Behaviorism, Social Constructivism, And Cognitive Development

924 Words4 Pages

When reflecting about which learning theory my teaching most resembles, I was actually shocked. I found myself identifying with all of the learning theories in some way. There were beliefs I held and activities in my current teaching that fell into all categories. That being said, I find myself mainly identifying with Behaviorism, Social Constructivism, and Cognitive Development. Behaviorism focuses a lot on using stimuli, such as positive and negative reinforcements, to change observable behaviors. In the classroom, typically these positive and negative reinforcements are rewards and punishments. Behaviorism began with John B. Watson, who used the previous work of Ivan Pavlov on conditioning. Watson studied which stimuli led to responses in organisms, which ultimately led to methodological behaviorism. From there, B.F. Skinner, went on to research and …show more content…

I work with mainly at risk students, who I find, really strive on being offered rewards, more so than punishments, for following classroom expectations, answering questions correctly, and doing their work. A teacher who believes in the behaviorism theory would offer a lot of rewards and punishments in order to change or reach a desired behavior/learning. To determine if these rewards or punishments are working and the student is learning, then the teacher would need to base that on their observations of the student. Currently, I see the behaviorism theory implemented often within technology. One example would be an online program I used to use in my classroom called Front Row. As students answered questions correctly, they earned points. Once they earned enough points, they were able to go to the store and buy certain things to dress up their character. This program focused mainly on rewards and not punishments. Giving students a chance to earn some sort of points or level up is a great way to implement behaviorism in