1. Exploring theories of learning - Behaviourism

2. Last week Why do teachers need to know about theories of learning?
Learning styles – uses and problems?

3. Outcomes You will be able to..
Define a behaviourist approach to learning
Describe how behaviourism can be applied to your own teaching
Evaluate behaviourism in terms of application to your own practice

4. It may be a mixture of approaches will be most appropriate.
LEARNING THEORIES CONTINUUM
BEHAVIOURISM COGNITIVISM HUMANISM
Watson
Thorndike
Skinner
Gagne
Piaget
Bruner
Ausebel
Dewey
Neill
Maslow
Rogers
Kolb
Teacher controls Student controls
Objective model Process model
Easily measured Not easily
and evaluated measured
Teacher needs to use approach best suited to the students and organise accordingly.
It may be a mixture of approaches will be most appropriate.

5. But for now; the Behaviourists…
Do not look for the “underlying cause” of behaviour
View the learner’s mind as a “blank slate”
(Classical approach)
View behaviour as the result of conditioning (when you learn 2 things are associated)
View learning as a gaining of new behaviours

6. Pavlov’s Dog

8. Watson’s Contribution
First used the term
“behaviourism” (1913)
Applied the animal experiments
of Pavlov to human behaviour
Scientific explanation of behaviour (observable cause and effect)
Behaviour explained in terms of Stimulus and Response (S R)

9. The Skinner Box

10. Watch the following……. Dog = student!
Key phrases – look out for these on screen
What does it tell you about the role of the teacher and the student?

11. Watson ( )
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
Watson, John B (1930) Behaviorism. University of Chicago Press.

12. Reinforcement or Punishment
Reinforcements: increase the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforcements can be either positive (pleasant) or negative (removal of unpleasant)
Punishments: decrease the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishments are unpleasant consequences.
Note pleasant and unpleasant consequences are subjective

13. Neo-behaviourism Logical learning sequence
A bit more human in their approach – thought that the human mind selective NOT just a response. Learning must be driven by
goals and targets, so need
Logical learning sequence
Opportunities to apply learning
Highly structured learning with planned rewards and feedback for reinforcement
Cagne – start with lower order and move to higher order

14. Behaviourist Learning 1850’s onwards - overview
Originated in research into animal behaviour
Emphasis on demonstrable and measurable learning outcomes
Gives clear focus and direction to lesson planning
Mainly relates to learning of skills
Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson

15. Behaviourism – some key concepts
Learning by association / reinforcement
Conditioning
Shaping behaviour – manipulative?
Stimulus and response
Habit forming
Can be controlled by external environment – by the teacher
The more frequent and repeated the response the better the learning

16. What does it mean for my teaching?
Practice should take the form of question (stimulus) - answer (response) which expose the student to the subject in gradual steps
Require that the learner make a response for every step and receive immediate feedback
Try to arrange the difficulty of the questions so the response is always correct and hence a positive reinforcement
Ensure that good performance in the lesson is paired with ‘reinforcers’ such as verbal praise, prizes and good grades.

17. Give feedback frequently and quickly, especially when the learning is new. Supply rewards less often later
List what you want them to learn at the start of a session
Arrange materials in steps
Negotiate completion times for work and attach a reward to it
Job of the teacher is to reinforce the ‘correct’ response while discouraging the ‘wrong’ response (R and W)

18. Pavlov’s brickwork student (a poor example!
Before conditioning “what do I do with these bricks?”
After Conditioning - “Nice wall!”
How might these students have been ‘conditioned?’

19. Power Teach

20. Some criticisms of behaviourism
Does not account for….
free will and internal influences such as moods, thoughts, and feelings
other types of learning, especially learning that occurs without the use of reinforcements or punishments
adapting behaviour when new information is introduced, even if a previous behaviour pattern has been established through reinforcement.

21. What happens when they don’t get rewarded?
Can you reduce complex human behaviour to such a simple analysis?
Your Criticisms?
Another view

22. Influence:
Huge influence upon the development of curriculum in the UK and elsewhere
Led directly to the development of the outcome/product models of curriculum
Developing measurable learning outcomes a direct result of this approach
Vocational courses in particular but education in general
Appeals to government, managers, regulatory bodies
Gets rid of vagueness

23. What about your own life experiences
Do you have any strong stimulus > response stimuli?

24. What to do with all of this in your essay
Describe the main characteristics of behaviourism and how it was developed – make this to the point (I don’t want hundreds of words on it)
How do you use this approach in your teaching? Give precise examples
Why is it appropriate for your subject specialist area?

25. Why do you use this approach
What are the issues/problems with the approach
What (if anything) will you do differently as a result of what you have learnt on the module?

26. Your re-cap And your definition is………………….?
“The term behaviourism refers to the school of psychology founded by John B. Watson based on the belief that behaviours can be measured, trained, and changed”
(Kendra, C. 2013)

27. Someone else’s recap

28. In class activities

29. So it’s all about conditioning or changing a students behaviour by providing stimuli
Read the explanations of these key elements to Operant Conditioning:
Operant conditioning
Reinforcement
Punishment
Shaping
Stimulus control
NOW take one each and explain it to the rest your group – NO help from me

30. Activity Think about your own teaching and learning
explain to your group what you do to condition your learners/get the ‘right’ response from them (no electric shocks allowed) – use specialist terminology from the handout
e.g. how do you start a class, how do you get attention, how do you get them to work in groups or on a task?

31. Try this activity
Do you want maths or English?

32. Activity in your team If you don’t do it I’ll make you stand in the corner
Work in your team to complete the activity sheet to complete the first 3 columns on the activity sheet