Behaviorism Essay

Behaviorism is defined as a school of psychology that takes the objective evidence of behavior (as measured responses to stimuli) as the only concern of its research and the only basis of its theory without reference to conscious experience (Merriam-Webster). B.F skinner, Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson are known as the fathers’ of behaviorism. They all had a different prospective on what makes someone learn, the one thing they had in common is reinforcement methods. Their experiments did have enough true findings to spark others to want to explore how behaviorism affects learning. Behaviorists often look at learning as a characteristic of conditioning and will promote a system of prizes and targets in education.

Skinner believed that the best way to understand behavior is to look at the causes of the action and its consequences. He coined the phrase operant conditioning. His experiments thought us that behaviors that are reinforced tend to be repeated and the ones not reinforced tend fade away. He was able to prove is his theory with famous “skinner box”. This experiment used animals to show if given reinforcements like food they behavior will repeat. When the animal was given a punishment or negative reinforcement the animal was less likely to do it again. This experiment still holds true today. While educators do not put their students in a box and give them electrical shocks when they are wrong, They do however promote good behaviors such as the token economy, where they provide gold stars on a big board which will condition the kids to want to get the stars for a special treat at the end of the specified time. Teachers now focus more on positive reinforcement rather than punishment. It tends to reap better benefits.

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...o quantify its changes. While these men contributed in one way or another to the study of behavior as it pertains to learning it clearly identified some holes in the theories that need to be addressed and over the years have been revamped. New theories have been born to accommodate the changes in society and the way teachers approach the techniques.

Constructivism believes that a learner's ability to learn relies on what he already knows and understands, and that the gaining of knowledge should be an individually designed process. Educators who like the cognitive theory believe that the definition of education as a change in behavior is too narrow so they prefer to study the learner and its human memory. The one thing is for certain times keep changing so the teaching styles with continue to evolve and new theories will be manifested as a result of these changes.