Behaviorist and Cognitivist leaning theories are two key elements of psychology that have significant implications for education, learning, as well as technology. The behaviorist learning theory “Focuses on that which is observable and measurable“. Furthermore, it regards the concept of learning as a behavior and provides a framework for manipulating behavior through conditioning for a desirable result reinforcement and punishment. The behaviorist stance on learning is a behavior can be learned through rewards and punishment. The cognitivist learning theory focuses on the mind and mental thinking even more so, how the mind acquires and processes information. These two learning theories both have similarities and differences in their approach …show more content…
Similarities between the behaviorist and cognitivist leaning theory lie in the idea of behavioral instructional design. According to our textbook in chapter three it explains that, instructional design consist of “Systemic planning and presenting of instructional sequences, based on a theory of learning.” Additionally, …show more content…
Our textbook further explains that as the instructional (teacher) one can facilitate learning in many ways, if utilizing the “Right set of instructional stimuli”(pg. 40). This same perspective applies to the cognitivist learning theory where instructional design based on prediction that, “If a certain stimulus resulted in a particular response or outcome, it would do so again and again” (Harasim, 2017, p. 54). Another similarity between both learning theories, still relating to the instructional design is the taxonomies of learning. Two different authors constructed the taxonomies of learning for each learning theory: Benjamin Bloom (behaviorist learning theory) and Robert M. Gagne’ (cognitivist learning theory). Although these are two different taxonomies created by two different people, they are comparable to each other. Harasim makes this clear as stated in the text, “ Gagne`’s taxonomy of learning outcomes has similarities to Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive affective and psychomotor outcomes, in that both focused on learning outcomes”(pg 52). The taxonomies were created as a plan to assist and strengthen teacher’s instruction to students as they implement these