Anyway, here are my reflections for completing Assignment 2 on the 3 theories:
Behaviourism
In my own words, Behaviourism involves the educator identifying learning objectives and shaping the learner's behaviour, through reinforcements and punishments, to achieve the desired learning outcome. Essentially, three words can describe this theory: stimulus (learning context) -response (learner's behaviour) - outcome (reinforcement or punishment).
The key assumption is that it is human nature that the learner likes to receive rewards and dislikes getting punished. It also assumes that the learner is selfish in that he or she does things to satisfy his or her own personal needs and wants - that we do what we do for our self-interest.
Learning is the process of changing (or in more technical terms, adapting) our behaviour so that we get more of the good stuff i.e. rewards and less of the bad stuff i.e. punishments. Behaviourism assumes that when learning takes place, it is attributed to the environment and the external factors like reward and punishment. It is NOT attributed to the learner's motivation and intention to learn. Although is may appear that the learner is passive, it is not actually so because the learner still has to exhibit a particular behaviour based on his environment in order to receive a reward or punishment.
Let me illustrate the process of learning in Behaviourism with a simple representation. Suppose after playtime, Tommy has 2 alternatives that he can take: i) put all his toys back from where he took it from OR ii) leave the playroom in a mess without keeping his toys.
If Tommy exhibits Behaviour (i), Mummy will reinforce that behaviour by giving him a sweet as a reward for being a good boy. If Tommy exhibits Behaviour (ii), Mummy will discourage such behaviour by scolding him and take away 10 mins of Tommy's next playtime as punishment.
Over time, Tommy learns to exhibit more of Behaviour (i) over Behaviour (ii) not because he likes to help Mummy keep the house tidy; but rather he does so in order to get more of what he likes (reward) and to avoid getting his next playtime cut by 10 mins (punishment).
Behaviourism highlights that the learning process involves a learner and his environment. Based on the environment or educational context created by the educator, a response is elicted from the learner.
This approach seems simple enough to understand but it's usefulness may be limited to problems that involve simplistic or habitual behaviour. Application may only be useful in situations whereby the actions required are mechanical and repetitive e.g. in a factory setting where workers do the same thing over and over again.
Behaviourism takes credit for the progress we've made away from human intelligence and attributes it to the environment. However, in the 21st century, the general population is getting more educated and the complexity of operations we required to perform in daily life increases. We are sometimes required to perform task autonomously and hence we need another theory to account for those times we behave independently.
Cognitivism
In my own words, Cognitivism involves the educator changing and improving on the internal mental representations of the learner. The educator encourages the learner to ask questions and provides different views and perspectives for the learner to think in a new way.
The key assumption is that the learner has an intrinsic motivation to know and learn what is going on around them. Humans are naturally curious and want to learn new stuff, to make sense of things. They are like little scientists.
Learning is the process of changing our mental representations. In order to do so, the learner has to be exposed to new learning contexts and do something different from what they have been doing all along. We all already have our own set of views of how the world works. When the learner is exposed to a new context, he first tries to fit it into his existing concepts i.e. assimilate. If the outcome is unexpected and does not conform to existing concepts, then the learner makes adjustments to his concepts i.e. accomodate. Learning thus takes place through the process of accomodation.
Let me illustrate the process of learning in Cognitivism with another simple representation using Tommy again. Suppose Tommy is now in Pri. 6 and is attending Science class. The teacher instructs the class to boil a beaker of water and place a metal tray high above the beaker.
When water droplets form on the metal tray, Tommy is astonished and immediately raises his hands to ask where the water droplets appeared from. Tommy has seen steam coming out of the kettle before when Mummy boils water but he never knew that the steam can be converted back into liquid form again.
In this scenario, the educator has exposed the learner to a new context of placing a metal tray above a beaker of boiling water. Tommy first tries to assimilate the new scenario into his existing concept by predicting that liquid water will turn into steam. Later, when the steam condenses back into liquid water, Tommy is astonished because the outcome was unexpected. This triggers his curiosity to ask the teacher for an account of what happened. After the teacher's explanation, Tommy accomodates what he has just learnt and tells himself that it is possible to convert liquid water into steam and to convert steam back into liquid form again.
This approach seems to be able to explain more complex issues where humans learn just for the sake of learning. It provides explanations as to why people decide to pick up a new musical instrument out of interest.
In the 21st century, Cognitivism is more useful than Behaviourism in helping learners develop critical-thinking and analytical skills. The approach facilitates learning by encouraging the learner to think in different ways and in the process, sharpen his/her thinking by accomodating existing concepts to those which are applicable in an operational context.
While Cognitivism offers a more complex account of learning on the individual-level, a learner often do not operate in isolation but have to interact with many other learners.
Socioculturalism
In my own words, Socioculturalism involves the educator providing the learner with cognitive tools drawn from the environment, the right kind of people whose knowledge complements the learner's and an optimal layout of the learning environment. The unit of analysis is the entire system instead of an individual learner and so the educator's role is to get the whole system to work better.
The key assumption is that humans are evolved to become social creatures meant to work with other people. The system depends on people and so the people depend on each other.
Learning takes place by drawing tools from the social environment and by taking in the contextual cues in the learning environment. Learning involves interacting with other people and from a cognitive point of view, it is a form of situated cognition i.e. the cognition is situated in a whole context and it requires that context to be meaningful.
Let me represent Socioculturalism by involving Tommy for the last time. Suppose Tommy is now in University and has joined sailing as his CCA. There are 6 team members on a boat. There is 1 team captain, 1 person steering, 1 navigator, 2 other crew and Tommy's role is to man the sail.
Each member knows his specialized role well but may not know where they are or where they are heading without communicating with another team member. The steerer does not know where to steer without taking instructions from the team captain while the team captain does not know what instructions to pass to the steerer without first consulting the navigator.
In this scenario, Tommy is not the focus of analysis but instead is only 1 component of the entire learning system. On his own, he would not know whether to raise or lower the sail. But he soon learns that if the captain tells him to raise the sail, he does so and the boat will be heading towards the finish line. Other contextual cues around Tommy might include landmarks around the boat like floating buoys. If Tommy sees a giant rock ahead and realizes that the boat is speeding past each buoy, then he may sound an alert to the captain that they are travelling too fast and might need to lower the sail.
This approach appeals to problems that occur in an organizational context where the issue involves discussion and each group member specializes in a particular topic. Anytime the task/problem involves more than 1 learner, Socioculturalism may be used as a guiding approach, in conjunction with behaviourism or cognitivism.
In the 21st century of networked-organizations where knowledge transfer is key to an organization's growth, Socioculturalism has an appeal in that it highlights the importance of each member playing his/her specified role and then communicating information to other team members.
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Blog i've commented on:
Blogs i've read:
1) http://shuping-nm3204.blogspot.com/
2) http://abcde-learning.blogspot.com/2009/02/3-theories-of-learning.html#comments
