Behaviourism

Behaviourism http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/f/behaviorism.htm
was one of the first fields in psychology to investigate how humans gain and learn information. This developmental theory starts with an assumption of Tabula Rasa- A Blank Slate. http://science.jrank.org/pages/49267/mental-sciences.html What is meant by this is that each human starts off with a no knowledge of the world or a subject and this blank slate is imprinted on by those with the information(teachers). Behaviourist theory is based on the classical conditioning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP5lCleK-PM idea of stimulus and response, or put more simply, behaviour and consequence. http://www.funderstanding.com/content/behaviorism
This theory is supported in the language learning stage of development, http://www.duke.edu/~pk10/language/psych.htm where children are taught language by associating a picture of a tree with the word "tree". (Saussure, Course in general linguistics, 1972)

Behaviourism is an examination of observable behaviour. When a human is provided with a stimulus, what is their response and how can they be conditioned to respond in the correct way. Many famous behaviourists such as Ivan Pavlov and his salivating dogs, http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html John Watson and Little Albert, http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/little-albert-experiment.htm and B.F Skinner and his teaching machines have tested this theory. http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/history/skinner.html

Click here for a video of the Little Albert Experiment

These psychologists investigated how behaviour and learning can be manipulated be controlling the environment of the subject and how positive and negative rewards works to elicit learning responses.

However the study of behaviourism does not account for mentalist responses. The thoughts, feelings and individual differences of each learner are not accounted for and thus teaching methods informed by behaviourism become a didactic and focus on teacher centred learning.


What Does this mean for your Classroom??

As education moves into the 21st century, behaviourism becomes less relevant to our classroom environments. There has been move away from a didactic method of teaching, through which students are filled with knowledge by the teacher- the banking method described by Paulo Frier, in his work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, http://www.paulofreireinstitute.org/ where teachers are the providers of information’s to be regurgitated and rewarded or punished accordingly. While there has been a trend away from this style of conditioning, there are still lessons that can be taken from this school of thought.

1. Control your classroom environment- Student will respond to negative consequences and positive reinforcement within the learning environment.

2. Always provide feedback to students- this will indicate to the students how they can change their actions to achieve desired outcomes.

3. Always encourage and motivate students to achieve- a positive classroom environment will always be more encouraging than a negative one.

More links on behaviourism

B.F. Skinner Foundation

The Behaviourist Approach to Teaching in Class