Behaviourism is based on the assumption that learning occurs through changes in behaviour and teachers are able to transfer knowledge to students’ minds. Learning is the acquisition of new behaviour based on environment conditions due to environment stimulus. Learners shape their behaviour through positive or negative reinforcements. Skinner (1938) used the term of “reinforcer” rather “reward” and he described how a response followed by a reinforcing stimulus was strengthened and was more likely to occur again, while a response which did not follow by a reinforcing stimulus was weakened and it was unlikely to occur again. Punishment did not consider an effective reinforcement in modifying behaviour, but it was mainly used as a deterrent. Overall, following this theory desired behaviours were rewarded causing their frequency to increase and undesired behaviours were punished causing their frequency to decrease (Skinner, 1958). Neo-behaviourists acknowledged the importance of internal mental process and learner’s internal characteristics (personality, motivation and habit) (Salvin, 2006). Bloom developed a model based on three domains: cognitive, affective and psychomotor spheres of learning. The cognitive sphere of learning is related to internal knowledge which might be revealed by external behaviour. The affective domain combines attitudes and values with a particular subject areas and finally the psychomotor domain describes how a skill would be developed through practice, integration and automatisation (Jornan, Carlile, Stack, 2008).
To sum up, the learning process in behaviourism is based on stimulus-response and reinforcement process and the role of teacher is to control the learning environment and to provide stimuli. On the other hand, learners just response on the stimuli which are provided to them within a controlled learning environment and they received a reinforcement by their teachers, thus the learners’ role is characterised as passive.
For example, following this teaching approach teachers are in the centre of learning teaching in lecture environment, as their role is to stimulate learners’ behavioural responses, learners play a passive role, as the material is delivered in a predetermined text format, where should be memorised by them. The learning outcomes are explicit statements which include how learners should act, what is the context and which is the acceptable performance in order learners to successfully complete a course. Regarding the assessment, teachers evaluate learner’s performance at the end of the course giving emphasis on the grades and not so much on the feedback. They evaluate students’ behaviour performance in learning outcomes, while formative assessment may encourage and motivate learners to develop a desired behaviour, if the correct response on a task is provided consistently and in a timely manner. Being part of this learning process, students compare themselves with others finding a position in a learning network receiving award for a specific behaviour.
The traditional way of teaching is based on this learning theory and students spend time determining, if they obtain the “correct” results having little motivation to solve problems from real world or to collaborate with their peers. Also, through this teaching approach the grading system does not capture the complexity students’ learning, their motivations for learning, their needs, etc. and above does not allow learners to critically think through issues and arguments. As a result through this approach, learners often bored and inattentive in class, have poor performances and in many cases change courses. Teachers receive that frustration and in their effort to administrate it, they either become overly critical of their students or are embarrassed by their criticism (Felder & Silverman 1988).
The main benefit of that approach is that teachers can “effectively” combine the fact to teach in a large number of students class and to use the minimal time and resources such as space, equipment and budget. Although teachers are searching to find teaching approaches in order to enhance the course content (inputs), instructional methods (process) and assessments (outcomes) by integrating new technology, there are still some cases that they use methods to control teaching within classrooms in order to ensure that their classrooms run smoothly and effectively. For example, many teachers
- use Microsoft PowerPointTM presentations facilitating students note-taking;
- provide software to their students to redress deficiencies in basic skills (usually in literacy and numeracy), where students exhibit similar responses to the same, or similar, teaching stimuli;
- integrate multimedia (educational games and interactive simulations), where their students get a result quickly to determine if they are correct or not and receive their score; and
- track students’ effort by referring to a rubric and comparing their grades to their effort score.
References
Felder, R. M. & Silverman, L. K. (1988). Learning and Teaching Styles In Engineering Education. Engineering Education, 78(7), 674–681.
Jordan, A., Carlile, O. & Stack, A. (2008). Approaches to learning: A guide for teachers. New York: Open University Press.
Slavin, RE. (2006). Educational Psychology: Theory and Practice. New York: Pearson publishing Ltd.
Skinner, B.F. (1938). The Behavior of Organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Skinner, B.F. (1958). Reinforcement today. American Psychologist, 13, 94-99.
Behaviourism by Maria Limniou is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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