people.
Another learning and development theory is the social constructivism. This theory implies that people learn and develop their behaviour through the social and cultural set up that revolves around them. According to (Freidus and Helen, 2017, pp.103-116), learning is depicted to be a continuous process that advances from the existing cultural and social environment as nothing is learnt from scratch. The theory focuses the successful learner as the one who creates and comes up with new ideas from the old ideas and utilizes the new experience in understanding the human behaviour.
Therefore, the social constructivism learners’ usually view the world they live in as a subjective tool to enable them to acquire knowledge. According to this theory, the learners are expected to develop their own way to view the world. Furthermore, the social constructivism theory maintains that knowledge acquisition in real life is through the adaptive problem based learning where people share their experiences through discussions, where the problem is matched with the new ideas through group communications (Loseke, 2017). Learning is not seen as a passive experience in response to certain external forces but rather a significant socially engaging process. Therefore, the theory recognizes the individuality and the difficulties faced by the individual values and develops a reward as part of an essential learning process.
However, while behaviourism and social constructivism are a good mechanism for controlling and influencing human behaviour, they are more effective to animals than to human beings. This can be seen as a weakness of the behaviourism and social constructivism as these theories have mostly been experimented on animals more than on human beings (Rieger et al., 2017, pp.57-62). The results have shown that for the animals the newly acquired behaviour is seemingly more permanent to animals than to the people as people are prone to quickly adapting to newly different behaviour concerning the environment or condition that are exposed to, unlike the animals.
For instance, restraining children from streaming the daily shows on Netflix to make them finish their homework as a negative punishment will not last for a long time. Without daily supervision, the children will most definitely adapt to the fact that they cannot watch the shows and still not to do the homework. This implies that a third mechanism will be brought in such as a punishment for failure to finish their homework. Unlike the animals especially the dogs, they exhibit loyalty where they stick to the newly acquired behaviour from their trainer for a very long time.
The approach of observation theory is quite more useful to human as it is the first approach that people acquire behaviour in their lifetime as claimed by (Rosenberg, 2018). The people tend to maintain their first acquired traits through observations more than the other approaches explained in the other theories. For instance, the kids born in an environment exhibited by bullies and morally poor behaviour are most likely to end up growing into the same characters as well as the kids born in a caring environment are likely to replicate the same in their entire lifetime.
The Social constructivism approach theory has some advantages and disadvantages as acknowledged by (Miller and Gale, 2017). For instance, this approach helps students to understand the topic by discovering the information. The social constructivism approach is likely to be more effective if the teachers can get to assess whether students are doing the expected things or observing the code of conduct. This is because some students require strict supervisory measures for them to perform well. However, social constructivism can be tailored towards encouragement among the students to device their own conclusions from their experiences which can give self-confidence and motivation among them. Social constructivism can also help students to improve their problem-solving skills and to think further.
This is because in order to get to the conclusion they must work. It also excites students to explore, experiment and do research on their own about the topic that interests them. Another advantage is that it will encourage the students to work with other people and develop a strong teamwork spirit among them (Barak, 2017, pp.283-303). This will help them to prepare for facing issues in the real life by teaching them how to deal with complex issues. However, there are some disadvantages to this approach. One of the disadvantages is that not all students have similar the previous knowledge. Depending on from where students come they have different experiences and knowledge on the different topic. Every student learns differently, and they been raised differently.
This can effect on their ability to learn, for example, amount of attention that parents paid for their students can be different. The parents who pay extra attention to their students they will more educational experiences and knowledge. The learning process might be greatly affected for those students who require more support for their educational knowledge and therefore for the entire team as well. For this, much effort students need to be self-motivated which is the higher level of needs from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Stoyanov, 2017). The reason why students need to be self-motivated because it requires much more effort than normal learning. For example, talking not just listening, writing not just reading, interaction, problem-solving and other approaches that involve.
Students will come up with the conclusion on their own by reading, writing, speaking and listening. It involves students into education and work by themselves; rather than doing what they have been told to do. Listen to the teachers and make notes. Social constructivism approach for those who learn because they want to learn. This is the difference between social constructivism and behaviourism. In behaviourism, people do what they have been told to do and in social constructivism, people develop and come up with the conclusion on their own (Jessor, 2017, pp.207-215). The behaviourism is the better approach to behave properly in class, but for the education purpose, the social constructivism is a better approach.
I have also experienced behaviourism and social constructivism in my educational experience. Both the approaches were used at different times and had different impacts. One of the major impacts was that l greatly improved in my grades due to the operant conditioning in the behaviourism approach where my parents would take me to a trip for performing well or not if l did not (Davey, 2017). However, it is important to acknowledge that different approaches work for different students. Similarly, some rewards might work, and some might not. For example, when I was in school the red card detention for being late never used to work for me. We used to get a red card for being late to school and as a punishment, we had stay after school for an hour. The reason why it did not work for me or for my friends, because we used to stay after school for a couple of hours to do our work.
The red card detention also took place in a computer room. It was beneficial for us because in red card detention (which was only for 1 hour), we had to stay quiet and do our work. The school used this form of punishment so that the students can be punctual. Staying after school for red card detention helped us with our study, but it never influenced much on some students to adapt to the behavioural change of punctuality. This is because some students had adapted to staying an extra hour after the classes to compensate for an hour wasted in the morning. The punishment was effective for students who would prefer working at home than in school which is clearly explained by (Frost and Aaron, 2015, p.118). However, this punishment had an impact to study more, but it did not totally improve my punctuality for the daily schedule at school.
Moreover, the school made use of rewards as a motivation to the students for remarkable performance as well. This was a great motivation for me as for each stage there was a different type of rewards. For example, in year 7 and 8 we used to vivo point. Vivo point is a website, where teachers and students had their own login. Teachers used to give us points for behaving nicely in class, working correctly and for having good attendance. This reward did work for me because I used to collect the points. Another reward was teachers used to send ‘Good News’ postcard to our houses so, our parents can see it. According to (Payne, 2015, pp.483-504), rewards and sanctions can greatly influence behavioural modification in human beings. However, this only worked in the first year because I had many postcards at home that I did not want anymore.
These small methods of rewarding do work for some students but only for a certain period. As student advance in age, the type of rewards and the influence of these rewards towards behavioural change diminish. This calls for a change in the type of reward to be given at different stages of studying. My school tried different things to keep students motivated in different years. For example, only sixth form students were allowed to have lunch passes, so students can go out at lunchtime. As an operant conditioning mechanism, in order to get lunch pass students attendance should be more than 94%, else there would be a decline in being issued a lunch pass. This method worked well for me as l had to keep a record of 100% attendance so that l could enjoy the privileges that came along with the lunch pass. The idea of going out from school at lunchtime motivated most of the students who opted to attend the classes to achieve the required attendance percentage.
In addition, some students did try to improve their attendance because their friends had the lunch pass. For example, my friend’s attendance was 88% so she did not get the lunch pass. For this reason, she improved her attendance and got the lunch pass in the end. Therefore, behaviourism especially operant conditioning can be effective in school when applied correctly to alter or improve the student’s behaviour (Mason, 2017, pp.1-3).
However, in my school, there was less use of social constructivism. This is because we used to listen to teachers and learn from that. We never had much of group discussion, this might depend on the subjects that I did. This is because in Business studies we used to listen to the teacher and do our assessments. However, subjects like Health & Social care they had more of group discussion, which I found out from my friends. I had more of group discussion and group work in the university. This approach was different for me, but it did work for me. This is because I enjoyed listening to other people’s views and their educational experience. In University, I did see the use of social constructivism because we had many group discussions where we talked about one topic and discovered it by talking about our past educational experience (Balakrishnan and Vimala, 2016, pp.808-821).
Ideally, both approaches do work but for educational purpose, teachers can use social constructivism because students can share their past educational experience. However, it will not work for younger students everyone is born as a blank slate, once we start learning, we learn from the start. Similarly, the behaviourism approach might not exactly work for education purpose, but it will to improve students’ behaviour. Teachers or school can provide different methods of motivation to influence the behaviour of students in a positive way (Cherry, 2017).
References
Allan, J., 2017.Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Macat Library.
Backhouse, M., Fitzpatrick, M., Hutchinson, J., Thandi, C.S. and Keenan, I.D., 2017. Improvements in anatomy knowledge when utilizing a novel cyclical “Observe?Reflect?Draw?Edit?Repeat” learning process. Anatomical sciences education, 10(1), pp.7-22.
Balakrishnan, V. and Gan, C.L., 2016. Students’ learning styles and their effects on the use of social media technology for learning. Telematics and Informatics, 33(3), pp.808-821.
Bandura, A., 2018. Albert Bandura and Social Learning Theory. Learning Theories for Early Years Practice, p.63.
Barak, M., 2017. Science teacher education in the twenty-first century: a pedagogical framework for technology-integrated social constructivism. Research in Science Education, 47(2), pp.283-303.
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Frost, A.D. and Devilly, G.J., 2015. Principles of behaviourism in relation to health. Psychosocial Dimensions of Medicine, p.118.
Goubert, L., Vlaeyen, J.W., Crombez, G. and Craig, K.D., 2011. Learning about pain from others: an observational learning account. The Journal of Pain, 12(2), pp.167-174.
Jessor, R., 2017. Engaging Subjectivity in Understanding Individual Differences. In Problem Behavior Theory and the Social Context (pp. 207-215). Springer, Cham.
Loseke, D., 2017. Thinking about social problems: An introduction to constructionist perspectives. Routledge.
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Pansini, R., Campennì, M. and Shi, L., 2018. Asymmetric Use of Punishment in Socioeconomic Segregated Societies Leads to an Unequal Distribution of Wealth.
Payne, R., 2015. Using rewards and sanctions in the classroom: pupils’ perceptions of their own responses to current behaviour management strategies. Educational Review, 67(4), pp.483-504.
Rieger, G., 2017. Conceptualizing Success And Performance for Adult Learners: Merging the Contexts of Adult Education and Professional Training. Signum Temporis, 9(1), pp.57-62.
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