Behavourism

Part 1

Introduction

Behaviourism and constructivism are learning theories come from two different philosophical views which educators have used for affective learning for their students. These two theories have influenced education for decades. The major leader for behaviourism was Watson. Watson stated that education was influenced more by the environment surrounding the student (Skinner, 1974). Piaget and Vygotsky were more towards the constructivist view of learning as more of a journey for the student (Rummel, 2008). Both of these theories will be explored and will show how they influence today's education.

Behavioural Learning Theory

Psychology was not accepted as science before the late nineteenth century; where it was considered to be the researching of consciousness. "Behaviourism was, and is, a moment primarily in American psychology that rejected consciousness as psychology's subject matter and replaced it with behaviour" (Leahey, 2000, p. 686). The majority of psychologists agree that psychology is the observations and research of psychology.

Jean Piaget: founder of Constructivism

Teaching machine, designed by B. F. Skinner

Constructivism in Barnaul

Even though this seems like a fundamental aspect of the 'Behavioural learning theory', psychologists only consider themselves behaviourists if they follow the research of Skinner (Leahey, 2000).Skinner did a lot of research on animals, majority of the time on rats and pigeons. Skinner invented a famous box that required the rat to pull a lever in order to receive food. Every time the rat pulled the lever, it received food, which in turn influences the behaviour of the rat. "The behaviourism of Skinner is based on a positivistic approach to science, that is, a reductionist view in which all that can be addressed is the relation between sensory stimuli and the unique corresponding response" (Webb, 2007, p. 1086). Even though this did relate to humans; after much more research, Skinner realised that humans don't only respond to the environment that surrounds them, but also from...