Behaviorism...

This week’s resources were very interesting and enlightening as they are dealing with students and learning theories.  Before I begin this, I must say, I was somewhat up in the air about the behaviorism and its place in education.  After reading through the various weekly resources, I feel I have a better grasp on what exactly behaviorism in the classroom entails.

“Operate conditioning”, coined by B.F. Skinner, sits on two foundation concepts (Orey, 2001).  The first being reinforcement of desirable behavior while the second is punishment or discipline of undesirable behaviors (Orey, 2001).  Reinforcing is the more powerful of the two and an idea that all educators should implement if he or she is not doing already.  To put this a little more blunt, James Hartley clearly states in his key principles that “reinforcement is the cardinal motivator”. (Smith, 1999)  If reinforcement is so essential in education, why are more educators not tying motivation into course work?  That being said, I do think there is a time and place for everything; college students do not need nearly the same motivation and/or praise that a second grade student would, as college learners are more self motivated and self driven.  In my opinion, we need to keep in mind that some of the behaviorism fundamentals are built on ideas or concepts completely dependent upon the age of the subject. 

Another theory I want to touch upon is one by John B. Watson, he claims that the amount of time taken between learning an idea/action and reinforcing the action are in direct correlation to how successful the learner will be.  (Smith, 1999)  I find this to be as accurate as can be, a human can’t learn a new action and wait any significant length of time before reinforcing it.  There have been many studies produced about professional athletes “mastering” an action that are quite interesting.  I believe it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to “master” an athletic technique. What is funny about this is that these studies always show that the action needs to be practiced not only daily, but almost immediately after it has been acquired or the action will not take.  A more academic example would be a young learner working on his or her times tables.  The times tables are not something you can look at and just remember, it takes work…and many hours of that work if I remember correctly!  If the learner were taught those functions, then not shown again for a few months, there is absolutely zero chance the learner will be able to recall the times tables.  An action needs to be reinforced in a short time frame for it be successful.

James Hartley adds, in my opinion, an excellent concept to this learning theory.  He states “activity is important. Learning is better when the learner is active rather than passive”.  (Smith, 1999)  I can think of no better example of this than when a future educator is doing his or her student teaching.  I think someone would be hard pressed to find a teacher that does not feel he or she learned more in six months of student teaching than the entire three and a half years of undergrad work!  While student teaching, you are actually in the classroom “getting your hands dirty” so to speak, and teaching, educating, motivating, encouraging and everything else that fits the daily transcript of an educator’s career.  There is no question as to why this theory is so accurate; when given the chance to get active, the brain processes this information in a much more effective manner.  A seventh grade student that dissects a frog or worm will indefinitely recall that lesson and all the details involved much easier than a lecture, it is a simple equation: when a learner is being active and not “passive”, information is attained much more efficiently. 

It is hard to say whether or not behaviorism is the right or wrong way of educating the human race.  I can say, with a fair amount of certainty, that a combination of behaviorism and other forms, theories, methods of education in conjunction with the use of technology, will put the modern day educator on the right path.

Smith, K. (1999). The behaviourist orientation to learning. In The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/learning-behavourist.htm

Orey, M. (Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved           from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Main_Page