1. Theories and principles for enabling learning - Behaviourism

2. Learning styles What is the point? What are the problems with them?
How will you use them in your teaching from now on?

3. Homework! Tell your group your definition of learning
Tell them why this is a good definition in terms of how it applies to you, your students and what you teach
If you found out something about behaviourism tell them what you now know – if you have time

4. 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

5. Definition
Write your own before you go home incorporating what you have learnt tonight

6. 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.

7. But tonight 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

8. Pavlov’s Dog

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

11. Activity 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?

12. Advertising examples
For example, many beer ads prominently feature attractive young women wearing bikinis. The young women (Unconditioned Stimulus) naturally elicit a favourable, mildly aroused feeling (Unconditioned Response) in most men.
The beer is simply associated with this effect. The same thing applies with the jingles and music that accompany many advertisements.

13. Hmm- nice legs – attractive – car!
[must buy it to a)get legs like that or b) attract someone with legs like that ]

14. 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)

15. 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.

16. The Skinner Box

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Activity Think about your own teaching and
explain to your group what you do to condition your learners/get the ‘right’ response from them (no electric shocks allowed) – use specialist terminology
Consider ways you might build this into your practice in a more methodical way
What do you do if you arrive in class and the group are noisy and rowdy?

22. 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.

23. 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)

24. Power Teach

25. Activity- in threes If you don’t do it I’ll make you stand in the corner
Design an Activity – Behaviourist Approach
Decide on a complex topic from one of your subject areas
Design an activity which incorporates behaviourist ideas – see notes on shaping
Could you use power teaching to accomplish what you want?

26. 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.

27. What happens when they don’t get rewarded?
Your Criticisms?
Another view

28. 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

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

30. 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 area?

31. 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?

32. Your re-cap
And your definition is………………….?

33. Someone else’s recap