BEHAVIOURIST PSYCHOLOGY

Behaviourist Psychology

Behaviourist Psychology

Behaviourism is a philosophy and conceptual framework for the study of behaviour. It advocates the use of a natural science approach to establish general laws and principles that explain the causes of behaviour—its acquisition, maintenance, and change—without reference to mental events or internal psychological processes. These principles emphasize relationships between behaviour and the physical and social environment, particularly the contingencies of reinforcement that control the occurrence, strength, and choice of behaviours.

Behaviourist psychology does not consider what actually happens in human mind. The essential forms of learning are visible stimulation and response, helped by repetition, reinforcement and conditioning. Programmed learning (informed by behaviourism) suggests firstly an introduction on what exactly students should learn by the lesson's end; that the learning should progress in steps; feedback is given at each step; a contract of learning is negotiated to end with a reward and there are short term frequent immediate rewards to motivate learners.

Lesson planning involves reinforcement with frequent feedback on learning, delayed feedback allowing trial and error, and praise, marks and prizes. (Reece, Walker, 2000, 106)

Neo-behaviourists modify core behaviourism because the human mind is selective in what it learns. The method adjusts to hierarchical learning behaviour in small upward steps (Gagne). It means entry level checking, connecting concepts together, and clear questioning to determine what students have (selectively) learnt (Reece, Walker, 2000,107-108).

This general learning approach is associated with Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, Skinner and Gagne.

For lesson planning teachers must think in detail and rationally: there should be clear objectives and assessment to match; a teacher should consider short tasks with frequent focused feedback for reinforcement with praise, marks and prizes. However, in criticism, learning cannot be reduced to processes of conditioned reflexes, inputs and outputs. Behaviour observed is not the same thing as knowledge. Over defined objectives can limit learning, and lead to triviality and criteria for learning in some subjects result from learning, in a more qualitative and dynamic relationship. (Reece, Walker, 2000, 107)

Cognitive psychology involves the internal processes of the mind in learning, arrangement of knowledge, understanding, motivation and retention. Dewey saw it as learning to think itself. Bruner argued that teachers must teach how to think and analyse. Existing knowledge is used to check new knowledge, leading to transformation of held knowledge. Bruner called it "inquiry training". Ausubel believed that for such new knowledge to get into cognitive structures, students needed "advance organisers" to bridge from what they do know to what they must know next. In other words, new material needs describing before it can be accepted within a lesson (Reece, Walker, 2000, 110).

There are still inputs and outputs but the focus is on the process. (Reece, Walker, 2000, 111) In lesson plans it means seeing patterns within the subject material in order to prepare students for it. Students would have to make their own cognitive connections with the subject patterns. They can transform these subject patterns into their own cognitive understandings. This means lessons with plenty of ...