Behavioral and Social Cognitive Views of Learning

According to Ormrod, behaviorism is defined as, "Theoretical perspective in which learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships" (Ormrod 285).  She lists five perspectives that are the backbone of any behaviorist teacher.

• "People's behaviors are largely the result of their experience with environmental stimuli" (286).
• I like this because it can involve changing the environment that your students are in to help them behave in the way you want and to learn.
• "Learning involves a behavior change" (286).
• This means we can only see physical changes in behavior, not mental changes.  We cannot observe if the student has learned anything until they, maybe, take a test or quiz or something.
• "Learning involves forming associations among stimuli and responses" (286).
• Learning involves observable events: X leads to Y.
• "Learning is most likely to take place when stimuli and responses occur close together in time" (287).
• I understood this as one thing leading immediately to the next.  If I have a class that is rowdy and won't calm down, I could use something more drastic like smacking the podium with a mallet.  I remember a teacher doing that in a class in high school and each time she would grab the mallet, we would all shut up because we FEARED the noise it made.  Plus, we feared her in general.
• "Many species of animals, including human beings, learn in similar ways" (287).
• Much research has been done that shows that animal behavior is helpful in understanding human behavior tendencies.  Hmm, I like to think of myself as higher than some lab animal personally.

In my class, I would define successful mastery of my lesson objectives through the following ways.  I would need to design an assignment that allows me to judge their behavior in class.  A type of pop quiz would be a good way (well for me) to start a class off to see how much they remember from the last class.  I would look around the class to see their behaviors and actions.  If I notice a lot of head turning and upset faces, I know that they aren't doing their work.  If they aren't really confident in their answers then I know they don't understand the material either.  For those that do well, I would positively reinforce them with rewards.  For those who did not do so well, I could maybe move them to the front of the room, away from their peers so they don't feel distracted and cause problems.