Radical Behaviorism

Radical Behaviorism
The black box (an organism--something that learns) the organism reacts to things, the enviornment. The behavior (response) has consequences (stimulus) which feeds back into their enviornment. That then increases or decreases their behavior.

Behaviorism is ingrained into our American culture.

It was interesting because Sunday

Methods are not tied to any one learning theory. It's what you believe about how people learn.

Behaviorism says you can manage behavior. That's a behaviorist approach. If you take the approach that my child is a agent and I can't force them to behave a certain way. Then you are trying to persuade. In behaviorism you don't care what's happening in the box or why they are doing what they are doing. You just care about the behavior or outcomes.

You need to clearly define what your subject is, what the response is, and what the Satisfying/Aversive consequence is in behaviorism is.

With the following, S is presented contingent upon R:

• Positive Reinforcement (R strengthened)
• Punishment (R weakened)

With the following, S is removed contingent upon R:

• Reinforcement Removal (R weakened)
• Negative Reinforcement (R strengthened)

Example: Students in the class started whispering to one another, the teacher gave them a warning look, which resulted in them being quiet and allowed her to go back to the lesson.

Subject: Students
Response: decrease the whispering (you're trying to weaken the response in this case)
S: Dirty look

Here's a problem I see with behaviorism that if people are always rewarded for showing a particular behavior, they'll repeat the behavior because of the reward only. Here's a quote from President Kimball with a gospel perspective:

“If pain and sorrow and total punishment immediately followed the doing of evil, no soul would repeat a misdeed. If joy and peace and rewards were instantaneously given the doer of good, there could be no evil—all would do good and not because of the rightness of doing good. There would be no test of strength, no development of character, no growth of powers, no free agency. … There would also be an absence of joy, success, resurrection, eternal life, and godhood” (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball (1982), 77).

Cognitive information processing
How things get stored in memory. Terms used are short-term and long-term memory.
Picture taken from Psychology of Learning for Instruction, Marcy P. Driscoll (2000) , 73.


The theories are how do you get things into short-term memory and long term memory.














Constructivism
Ontology - What is real
Epistemology - How we come to know or learn

We're trying to focus on Epistemology for learning theories. Your taking ideas in your mind and constructing your own reality. Tell a child that a world is round, but they walk on it and it looks flat. Therefore, it must be like a pancake.

We use our own experiences and knowledge to try to make sense of what we are learning. The constructivist would say, unlike the cognitive processing, that what is input and then comes out of the box depends on what was in the box to begin with.

In constructivism, each student is going to process and construct their knowledge in a way that is unique to them. So, you would build on the learners current experiences and knowledge.

Project-based learning comes out of constructivism.