John Watson's Behavioral Learning Theory

Watson (1924) describes behavioural learning theory as “a natural science that takes the whole field of human adjustments as its own”. Behaviourism is an educational theory which assumes an overall interpretation of human behaviour, a worldwide view operating on the human response to various stimuli. Behaviourism will be the main focus of the essay, which will continue by outlining the key principles of this educational theory, examining both the literature and research surrounding these responses. Finally, the link between behavioural learning theory and classroom practice will be discussed.

Pavlov is considered to be the forefather of behavioural learning theory, as seen through his experiments and research in the area surrounding classical

Watson and Rayner (1920) affirmed Pavlov’s earlier work by applying a similar experiment to human behaviour in the famous “Little Albert” experiment. As a result of this experiment it was found that humans were susceptible of classical conditioning:

“I 'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race of his ancestors” (Watson 1924)

This conditioning focused on the human beings emotional response to stimuli (McLeod 2014). As discussed in Woolfolk et al (2013), the work of both Pavlov and Watson focused on “the automatic conditioning of involuntary responses”. However, Skinner (1938) looked at the potential to create the necessary positive or negative response from stimuli. Skinner (1938) alludes to the potential of a response to be created from the collection of data, as opposed to a biological process. This discovery coined the term operant conditioning. Holland (1992) states that Skinner’s experiments “showed that the control was in the consequences of the behaviour”. According to Skinner (1950) cited in Woolfolk et al (2013), behaviours can be segregated into two forms of environmental influences namely

The idea of co-operation and group work can be seen within the classroom. According to Wilson and Hopkins (1973) cited in Woolfolk et al (2013) the concept of group consequences can be used to reinforce behaviours on the entire class group. By incorporating reinforcement in the form of tokens for positive classroom behaviour (Alberto and Troutman 2006), students will experience the positive or indeed negative consequences as a group allowing for the establishment of powerful antecedents on the students behalf to enhance the collective well-being of the class group. One such way of that co-operation can be seen within the classroom environment is outlined in an experiment outlined by Theodore et al (2001) cited in Woolfolk et al (2013). This experiment examined the effect of the establishment of classroom rules for a group of adolescent males with emotional disorders. By incorporating an activity at the end of the class to access student behaviour during the lesson, students were provided with the opportunity to positively affect the whole class in the form of a reward. The research found that through the conditioning of the behaviour through a reward system, there was a significant increase in student