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TOPIC THREE: THEORIES AND MODELS OF LEARNING 6 Hours

Welcome to topic three which focuses on the following sections:

Section 1: Theories of Learning and their applications
Section 2: Behavioral theorists
Section 3: Cognitive theorists
Section 4: Social learning theorists
Section 5: Information Processing Theories
Section 6: Implication for learning

Several ideas and priorities, affect how we teachers think about learning, including the
curriculum, the difference between teaching and learning, sequencing, readiness, and transfer.
The ideas form a “screen” through which to understand and evaluate whatever psychology has
to offer education. As it turns out, many theories, concepts, and ideas from educational
psychology do make it through the “screen” of education, meaning that they are consistent with
the professional priorities of teachers and helpful in solving important problems of classroom
teaching. In the case of issues about classroom learning, for example, educational
psychologists have developed a number of theories and concepts that are relevant to
classrooms, in that they describe at least some of what usually happens there and offer
guidance for assisting learning. It is helpful to group the theories according to whether they
focus on changes in behavior or in thinking. The distinction is rough and inexact, but a good
place to begin. For starters, therefore, consider two perspectives about learning, called
behaviorism (learning as changes in overt behavior) and constructivism, (learning as changes
in thinking). The second category can be further divided into psychological constructivism
(changes in thinking resulting from individual experiences), and social constructivism,
(changes in thinking due to assistance from others). The rest of this chapter describes key ideas
from each of these viewpoints. As I hope you will see, each describes some aspects of learning
not just in general, but as it happens in classrooms in particular. So each perspective suggests
things that you might do in your classroom to make students’ learning more productive.

Over the past century, educational psychologists and researchers have posited many theories to explain
how individuals acquire, organize and deploy skills and knowledge. A theory is a set of understandings
about different dimensions of development (both maturation and learning). The learning theories are
grouped into three basic categories:
•Behaviorist learning theories
•Social Cognitive-constructivist learning theories
•Cognitive-information processing learning theories

There is no one true, correct or right theory. Each provides a window of understanding an aspect of
development:-
1.The Psychoanalytic theory focuses on early childhood experiences and unconscious forces

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2.Piaget’s cognitive theory addresses cognition and changes in the structure in the thinking,
from infancy to adolescent.
3.Behaviourist theory looks at the role of environmental factors in development.
4.Social learning theory focuses on the role of observation and imitation.
5.The information Processing theory describes the way in which we attend to, make sense of
and remember information during the course of development.
6.Maturational biological theory emphasizes importance of the individual’s rate of maturation.

BEHAVIORISM: CHANGES IN WHAT STUDENTS DO

Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable and measurable aspects of human behavior. In
defining behavior, behaviorist learning theories emphasize changes in behavior that result from
stimulus-response associations made by the learner. Behavior is the result of environmental stimulation
and much of what an individual becomes is the result of what he or she has experienced or learnt. An
individual selects one response instead of another because of prior conditioning/learning and
psychological drives existing at the moment of the action.

Behaviorists assert that the only behaviors worthy of study are those that can be directly observed;
thus, it is actions, rather than thoughts or emotions, which are the legitimate object of study.
Behaviour theories posit that all behaviors are learned habits, and they therefore attempt to account for
how these habits are formed.

In assuming that human behavior is learned, behaviorists also hold that all behaviors can also
be unlearned, and replaced by new behaviors; that is, when a behavior becomes unacceptable, it can
be replaced by an acceptable one. A key element to this theory of learning is the rewarded response.
The desired response must be rewarded in order for learning to take place.

In education, advocates of behaviorism have effectively adopted this system of rewards and
punishments in their classrooms by rewarding desired behaviors and punishing inappropriate ones.
Rewards vary, but must be important to the learner in some way. For example, if a teacher wishes to
teach the behavior of remaining seated during the class period, the successful student's reward
might be checking the teacher's mailbox, running an errand, or being allowed to go to the library to
do homework at the end of the class period. As with all teaching methods, success depends on
each student's stimulus and response, and on associations made by each learner.

Behaviorism Advocates

John B. Watson (1878-1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) are the two principal originators
of behaviorist approaches to learning.

Classical Conditioning -John B. Watson (1878-1958)

Watson believed that human behavior resulted from specific stimuli that elicited certain responses.
Watson's basic premise was that conclusions about human development should be based on
observation of overt behavior rather than speculation about subconscious motives or latent cognitive
processes (Shaffer, 2000). Watson's view of learning was based in part on the studies of Ivan Pavlov.

Pavlov was studying the digestive process and the interaction of salivation and stomach function when
he realized that reflexes in the autonomic nervous system closely linked these phenomena. To
determine whether external stimuli had an affect on this process, Pavlov rang a bell when he gave
food to the experimental dogs. He noticed that the dogs salivated shortly before they were given food.
He discovered that when the bell was rung at repeated feedings, the sound of the bell alone (a

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conditioned stimulus) would cause the dogs to salivate (a conditioned response). Pavlov also found
that the conditioned reflex was repressed if the stimulus proved "wrong" too frequently; if the bell
rang and no food appeared, the dog eventually ceased to salivate at the sound of the bell.

Figure: Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning can therefore be defined as a type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the
capacity to evoke a reflexive response that was originally evoked by a different stimulus.

a) The unconditioned stimulus and response

Before conditioning, Pavlov was studying salivation in dogs - he devised an experiment in which he
sounded a tuning fork and then placed meat powder in the dog’s mouth. The dog’s response to the food
was; salivating, chewing and swallowing.

This response was automatic, thus determined by the dog’s genetic blueprint because the association
between food powder in the mouth and salivation is not dependent on past learning. Pavlov called the
food powder unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the salivation an unconditioned Response ( UCR)

See the following diagram:

Innate S-R connection

US( unconditioned stimulus ) UR(unconditioned Response)

Meat powder in the dog’s mouth Salivation, chewing and swallowing

The neutral connection between the above conditions is innately (biologically) determined.

b) The conditioned stimulus and response

Pavlov soon made an important discovery; if he sounded a music tone just before he blew food into the
animal’s mouth, the dog soon salivated as much to the tone alone as it did to the tone plus the food.
And thus, each time the tone sounded, it salivated to the tone just as it did to the food.

Pavlov called the tone a conditioned stimulus (CS) because its power to call forth the salivation
response is the result of pairing it with the food powder

See the following diagram:

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( S-S association ) ( innate S-R connection)

S UCS UCR

Tone food salivation

Once the dog has learned the connection between the tone and food, we can present the tone alone
without giving the food and the dog will salivate.

Pavlov called this learned reaction to a neutral stimulus a conditioned Response (CR). This process is
called conditioning.

NOTE: This sort of conditioning occurs in people as well.

When psychologists use the term conditioning, they refer to some situation in which a previous neutral
stimulus gains the power to elicit a response in a reflexive or mechanical fashion

So they say that you have been conditioned to do something, they mean that you have learned to
respond rather automatically to a particular stimulus.

For classical conditioning to occur easily, the conditioned stimulus must be presented a fraction of a
second before the unconditioned stimulus

Many of our fears and emotions are learned through classical conditioning ( Watson and Rayner, 1920)

Students or pupils may tend to generalize their reactions to a stimulus that is similar to the one they
have learned to react to e.g. an 11 month old Albert learned to fear white rats and generalized this to
anything that was white and fury.

NOTE

a) Unconditioned Stimulus (US) - a stimulus that evokes an unconditioned response without any prior
conditioning (no learning needed for the response to occur).

b) Unconditioned Response (UR) - an unlearned reaction/response to an unconditioned stimulus that

occurs without prior conditioning.

c) Conditioned Stimulus (CS) - a previously neutral stimulus that has, through conditioning, acquired
the capacity to evoke a conditioned response.

d) Conditioned Response (CR) - a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of
prior conditioning.

RELATED CONCEPTS

a) Association: Pavlov believed that, the more closely in time two events occurred, the more likely they
were to become associated; as time passes, association becomes less likely. This is called learning by
association.

b) Extinction - this is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the Conditioned Response.
Extinction occurs from multiple presentations of Conditioned Stimulus (CS) without the
Unconditioned Stimulus (US). Essentially, as the organism continues to be presented with the

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conditioned stimulus but without the unconditioned stimulus the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) loses its
power to evoke the Conditioned Response (CR). For example, Pavlov's dogs stopped salivating when
the fork sound kept occurring without the meat powder following.

c) Spontaneous Recovery - sometimes there will be a reappearance of a response that had been
extinguished. The recovery can occur after a period of non-exposure to the Conditioned Stimulus
(CS). It is called spontaneous because the response seems to reappear out of nowhere.

d) Stimulus Generalization - a response to a specific stimulus becomes associated to other stimuli

(similar stimuli) and now occurs to those other similar stimuli. For Example – a child who gets bitten
by black lab, later becomes afraid of all dogs. The original fear evoked by the Black Lab has now
generalized to ALL dogs.

f) Stimulus Discrimination - learning to respond to one stimulus and not another. Thus, an organisms
becomes conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and not to other stimuli.For Example - a puppy
may initially respond to lots of different people, but over time it learns to respond to only one or a few
people's commands.

Application of Classical Conditioning in our educational settings

Conditioned Fear & Anxiety - many phobias that people experience are the results of conditioning.
Teachers should be careful not to cause fear among the students since it will be associated with the
teacher and thus impact negatively on learning

Operant conditioning - B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)

This refers to new behaviors because of new consequences. Expanding on Watson's basic
stimulus-response model, Skinner developed a more comprehensive view of conditioning, known as
operant conditioning. His model was based on the premise that satisfying responses are conditioned,
while unsatisfying ones are not.

Operant conditioning focuses on how the consequences of a behavior affect the behavior over
time. It begins with the idea that certain consequences tend to make certain behaviors happen
more frequently. If I compliment a student for a good comment made during discussion, there
is more of a chance that I will hear further comments from the student in the future (and
hopefully they too will be good ones!). If a student tells a joke to classmates and they laugh at
it, then the student is likely to tell more jokes in the future and so on.

The original research about this model of learning was not done with people, but with animals.
One of the pioneers in the field was a Harvard professor named B. F. Skinner, who published
numerous books and articles about the details of the process and who pointed out many
parallels between operant conditioning in animals and operant conditioning in humans (1938,
1948, 1988). Skinner observed the behavior of rather tame laboratory rats (not the unpleasant
kind that sometimes live in garbage dumps). He or his assistants would put them in a cage that
contained little except a lever and a small tray just big enough to hold a small amount of food.
(Figure 1 shows the basic set-up, which is sometimes nicknamed a “Skinner box.”) At first the
rat would sniff and “putter around” the cage at random, but sooner or later it would happen
upon the lever and eventually happen to press it. Presto! The lever released a small pellet of
food, which the rat would promptly eat. Gradually the rat would spend more time near the
lever and press the lever more frequently, getting food more frequently. Eventually it would

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spend most of its time at the lever and eating its fill of food. The rat had “discovered” that the
consequence of pressing the level was to receive food. Skinner called the changes in the rat’s
behavior an example of operant conditioning, and gave special names to the different parts of
the process. He called the food pellets the reinforcement and the lever-pressing
the operant (because it “operated” on the rat’s environment). See below.

Figure 1: Operant conditioning with a laboratory rat

Skinner and other behavioral psychologists experimented with using various reinforcers and
operants. They also experimented with various patterns of reinforcement (or schedules of
reinforcement), as well as with various cues or signals to the animal about when
reinforcement was available. It turned out that all of these factors—the operant, the
reinforcement, the schedule, and the cues—affected how easily and thoroughly operant
conditioning occurred. For example, reinforcement was more effective if it came immediately
after the crucial operant behavior, rather than being delayed, and reinforcements that happened
intermittently (only part of the time) caused learning to take longer, but also caused it to last
longer.

Operant conditioning and students’ learning: Since the original research about operant
conditioning used animals, it is important to ask whether operant conditioning also describes
learning in human beings, and especially in students in classrooms. On this point the answer
seems to be clearly “yes.” There are countless classroom examples of consequences affecting
students’ behavior in ways that resemble operant conditioning, although the process certainly
does not account for all forms of student learning (Alberto & Troutman, 2005). Consider the
following examples. In most of them the operant behavior tends to become more frequent on
repeated occasions:

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 A seventh-grade boy makes a silly face (the operant) at the girl sitting next to him.
Classmates sitting around them giggle in response (the reinforcement).
 A kindergarten child raises her hand in response to the teacher’s question about a story
(the operant). The teacher calls on her and she makes her comment (the
reinforcement).
 Another kindergarten child blurts out her comment without being called on (the
operant). The teacher frowns, ignores this behavior, but before the teacher calls on a
different student, classmates are listening attentively (the reinforcement) to the student
even though he did not raise his hand as he should have.
 A twelfth-grade student—a member of the track team—runs one mile during practice
(the operant). He notes the time it takes him as well as his increase in speed since
joining the team (the reinforcement).
 A child who is usually very restless sits for five minutes doing an assignment (the
operant). The teaching assistant compliments him for working hard (the
reinforcement).
 A sixth-grader takes home a book from the classroom library to read overnight (the
operant). When she returns the book the next morning, her teacher puts a gold star by
her name on a chart posted in the room (the reinforcement).

Key concepts about operant conditioning: Operant conditioning is made more complicated,
but also more realistic, by several additional ideas. They can be confusing because the ideas
have names that sound rather ordinary, but that have special meanings with the framework of
operant theory. Among the most important concepts to understand are the following:

 extinction
 generalization
 discrimination
 schedules of reinforcement
 cues

Extinction refers to the disappearance of an operant behavior because of lack of

reinforcement. A student who stops receiving gold stars or compliments for prolific reading of
library books, for example, may extinguish (i.e. decrease or stop) book-reading behavior. A
student who used to be reinforced for acting like a clown in class may stop clowning once
classmates stop paying attention to the antics.

Generalization refers to the incidental conditioning of behaviors similar to an

original operant. If a student gets gold stars for reading library books, then we may find her
reading more of other material as well—newspapers, comics, etc.–even if the activity is not
reinforced directly. The “spread” of the new behavior to similar behaviors is called

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generalization. Generalization is a lot like the concept of transfer discussed early in this
chapter, in that it is about extending prior learning to new situations or contexts. From the
perspective of operant conditioning, though, what is being extended (or “transferred” or
generalized) is a behavior, not knowledge or skill.

Discrimination means learning not to generalize. In operant conditioning, what

is not overgeneralized (i.e. what is discriminated) is the operant behavior. If I am a student
who is being complimented (reinforced) for contributing to discussions, I must also learn to
discriminate when to make verbal contributions from when not to make them—such as when
classmates or the teacher are busy with other tasks. Discrimination learning usually results
from the combined effects of reinforcement of the target behavior and extinction of similar
generalized behaviors. In a classroom, for example, a teacher might praise a student for
speaking during discussion, but ignore him for making very similar remarks out of turn.

Schedule of reinforcement- In operant conditioning, the schedule of reinforcement refers to

the pattern or frequency by which reinforcement is linked with the operant. If a teacher praises
me for my work, does she do it every time, or only sometimes? Frequently or only once in
awhile? In respondent conditioning, however, the schedule in question is the pattern by which
the conditioned stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

There are two types of reinforcement schedules - continuous, and partial/intermittent (four subtypes
of partial schedules)

Partial/Intermittent Schedules

There are four subtypes of partial schedules

a) Fixed Ratio (FR) - reinforcement given after every N th responses, where N is the size of the ratio
(i.e., a certain number of responses have to occur before getting reinforcement).

For example - many factory workers are paid according to the number of some product they produce. A
worker may get paid $10.00 for every 100 widgets he makes. This would be an example of an Fixed
Ratio-100 schedule.

b) Variable Ratio (VR) - the variable ration schedule is the same as the FR except that the ratio varies,
and is not stable like the FR schedule. Reinforcement is given after every N th response, but N is an
average.

For example - slot machines in casinos function on VR schedules .. The slot machine is programmed to
provide a "winner" every average N th response, such as every 75th lever pull on average. So, the slot
machine may give a winner after 1 pull, then on the 190th pull, then on the 33rd pull, etc...just so long
as it averages out to give a winner on average, every 75th pull.

c) Fixed Interval (FI) - a designated amount of time must pass, and then a certain response must be
made in order to get reinforcement.

For example - when you wait for a bus example. The bus may run on a specific schedule, like it stops at
the nearest location to you every 20 minutes. After one bus has stopped and left your bus stop, the timer
resets so that the next one will arrive in 20 minutes. You must wait that amount of time for the bus to
arrive and stop for you to get on it.

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d) Variable Interval (VI) - same as FI but now the time interval varies.

For example - when you wait to get your mail. Your mail carrier may come to your house at
approximately the same time each day. So, you go out and check at the approximate time the mail
usually arrives, but there is no mail. You wait a little while and check, but no mail. This continues until
some time has passed (a varied amount of time) and then you go out, check, and to your delight, there is
mail.

Skinner further identified two types of reinforcing events

Those in which a reward is given; and those in which something bad is removed. In either case, the
point of reinforcement is to increase the frequency or probability of a response occurring again.

1) Positive reinforcement - give an organism a pleasant stimulus when the operant response is made.
For example, a rat presses the lever (operant response) and it receives a treat (positive reinforcement)

2) Negative reinforcement - take away an unpleasant stimulus when the operant response is made. For
example, stop shocking a rat when it presses the lever.

"Negative reinforcement” is not a method of increasing the chances that an organism will behave in a
bad way. It is a method of rewarding the behavior you want to increase. It is a good thing - not a bad
thing.

Skinner also identified two types of Reinforcers

1) Primary reinforcer - stimulus that naturally strengthens any response that precedes it (e.g., food,
water, sex) without the need for any learning on the part of the organism. These reinforcers are
naturally reinforcing.

2) Secondary/conditioned reinforcer - a previously neutral stimulus that acquires the ability to

strengthen responses because the stimulus has been paired with a primary reinforcer. For example, an
organism may become conditioned to the sound of food dispenser, which occurs after the operant
response is made. Thus, the sound of the food dispenser becomes reinforcing. Notice the similarity to
Classical Conditioning, with the exception that the behavior is voluntary and occurs before the
presentation of a reinforcer.

PUNISHMENT

Whereas reinforcement increases the probability of a response occurring again, the premise of
punishment is to decrease the frequency or probability of a response occurring again.

Skinner did not believe that punishment was as powerful a form of control as reinforcement, even
though it is the so commonly used. Thus, it is not truly the opposite of reinforcement like he originally
thought, and the effects are normally short-lived. There are two types of punishment:

1) Positive - presentation of an aversive stimulus to decrease the probability of an operant response

occurring again. For example, a child reaches for a cookie before dinner, and you slap his hand.

2) Negative - the removal of a pleasant stimulus to decrease the probability of an operant response
occurring again.

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Guidelines for Effective Use of Punishment

Punishment is one consequence aimed at shaping behaviour. For punishment to be

effective the following guidelines should be observed.

i) The punishment must be punishing. True punishment decreases the response it follows.
Sometimes adults make assumptions about what consequences will be punishment, but
sometimes a common punishment might be reinforcing (e.g., the child for whom time-out is a
pleasure; the kid who hates school suspended for nonattendance).

ii) The punishment must be strong enough to be effective, but not overly severe.
Punishment that is too short or mild is not effective (e.g., fines are not sufficient deterrents for
many drunk drivers; threat of getting a bad grade is not sufficient to keep many students from
not studying). Punishment that is overly severe may have undesirable side effects, such as
resentment, hostility, or escape behaviour, and may reappear at its original level once the
punisher has left the scene.

iii) Punishment should be threatened once before it is administered. People should be

warned ahead of time, since punishment is most likely to deter behaviour when an individual
knows that the behavior will lead to punishment, what that punishment will be, and that the
punishment is, in fact, likely to occur as promised.
iv) The behavior to be punished should be described in clear, concrete terms. Students
should understand exactly which responses are unacceptable. (e.g., students told "disruption of
the class is unacceptable" might not actually know what "disruption" means, exactly, and if
"getting out of your seat without permission" is included, the student needs to know that).

v) Punishment should be consistent. Punishment is much more effective when it is a

consistent consequence of a particular response. When a response is punished only
occasionally, the response disappears slowly, if at all.

vi) Whenever possible, the environment should be modified so that the misbehaviour is less
likely to occur. The temptation to engage in a misbehaviour should be reduced or, if possible,
eliminated. (e.g., people on diets should not stock their kitchens with junk food; cheating on
exams can be reduced by having students sit apart from one another or by administering two
different forms of the exam)

ix) Desirable alternative behaviours should be taught and reinforced. Punishment is more
effective combined with reinforcement of appropriate behaviour. A misbehaviour is more
likely to be permanently suppressed when alternative behaviours are reinforced, especially
when those behaviours are incompatible with the punished behaviour. (e.g., if punishing
playground aggression, reinforce appropriate social behaviour)
x) Whenever possible, punishment should immediately follow the inappropriate
behaviour. Effectiveness of punishment decreases dramatically when delayed, although if
punishment cannot follow the misbehaviour, the punished behaviour must be clearly described.

xi) An explanation of why the behaviour is unacceptable should be given. Punishment is

more effective when reasons why certain behaviours cannot be tolerated are given. (e.g.,
"When you talk without permission and when you get out of your seat during quiet reading
time, you keep other children from getting their work done.") The advantages of this are that
providing the reasoning for the punishment lessens the critical factor of immediacy in the

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punishment, increases the likelihood that similar misbehaviours are also suppressed (the effect
of the punishment generalizes to other behaviours), increases likelihood that the misbehaviour
will be suppressed even when the punisher is absent, and helps with older children's
expectation that they be told why they cannot engage in certain behaviours and are less likely
to be defiant when reasons are provided.
xii) Some punishments that are particularly ineffective and should be avoided. Not
generally effective and not recommended are physical punishment (especially with older
children), psychological punishment, extra classwork, and suspension from school. Alternate to
suspension is in-house suspension (in-house time-out), which does not reward misbehaving
students by removing them from the school environment but prevents interacting with peers
that most students find rewarding.
xiii) Punishment should be used sparingly. An effective punishment is one that does not
need to be administered very often to be effective. When punishment is a frequent occurrence,
the numerous disadvantages of punishment are likely to appear (i.e., anger, resentment,
avoidance, etc.)

Cues- In operant conditioning, a cue is a stimulus that happens just prior to the operant
behavior and that signals that performing the behavior may lead to reinforcement. In the
original conditioning experiments, Skinner’s rats were sometimes cued by the presence or
absence of a small electric light in their cage. Reinforcement was associated with pressing a
lever when, and only when, the light was on. In classrooms, cues are sometimes provided by
the teacher deliberately, and sometimes simply by the established routines of the class. Calling
on a student to speak, for example, can be a cue that if the student does say something at that
moment, then he or she may be reinforced with praise or acknowledgment. But if that cue
does not occur—if the student is not called on—speaking may not be rewarded. In more
everyday, non-behaviorist terms, the cue allows the student to learn when it is acceptable to
speak, and when it is not.

CONSTRUCTIVISM
Changes in How Students Think
Behaviorist models of learning may be helpful in understanding and influencing what students
do, but teachers usually also want to know what students are thinking, and how to enrich what
students are thinking.

For this goal of teaching, some of the best help comes from constructivism, which is a
perspective on learning focused on how students actively create (or “construct”) knowledge out
of experiences. Constructivist models of learning differ about how much a learner constructs
knowledge independently, compared to how much he or she takes cues from people who may
be more of an expert and who help the learner's efforts (Fosnot, 2005; Rockmore, 2005). For
convenience these are called psychological constructivism and social constructivism (or
sometimes sociocultural theory). As explained in the next section, both focus on individuals'
thinking rather than their behavior, but they have distinctly different implications for teaching.

a) Psychological Constructivism: the independent investigator

The main idea of psychological constructivism is that a person learns by mentally organizing
and reorganizing new information or experiences. The organization happens partly by relating
new experiences to prior knowledge that is already meaningful and well understood. Stated in

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this general form, individual constructivism is sometimes associated with a well-known

educational philosopher of the early twentieth century, John Dewey (1938–1998). Although
Dewey himself did not use the term constructivism in most of his writing, his point of view
amounted to a type of constructivism, and he discussed in detail its implications for educators.
He argued, for example, that if students indeed learn primarily by building their own
knowledge, then teachers should adjust the curriculum to fit students’ prior knowledge and
interests as fully as possible. He also argued that a curriculum could only be justified if it
related as fully as possible to the activities and responsibilities that students will probably
have later, after leaving school. To many educators these days, his ideas may seem merely like
good common sense, but they were indeed innovative and progressive at the beginning of the
twentieth century.

Another recent example of psychological constructivism is the cognitive theory of Jean

Piaget (Piaget, 2001; Gruber & Voneche, 1995). Piaget described learning as interplay
between two mental activities that he called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is
the interpretation of new information in terms of pre-existing concepts, information or ideas. A
preschool child who already understands the concept of bird, for example, might initially label
any flying object with this term—even butterflies or mosquitoes. Assimilation is therefore a bit
like the idea of generalization in operant conditioning, or the idea of transfer described at the
beginning of this chapter. In Piaget’s viewpoint, though, what is being transferred to a new
setting is not simply a behavior (Skinner's “operant” in operant conditioning), but a mental
representation for an object or experience.

Assimilation operates jointly with accommodation, which is the revision or modification of

pre-existing concepts in terms of new information or experience. The preschooler who initially
generalizes the concept of bird to include any flying object, for example, eventually revises the
concept to include only particular kinds of flying objects, such as robins and sparrows, and not
others, like mosquitoes or airplanes. For Piaget, assimilation and accommodation work
together to enrich a child’s thinking and to create what Piaget called cognitive equilibrium,
which is a balance between reliance on prior information and openness to new information. At
any given time, cognitive equilibrium consists of an ever-growing repertoire of mental
representations for objects and experiences. Piaget called each mental representation
a schema (all of them together—the plural—were called schemata). A schema was not merely
a concept, but an elaborated mixture of vocabulary, actions, and experience related to the
concept. A child’s schema for bird, for example, includes not only the relevant verbal
knowledge (like knowing how to define the word “bird”), but also the child’s experiences with
birds, pictures of birds, and conversations about birds. As assimilation and accommodation
about birds and other flying objects operate together over time, the child does not just revise
and add to his vocabulary (such as acquiring a new word, “butterfly”), but also adds and
remembers relevant new experiences and actions. From these collective revisions and additions
the child gradually constructs whole new schemata about birds, butterflies, and other flying
objects. In more everyday (but also less precise) terms, Piaget might then say that “the child
has learned more about birds.”

Exhibit 1 diagrams the relationships among the Piagetian version of psychological

constructivist learning. Note that the model of learning in the Exhibit is rather “individualistic,”
in the sense that it does not say much about how other people involved with the learner might

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assist in assimilating or accommodating information. Parents and teachers, it would seem, are
left lingering on the sidelines, with few significant responsibilities for helping learners to
construct knowledge. But the Piagetian picture does nonetheless imply a role for helpful
others: someone, after all, has to tell or model the vocabulary needed to talk about and compare
birds from airplanes and butterflies! Piaget did recognize the importance of helpful others in
his writings and theorizing, calling the process of support or assistance social transmission. But
he did not emphasize this aspect of constructivism. Piaget was more interested in what children
and youth could figure out on their own, so to speak, than in how teachers or parents might be
able to help the young figure out (Salkind, 2004). Partly for this reason, his theory is often
considered less about learning and more about development, or long-term change in a person
resulting from multiple experiences that may not be planned deliberately. For the same reason,
educators have often found Piaget’s ideas especially helpful for thinking about
students’ readiness to learn, another one of the lasting educational issues discussed at the
beginning of this chapter. We will therefore return to Piaget later to discuss development and
its importance for teaching in more detail

EXHIBIT 1: LEARNING ACCORDING TO PIAGET

Assimilation + Accommodation → Equilibrium → Schemata

b) Social Constructivism: assisted performance

Unlike Piaget’s orientation to individuals' thinking in his version of constructivism, some

psychologists and educators have explicitly focused on the relationships and interactions
between a learner and other individuals who are more knowledgeable or experienced. This
framework often is called social constructivism or sociocultural theory. An early expression
of this viewpoint came from the American psychologist Jerome Bruner (1960, 1966, 1996),
who became convinced that students could usually learn more than had been traditionally
expected as long as they were given appropriate guidance and resources. He called such
support instructional scaffolding—literally meaning a temporary framework like the ones
used to construct buildings and that allow a much stronger structure to be built within it. In a
comment that has been quoted widely (and sometimes disputed), Bruner wrote: “We
[constructivist educators] begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively
in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.” (1960, p. 33).
The reason for such a bold assertion was Bruner’s belief in scaffolding—his belief in the
importance of providing guidance in the right way and at the right time. When scaffolding is
provided, students seem more competent and “intelligent,” and they learn more.

Similar ideas were independently proposed by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978),
whose writing focused on how a child’s or novice’s thinking is influenced by relationships
with others who are more capable, knowledgeable, or expert than the learner. Vygotsky made
the reasonable proposal that when a child (or novice) is learning a new skill or solving a new
problem, he or she can perform better if accompanied and helped by an expert than if
performing alone—though still not as well as the expert. Someone who has played very little
chess, for example, will probably compete against an opponent better if helped by an expert
chess player than if competing against the opponent alone. Vygotsky called the difference
between solo performance and assisted performance the zone of proximal
development (or ZPD for short)—meaning, figuratively speaking, the place or area of

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immediate change. From this social constructivist perspective, learning is like assisted
performance (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). During learning, knowledge or skill is found initially
“in” the expert helper. If the expert is skilled and motivated to help, then the expert arranges
experiences that let the novice to practice crucial skills or to construct new knowledge. In this
regard the expert is a bit like the coach of an athlete—offering help and suggesting ways of
practicing, but never doing the actual athletic work himself or herself. Gradually, by providing
continued experiences matched to the novice learner’s emerging competencies, the expert-
coach makes it possible for the novice or apprentice to appropriate (or make his or her own)
the skills or knowledge that originally resided only with the expert. These relationships are
diagrammed in Exhibit 2
.

EXHIBIT 2: LEARNING ACCORDING TO VYGOTSKY

Novice → Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) ← Expert

In both the psychological and social versions of constructivist learning, the novice is not really
“taught” so much as simply allowed to learn. But compared to psychological constructivism,
social constructivism highlights a more direct responsibility of the expert for making learning
possible. He or she must not only have knowledge and skill, but also know how to arrange
experiences that make it easy and safe for learners to gain knowledge and skill themselves.
These requirements sound, of course, a lot like the requirements for classroom teaching. In
addition to knowing what is to be learned, the expert (i.e. the teacher) also has to organize the
content into manageable parts, offer the parts in a sensible sequence, provide for suitable and
successful practice, bring the parts back together again at the end, and somehow relate the
entire experience to knowledge and skills meaningful to the learner already. But of course, no
one said that teaching is easy!

The teacher's role in Psychological and Social Constructivism

As some of the comments above indicate, psychological and social constructivism have
differences that suggest different ways for teachers to teach most effectively. The theoretical
differences are related to three ideas in particular: the relationship of learning and long-term
development, the role or meaning of generalizations and abstractions during development, and
the mechanism by which development occurs.

The relationship of learning and long-term development of the child

In general psychological constructivism such as Piaget emphasize the ways that long-term
development determines a child's ability to learn, rather than the other way around. The earliest
stages of a child's life are thought to be rather self-centered and to be dependent on the child's
sensory and motor interactions with the environment. When acting or reacting to his or her
surroundings, the child has relatively little language skill initially. This circumstance limits the
child's ability to learn in the usual, school-like sense of the term. As development proceeds, of
course, language skills improve and hence the child becomes progressively more “teachable”

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and in this sense more able to learn. But whatever the child's age, ability to learn waits or
depends upon the child's stage of development. From this point of view, therefore, a primary
responsibility of teachers is to provide a very rich classroom environment, so that children can
interact with it independently and gradually make themselves ready for verbal learning that is
increasingly sophisticated.

Social constructivists such as Vygotsky, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of social
interaction in stimulating the development of the child. Language and dialogue therefore are
primary, and development is seen as happening as a result—the converse of the sequence
pictured by Piaget. Obviously a child does not begin life with a lot of initial language skill, but
this fact is why interactions need to be scaffolded with more experienced experts— people
capable of creating a zone of proximal development in their conversations and other
interactions. In the preschool years the experts are usually parents; after the school years begin,
the experts broaden to include teachers. A teacher's primary responsibility is therefore to
provide very rich opportunities for dialogue, both among children and between individual
children and the teacher.

The role of generalizations and abstractions during development

Consistent with the ideas above, psychological constructivism tends to see a relatively limited
role for abstract or hypothetical reasoning in the life of children—and even in the reasoning of
youth and many adults. Such reasoning is regarded as an outgrowth of years of interacting with
the environment very concretely. As explained more fully in the next chapter (“Student
development”), elementary-age students can reason, but they are thought to reason only about
immediate, concrete objects and events. Even older youth are thought to reason in this way
much, or even all of the time. From this perspective a teacher should limit the amount of
thinking about abstract ideas that she expects from students. The idea of “democracy,” for
example, may be experienced simply as an empty concept. At most it might be misconstrued as
an oversimplified, overly concrete idea—as “just” about taking votes in class, for instance.
Abstract thinking is possible, according to psychological constructivism, but it emerges
relatively slowly and relatively late in development, after a person accumulates considerable
concrete experience.

Social constructivism sees abstract thinking emerging from dialogue between a relative novice
(a child or youth) and a more experienced expert (a parent or teacher). From this point of view,
the more such dialogue occurs, then the more the child can acquire facility with it. The
dialogue must, of course, honor a child's need for intellectual scaffolding or a zone of proximal
development. A teacher's responsibility can therefore include engaging the child in dialogue
that uses potentially abstract reasoning, but without expecting the child to understand the
abstractions fully at first. Young children, for example, can not only engage in science
experiments like creating a “volcano” out of baking soda and water, but also discuss and
speculate about their observations of the experiment. They may not understand the experiment
as an adult would, but the discussion can begin moving them toward adult-like understandings.

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How development occurs

In psychological constructivism, as explained earlier, development is thought to happen

because of the interplay between assimilation and accommodation—between when a child or
youth can already understand or conceive of, and the change required of that understanding by
new experiences. Acting together, assimilation and accommodation continually create new
states of cognitive equilibrium. A teacher can therefore stimulate development by provoking
cognitive dissonance deliberately: by confronting a student with sights, actions, or ideas that do
not fit with the student's existing experiences and ideas. In practice the dissonance is often
communicated verbally, by posing questions or ideas that are new or that students may have
misunderstood in the past. But it can also be provoked through pictures or activities that are
unfamiliar to students—by engaging students in a community service project, for example, that
brings them in contact with people who they had previously considered “strange” or different
from themselves.

In social constructivism, as also explained earlier, development is thought to happen largely

because of scaffolded dialogue in a zone of proximal development. Such dialogue is by
implication less like “disturbing” students' thinking than like “stretching” it beyond its former
limits. The image of the teacher therefore is more one of collaborating with students' ideas
rather than challenging their ideas or experiences. In practice, however, the actual behavior of
teachers and students may be quite similar in both forms of constructivism. Any significant
new learning requires setting aside, giving up, or revising former learning, and this step
inevitably therefore “disturbs” thinking, if only in the short term and only in a relatively minor
way.

Implications of constructivism for teaching

Whether you think of yourself as a psychological constructivist or a social constructivist, there
are strategies for helping students help in develop their thinking—in fact the strategies
constitute a major portion of this book, and are a major theme throughout the entire preservice
teacher education programs. For now, look briefly at just two. One strategy that teachers often
find helpful is to organize the content to be learned as systematically as possible, because
doing this allows the teacher to select and devise learning activities that are better tailored to
students' cognitive abilities, or that promote better dialogue, or both. One of the most widely
used frameworks for organizing content, for example, is a classification scheme proposed by
the educator Benjamin Bloom, published with the somewhat imposing title of Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives: Handbook #1: Cognitive Domain (Bloom, et al., 1956; Anderson &
Krathwohl, 2001). Bloom’s taxonomy, as it is usually called, describes six kinds of learning
goals that teachers can in principle expect from students, ranging from simple recall of
knowledge to complex evaluation of knowledge. (The levels are defined briefly in Error:
Reference source not found with examples from Goldilocks and the Three Bears.)

Bloom’s taxonomy makes useful distinctions among possible kinds of knowledge needed by
students, and therefore potentially helps in selecting activities that truly target students’ zones
of proximal development in the sense meant by Vygotsky. A student who knows few terms for
the species studied in biology unit (a problem at
Bloom’s knowledge and comprehension levels), for example, may initially need support at

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remembering and defining the terms before he or she can make useful comparisons among
species (Bloom’s analysis level). Pinpointing the most appropriate learning activities to accomplish
this objective remains the job of the teacher-expert (that’s you), but the learning itself has to be
accomplished by the student. Put in more social constructivist terms, the teacher arranges a zone of
proximal development that allows the student to compare species successfully, but the student still
has to construct or appropriate the comparisons for him or herself.

Table 1: Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain

Category or
type of Definition Example
thinking

Remembering or recalling List three things Goldilocks did in the

Knowledge facts, information, or
procedures three bears’ house.

Understanding facts, Explain why Goldilocks liked the little bear’s

Comprehension
interpreting information chair as the best.

Using concepts in new Predict some of the things that Goldilocks

Application situations, solving might have used if she had entered your
particular problems house.

Distinguish parts of
Select the part of the story where Goldilocks
Analysis information, a concept, or
seemed most comfortable.
a procedure

Combining elements or
Tell how the story would have been different
Synthesis parts into a new object,
if it had been about three fishes.
idea, or procedure

Evaluation Assessing and judging the Decide whether Goldilocks was a bad girl, and
value or ideas, objects, or justify your position.
materials in a particular

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situation

A second strategy may be coupled with the first. As students gain experience as students, they
become able to think about how they themselves learn best, and you (as the teacher) can
encourage such self-reflection as one of your goals for their learning. These changes allow you
to transfer some of your responsibilities for arranging learning to the students themselves. For
the biology student mentioned above, for example, you may be able not only to plan activities
that support comparing species, but also to devise ways for the student to think about how he
or she might learn the same information independently. The resulting self-assessment and self-
direction of learning often goes by the name of metacognition—an ability to think about and
regulate one’s own thinking (Israel, 2005). Metacognition can sometimes be difficult for
students to achieve, but it is an important goal for social constructivist learning because it
gradually frees learners from dependence on expert teachers to guide their learning. Reflective
learners, you might say, become their own expert guides. Like with using Bloom’s taxonomy,
though, promoting metacognition and self-directed learning is important.

By assigning a more active role to expert helpers—which by implication includes teachers—

than does the psychological constructivism, social constructivism may be more complete as a
description of what teachers usually do when actually busy in classrooms, and of what they
usually hope students will experience there.

COGNITIVE THEORIES

Introduction
Cognitive theories emphasize that cognitive changes take place only when previous conceptions go
through a process of disequilibrium in the light of new information.

Jean Piaget (1896–1980), a Swiss psychologist genious who earned a PhD at age 21, is best
known for his pioneering work on the development of intelligence in children. His studies have
had a major impact on the fields of psychology and education. In his work Piaget identified the
child’s four stages of mental growth.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

From observation of his own children; Jacqueline, Luciana and Laurent, Piaget understood that
children were creators of ideas. They were not limited to receiving knowledge from parents or
teachers; they actively constructed their own knowledge. Piaget's work provides the foundation
on which constructionist theories are based. Constructionists believe that knowledge is constructed
and learning occurs when children create products or artifacts. They assert that learners are more
likely to be engaged in learning when these artifacts are personally relevant and meaningful.

In studying the cognitive development of children and adolescents, Piaget identified four major
stages: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operational and Formal operational. Piaget
believed all children pass through these phases to advance to the next level of cognitive development.
In each stage, children demonstrate new intellectual abilities and an increasingly complex
understanding of the world. Stages cannot be "skipped"; intellectual development always follows this
sequence. The ages at which children progress through the stages are averages-they vary with the
environment and background of individual children. At any given time a child may exhibit behaviors

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characteristic of more than one stage.

The Inspiration web above illustrates Piaget's four cognitive development stages;
sensorimotor (birth-2 years), preoperational (2 - 7 years), concrete operational (7 - 11
years), and formal operational (adolescence - adulthood).

The sensorimotor stage. In the sensorimotor stage, occurring from birth to age 2, children gain
knowledge of the world from the physical actions they perform on it. They gain motor control by
coordinating sensory experiences(seeing& hearing) with motor/physical actions(touching& biting).
This stage involves the use of motor activity without the use of symbols (words). Knowledge is
limited in this stage, because it is based on physical interactions and experiences. Infants cannot
predict reaction, and therefore must constantly experiment and learn through trial and error. Such
exploration might include putting objects in the mouth. They show centration(inability to know
the rules of conservation where amounts remain constant in varying Object permanence
occurs at 7-9 months, demonstrating that memory is developing when infants realize that an
object exists after it can no longer be seen.

The preoperational stage usually occurs during the period between toddlerhood (18-
24months) and early childhood (7 years). In the preoperational stage the child is preoccupied with
verbal skills(symbols). At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively. During this

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stage children begin to use language; memory and imagination also develops. Children engage in
make believe games and can understand and express relationships between the past and the
future. However, intelligence is of egocentric/immediate perception (inability to distinguish
between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective. eg. during a telephone conversation
when a child nods in response to a question instead of responding verbally) and intuitive but
cannot apply rules of conservation and reversibility(eg. Do you have a brother ? yes. What is his
name? Jim. Does Jim have a brother? No. He can’t reverse to think of himself as also being a
brother). Animistic thinking also sets in where the child believes that inanimate objects have life
like qualities and possess human characteristics e.g that tree pushed the leaf off and it fell down, the
sun walks ;also etc.

The concrete operational stage. In the concrete operational stage, from ages 7 to 11/12, the child
begins to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers and relationships. Intellectual development
in this stage is demonstrated by the use of:-
- conservation (understands that basic attributes remain constant even if poured into another
container eg. though a wider glass will seem to have less water than a slim tall glass, the amount
is the same in both glasses),
-reversibility (mental operations allow children to reverse the actions in their heads and come to
the same conclusion eg. Do you have a brother ? yes. What is his name? Jim. Does Jim have a
brother? Yes, me. He can reverse to think of himself as also being a brother),
-mental classification, and logical/systematic serialization, which are related to concrete
objects. Thinking becomes less egocentric with increased awareness of external events, and
involves concrete references. Cannot hypothesize.

The formal operational stage is the period from adolescence through adulthood. Finally, in the
formal operational stage, ages 12 to 15, the child begins to reason logically and systematically.
Adolescents and adults use symbols/words related to abstract concepts. Adolescents can think about
multiple variables in systematic ways, formulate hypothetical situations, and think about abstract
relationships and concepts. They apply formulae to solve problems mentally.

By operations, Piaget meant internalized reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally
what they previously could only do physically. E.g. By imagining putting two sticks together to see
whether they would be as long as another stick without actually moving the sticks, one is performing a
concrete operation.

Piaget believed that intellectual development was a lifelong process, but that when formal operational
thought was attained, no new structures were needed. Intellectual development in adults involves
developing more complex schema through the addition of knowledge.

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

An important implication of Piaget's theory is adaptation of instruction to the learner's developmental

level. The content of instruction needs to be consistent with the developmental level of the learner.

The teacher's role is to facilitate learning by providing a variety of experiences. "Discovery learning"
provides opportunities for learners to explore and experiment, thereby encouraging new
understandings.

Opportunities that allow students of differing cognitive levels to work together often encourage less
mature students to advance to a more mature understanding.

One further implication for instruction is the use of concrete "hands on" experiences to help children
learn. Additional suggestions include:

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Provide concrete props and visual aids, such as models and/or time line
Use familiar examples to facilitate learning more complex ideas, such as story problems in math.

Allow opportunities to classify and group information with similar increasing complexity; use
outlines and hierarchies to facilitate assimilating new information with previous knowledge.

Present problems that require logical analytic thinking; the use of tools such as "brain teasers" is
encouraged.

Only 35% of high school graduates in industrialized countries obtain formal operations; many
people do not think formally during adulthood. This is significant in terms of developing instruction
and performance support tools for students who are chronologically adults, but may be limited in their
understanding of abstract concepts. For both adolescent and adult learners, it is important to use these
instructional strategies:

Use visual aids and models.

Provide opportunities to discuss social, political, and cultural issues.

Teach broad concepts rather than facts, and to situate these in a context meaningful and
relevant to the learner.

SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES (SCT)

Social cognitive theory (SCT) refers to a psychological model of behavior that emerged primarily
from the work of Albert Bandura. SCT emphasizes that learning occurs in a social context and that
much of what is learned is gained through observation and imitation of those around us. SCT has been
applied broadly to such diverse areas of human functioning as career choice, organizational behavior,
athletics, and mental and physical health. SCT also has been applied extensively by those
interested in understanding classroom motivation, learning, and achievement.

SCT rests on several basic assumptions about learning and behavior. One assumption concerns triadic
reciprocality, or the view that personal, behavioral, and environmental factors influence one another
in a bidirectional, reciprocal fashion. That is, a person's on-going functioning is a product of a
continuous interaction between cognitive, behavioral, and contextual factors. For instance, classroom
learning is shaped by factors within the academic environment, especially the reinforcements
experienced by oneself and by others. At the same time, learning is affected by students' own
thoughts and self-beliefs and their interpretation of the classroom context.

A closely related assumption within SCT is that people have an agency or ability to influence their
own behavior and the environment in a purposeful, goal-directed fashion (Bandura, 2001). This
belief conflicts with earlier forms of behaviorism that advocated a more rigorous form of
environmental determinism. SCT does not deny the importance of the environment in determining
behavior, but it does argue that people can also, through forethought, self-reflection, and self-
regulatory processes, exert substantial influence over their own outcomes and the environment more
broadly.

A third assumption within SCT is that learning can occur without an immediate change in behavior or
more broadly that learning and the demonstration of what has been learned are distinct processes. One
reason for this separation is that SCT also assumes that learning involves not just the acquisition of

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new behaviors, but also of knowledge, cognitive skills, concepts, abstract rules, values, and other
cognitive constructs. This division of learning and behavior is a shift from the position advocated by
behavioral theories that defined learning stridently as a change in the form or frequency of behavior.
It also means that students can learn but not demonstrate that learning until motivated to do so.

HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY

Born in 1925, Albert Bandura was trained and began his career in the mid-twentieth century when
explanations of human functioning, including classroom learning, were dominated by behavioral
models advocated by researchers such as B. F. Skinner, Clark Hull, Kenneth Spence, and Edward
Tolman. In this context, Bandura, along with his students and colleagues, initiated a series of
studies designed to examine social explanations for why and when children displayed aggressive
behaviors. These studies demonstrated the value of modeling for acquiring novel behaviors and
provided initial evidence for the separation of learning and performance. They also indicated the
importance of the learner's perceptions of the environment generally, of the person modeling a
behavior specifically, and of the learner's expectations regarding the consequences of behavior. In
doing so, findings from this systematic research contradicted assumptions within behavioral models
that learning was the result of trial and error learning or that changes in behavior were due
primarily to the consequences of one's own actions.

By the mid 1970s these studies helped form the foundation for what Bandura initially called
observational learning theory and then later social learning theory. This precursor to SCT
established a viable model for understanding how people learned through observation of models.
Additional work during this time expanded aspects of the theory dealing with abstract modeling,
language, and conceptual learning. In the years that followed, SCT continued to evolve, spurred by
the work of Bandura and his colleagues stressing the processes of goal setting, self-efficacy,
and self- regulation. The evolution of SCT also drew ideas from information processing models of
psychological functioning to describe the cognitive processes that mediate learning.

CORE CONCEPTS WITHIN SCT

SCT integrates a large number of discrete ideas, concepts, and sub-processes into an overall
framework for understanding human functioning. Five of the central concepts are described below.

Observational Learning/Modeling. One core premise within SCT has been that people learn
through observation. This process is also described as vicarious learning or modeling because
learning is a result of watching the behavior and consequences of models in the environment. Live
demonstrations of a behavior or skill by a teacher or classmate, typify the notion of modeling.
Verbal or written descriptions, video or audio recordings, and other less direct forms of performance
are also considered forms of modeling. There are also distinctions among different types of models.
Mastery models are proficient when demonstrating a skill, whereas coping models struggle, make
mistakes, and only eventually show proficiency. Abstract modeling occurs when the skill or
knowledge being learned is conveyed only indirectly, and cognitive modeling occurs when a model
verbalizes her thoughts while demonstrating a cognitive process or skill(talking to the class while
calculating a sum on board).

According to SCT, observational learning of novel/new behaviors or skills is dependent on four inter-
related processes involving attention, retention, production, and motivation. Attentional processes are
critical because students must attend to a model and the relevant aspects of behavior in order
to learn. Retention refers to the processes necessary for reducing and transforming what is observed
into a symbolic form that can be stored for later use. Production processes are necessary when
students draw on their stored codes and make an effort to perform what they have observed. Finally,
motivational processes are key for understanding why students engage in the prior sub-processes,
including whether they ever attempt to use or recreate the new skills they have observed. Each of

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these processes, furthermore, are affected by factors such as the developmental level of the learner
and characteristics of the model and modeled behavior.

Beyond new learning, modeling is also important for understanding when or why previously learned
behaviors are exhibited. Students' may inhibit their engagement in a behavior if they observe a model
suffer consequences they would prefer to avoid. For instance, if a teacher glares at one student who is
talking out of turn, other students may suppress this behavior to avoid a similar reaction. In a related
fashion, students may disinhibit or engage in a behavior they had initially suppressed when they fail
to see any negative consequences accrue to a model. For example, students may refrain from shouting
out answers unless they are called upon only until they see others do so without repercussions.
Finally, through a process labeled response facilitation, models can simply prompt others to behave in
known ways.

Outcome Expectations. Outcome expectations reflect individuals' beliefs about what consequences
are most likely to ensue if particular behaviors are performed. For instance, children may believe that
if they get a hit during a baseball game the crowd will cheer, they will feel good and will be admired
by their teammates. These beliefs are formed enactively through students' own past experiences and
vicariously through the observation of others. Outcome expectations are important in SCT because
they shape the decisions people make about what actions to take and which behaviors to suppress. The
frequency of a behavior should increase when the outcomes expected are valued, whereas behaviors
associated with unfavorable or irrelevant outcomes will be avoided.

Perceived Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy also has emerged as a prominent and influential concept within
SCT. Self-efficacy reflects individuals' beliefs about whether they can achieve a given level of
success at a particular task. Students with greater self-efficacy are more confident in their abilities to
be successful when compared to their peers with lower self-efficacy. Self-efficacy has proven
useful for understanding students' motivation and achievement in academic contexts. Higher
levels of perceived self-efficacy have been associated with greater choice, persistence, and with more
effective strategy use.

Consistent with the tenets of SCT, self-efficacy is viewed as a product of individuals' own past
performances, the observation and verbal persuasion of others in the environment, and individuals'
on-going physiological state. Rather than directly affecting their self-efficacy, however, these
sources of information are weighed and filtered through a process known as cognitive appraisal. For
instance, a prior failure may not be detrimental to self-efficacy if students believe there was some
no-longer relevant reason for the poor performance (e.g., prior sickness). Interventions based on
SCT and designed to increase self-efficacy in school-aged children have proven effective.

Goal Setting. Goal setting is another central process within SCT. Goals reflect cognitive
representations of anticipated, desired, or preferred outcomes. Hence, goals exemplify the agency
view within SCT that people not only learn, they use forethought to envision the future, identify
desired outcomes, and generate plans of action. Goals are also closely related to other
important processes within SCT. For instance, models can provide goals in the form of
specific behavioral outcomes or more general standards for acceptable levels of performance. Goals
also are intricately related to students' outcome expectations and their perceived self-efficacy.
Goals are a function of the outcomes students expect from engaging in particular behaviors and the
confidence they have for completing those behaviors successfully. Finally, goals are an important
prerequisite for self- regulation because they provide objectives that students are trying to achieve and
benchmarks against which to judge progress.

Self-regulation. SCT models of self-regulation assume that self-regulation is dependent on goal

setting, in that students are thought to manage their thoughts and actions in order to reach particular
outcomes. SCT views of self-regulation initially emphasized three sub- processes. Self-observation
reflects students' ability to monitor or keep track of their own behaviors and outcomes. Self-judgment

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is the process through which students' evaluate whether their actions are effective and allow them to
make progress toward their goals. Finally, self- reaction occurs when students' respond to the
evaluations they have made by modifying their behavior, rewarding it, or discontinuing it.

Self-regulation is a prominent and increasing aspect of SCT that exemplifies the underlying
assumptions regarding agency and the influence of personal factors on behavior and the
environment. As noted above, self-regulation is also dependent on other processes within SCT,
including goal setting and self- efficacy. Unless students have goals and feel efficacious about
reaching them, they may not activate the processes needed for self-regulation. Modeling can also
affect students' self-regulated learning. The skills needed to manage one's behavior, as well as the
beliefs and attitudes that serve to motivate self- regulation, can be obtained through modeling.

Young children are particularly unable to discriminate between the fiction of television and real life.
Research shows that they are likely to apply the aggressive behaviors they have seen on television to
the playground as early as nursery school age. They internalize behaviors that they observe even
though they have not experienced them directly.

When Bandura's social cognitive theory, which suggests that children learn through observation, is
extended to television viewing, it would seem to indicate that children would learn aggressive
behavior through observation of violence on television. It also means that if children observe positive
behaviors in television programming, they should emulate those behaviors as well. Bandura's
theory states that when children see behavior modeled, they will accept it and use it when they
deem it appropriate. It also explains the need for positive role models on television for children.

According to Bandura's social cognitive theory, when children see family members or friends
working together on a television situation comedy to resolve a problem, it follows that they will try
to resolve problems with their own family members or friends peacefully, by working together,
instead of fighting with them. Research on the results of this type of modeled behavior is reported to
be difficult, with inconclusive results.

Bandura's theory of behaviors learned by observation means that young viewers have to identify with
the characters to model either pro-social or violent behavior. In other words, if a child observes
television characters that she or he perceives as being similar to herself or himself, that child will be
more likely to behave in a manner similar to those characters.

Educational programming is based on Bandura's theory of modeled behavior. To be effective with

prosocial behaviors, television programmers have to conduct extensive research and make sure
characters and events portrayed in their shows have a relation to real-world situations. They also
have to carefully create characters who are positive, with good results from their actions; negative,
with undesirable results from their actions; and transitional, who start the show as negative characters
but change because of decisions made and actions taken, so they become positive role models by the
end of the show.

Violent acts in regular television programming have more of an effect on children's behavior than
sports programming. The results of research on the effect that violence on television has on students
generally are in agreement that children who observe violence in prime time television or on
Saturday morning children's shows that do not include sports programming will behave aggressively
whether or not they had were pre-disposed to behave aggressively.

A real concern with the effects of television violence and aggressive behavior learned by observation
of incidents of violent programming is that this learning has been proven to continue through
adolescence and into adulthood.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION

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One strength of SCT is that it provides a clear foundation for classroom interventions designed
to improve students' learning. In this section, several general implications for instruction derived from
the key concepts described above are described.

Observational Learning/Modeling.

The most basic instructional implication of SCT is that students should be provided frequent
access to models of the knowledge, skills, and behaviors they are expected to learn. For example,
teachers should model the behaviors and cognitive processes they want students to learn. Effective
instruction, moreover, should include multiple types of models (e.g., teacher, peers, parents) and
various forms of modeling (e.g. cognitive, verbal, mastery, coping). The inhibitory and disinhibitory
effects of modeling, further, necessitate that educators administer rewards and punishments
in a careful and consistent manner.

More specifically, instruction based on SCT should support students' engagement in each of the
four sub-processes of observational learning. Students' attention can be increased by using models
that are viewed as competent, prestigious, and similar to themselves.

Students also pay closer attention when the skill or material being demonstrated is considered
more personally relevant or interesting. Instruction should support students' retention by facilitating
the creation of verbal labels or images through the use of mnemonics, graphic organizers, or other
similar learning strategies.

Opportunities for rehearsal, both in the form of repeated exposure to models and in the form of time
to reflect on the material or skills also assist retention.

The effective use of models depends on providing students multiple opportunities to practice the
behaviors or skills they have observed. This process will be improved if students are provided
feedback about their efforts that is specific, more immediate, and insightful about what the learner is
doing well and what needs improvement.

Teachers should support the motivational aspects of observational learning through the purposeful use
of rewards and punishments. These consequences, further, should shape students' behavior when they
are provided either to the learner or to a model.

To improve motivation, teachers should also model attitudes that they want students to adopt such as
enthusiasm or interest in the material.

Outcome Expectations. Instruction should help students to see that classroom learning and the
demonstration of that learning leads to personally valued or important outcomes. Students must
believe that, if they complete learning tasks successfully, the outcomes they achieve are meaningful,
useful, or worthy of the effort necessary to reach them. To encourage these beliefs, teachers
should create lessons that emphasize real-world applications and the relevance of material to
students' own lives. Decontextualized instructional practices that obfuscate the benefits of learning
should be avoided.

Perceived Self-Efficacy. Students will be more active, effortful, and effective learners when they are
confident in their ability to complete academic tasks successfully. Hence, instruction should be
designed in a way that helps them to develop and sustain their self-efficacy for learning. Most simply,
tasks should be moderately challenging so that students do well and make progress when
providing reasonable effort. Teachers should ensure that students have the prerequisite knowledge and
strategies needed to be successful at more complex and rigorous tasks. In this way, students will
develop a pattern of success that fosters positive levels of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy can also be

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improved when students are exposed to peer models who initially struggle but who ultimately are
able to complete tasks effectively (i.e., coping models). Finally, teachers can make direct
statements to learners or models as a way to boost their confidence. Such statements, however, must
be credible or they will be discounted or ignored by learners.

Goal Setting. Instruction should help students to set effective goals by addressing the properties
found in the most effective goals (Schunk, 1990). Instructional practices should promote students'
efforts to set attainable goals that are clear, specific, and moderately challenging. In order to show
progress and to maintain self-efficacy, learning goals should be attainable with moderate levels of
effort. These goals will also reduce disappointment and frustration that students might feel if they fail
to reach their goals. Specific goals are more effective than general or vague goals in spurring
students to action and in guiding their behavior. Students should have both distal and more short-
term goals for their learning in school. However, proximal goals are more effective at guiding
behavior because they allow for more immediate feedback about progress. Finally, goals that
students set or endorse themselves have a bigger impact on their behavior than goals that are
assigned. Hence, instruction should help students develop the ability and willingness to form their
own academic goals.

Self-Regulation. According to SCT, all students should be supported in their efforts to be self-
regulated learners. In addition to fostering self-efficacy and effective goal setting, teachers should
help students become skilled at self-observation, self-judgment, and self-reaction (see Zimmerman et
al., 1996). Teachers can promote self-observation by helping students learn how to monitor different
aspects of their academic behavior. Practices such as journal writing, checklists, and time for self-
reflection help students develop these skills. For self-judgment, students must learn how to evaluate
their performance in light of the goals or standards they have set. Teachers can facilitate this
process through modeling and by supporting students' own efforts to compare their performance to
both absolute and normative standards. Teachers should also help students see the value and relevance
of the standards in order to encourage their self-judgment. The self-reaction process depends on
students' ability to respond adaptively both when they are making progress and when they are not. For
the former, instructional practices should assist students in learning how to self-administer
reinforcements for their own efforts using both concrete and internal rewards. For the latter,
instruction should support students in their efforts to evaluate and modify their learning strategies in
order to improve progress. As with all skills, students can develop these self-regulatory abilities
vicariously and with guided opportunities to practice them firsthand.

INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORY

According to the cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, the human learner is conceived to be a
processor of information, in much the same way a computer is. When learning occurs, information is
input from the environment, processed and stored in memory, and then output in the form of a learned
capability. The mind is often compared to a computer which analyzes information and determines
how the information will be stored.

The Information Processing Theory addresses how people respond to the information they received
through their senses and how they further process those information with steps of attention, forgetting,
and retention.

Human beings process information with amazing efficiency and often perform better than highly
sophisticated machines at tasks such as problem solving and critical thinking. The best articulated and
most heavily researched model is the information processing model (IPM).

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THE INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL (IPM).

The IPM consists of three main components, sensory memory, working memory, and long-term
memory . Sensory and working memory enable people to manage limited amounts of incoming
information during initial processing, whereas long-term memory serves as a permanent repository for
knowledge. In this entry, the information processing model will be used as a metaphor for successful
learning in the learning cycle.

There are three components of the Information Processing Theory: sensory memory, working
memory, and long term memory.

SENSORY MEMORY
Sensory memory is all of the things that you experience through your five senses - hearing,
vision, taste, smell, and touch. The capacity of sensory memory is great but the duration is very
limited.

Sensory memory processes incoming sensory information for very brief periods of time, usually on
the order of 1/2 to 3 seconds. The main purpose of sensory memory is to screen incoming stimuli and
process only those stimuli that are most relevant at the present time. For example, drivers on a busy
freeway in heavy traffic are constantly bombarded with visual and auditory stimuli.

To maximize efficiency and safety, they process only information that is relevant to safe driving.
Thus, they would attend to road conditions but not buildings they pass as they drive. Similarly, they
would attend to sounds of other cars, but not to music from the radio or one passenger's casual
conversation with another.

SHORT TERM/ WORKING MEMORY

Working memory is short term, often just seconds long, and includes the thinking part of applying
what came out of the sensory memory.

After stimuli enter sensory memory, they are either forwarded to working memory or deleted from the
system.

Working memory is a term that is used to refer to a multi-component temporary memory system
in which information is assigned meaning, linked to other information, and essential mental
operations such as inferences are performed.

LONG-TERM MEMORY

Long term memory is memory that can be accessed at a much later time, and is much longer lasting
and can hold more information than working memory.

Unlike sensory and working memory, long-term memory is not constrained by capacity or duration
of attention limitations. The role of long-term memory is to provide a seemingly unlimited repository
for all the facts and knowledge in memory. Most researchers believe that long-term memory is
capable of holding millions of pieces of information for very long periods of time.

Different types of information exist in long-term memory and that information must be organized,
and therefore quickly accessible, to be of practical use to learners.

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Working memory and long-term memory are connected by encoding and retrieval processes.

Encoding refers to a large number of strategies that move information from temporary store in
working memory into long-term memory.

Retrieval refers to processes that enable individuals to search memory and access information for
active processing in working memory.

Both encoding and retrieval greatly facilitate learning when information in long-term memory is
organized for easy access.

The main learning constraint on long-term memory is the individual's ability to quickly encode and
retrieve information using an efficient organizational system.

IMPLICATIONS OF IPM FOR INSTRUCTION

The Informational Processing Model (IPM) provides an excellent framework for understanding
principles of effective learning. It provides four important implications for improving learning and
instruction.

1. The first is that memory stores are extremely limited in both sensory and working memory. The
two main strategies that effective learners use to cope with limited capacity are selectively focusing
their attention on important information and engaging in as much automated processing as possible.
From an educational perspective, it is essential for students to become automated at basic skills such
as letter and word decoding, number recognition, and simple procedural skills such as handwriting,
multiplication, and spelling. Automaticity makes available limited processing resources that can be
used to engage in labor intensive self-regulation and comprehension monitoring.

2. A second implication is that relevant prior knowledge facilitates encoding and retrieval processes.
Highly effective learners possess a great deal of organized knowledge within a particular domain
such as reading, mathematics, or science. They also possess general problem-solving and critical-
thinking scripts that enable them to perform well across different domains. This knowledge guides
information processing in sensory and working memory by providing easy-to-access retrieval
structures in memory. It also serves as the basis for the development of expertise. Thus, helping
students use their prior knowledge when learning new information promotes learning.

3. A third implication is that automated information processing increases cognitive efficiency by

reducing information processing demands. As discussed earlier, automaticity is an important aspect of
effective learning for two reasons. One is that being automated makes it easier selectively to allocate

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limited resources to information that is most relevant to the task at hand. Unfortunately, there is no
easy road to automaticity other than sustained, regular practice. In addition, automaticity frees limited
resources that can be used for other activities such as drawing inferences and connecting new
information to existing information in memory.

4. A fourth implication is that learning strategies improve information processing because

learners are more efficient and process information at a deeper level. All effective learners draw from
a repertoire of learning strategies in a flexible manner. Some of these strategies are used
automatically, while some require controlled processing and metacognitive control that place high
demands on limited cognitive resources.

Good learners use a wide variety of strategies and use them in a highly automatic fashion.
However, there are three general strategies that all effective learners use in most situations. These
include organization, inferences, and elaboration. Organization refers to how information is sorted
and arranged in long-term memory. Information that is related to what one already knows is easier to
encode and retrieve than isolated information. In some cases, individuals already possess well
organized knowledge with empty slots that can be filled easily with new information. Activating
existing knowledge prior to instruction, or providing a visual diagram of how information is
organized, is one of the best ways to facilitate learning new information. Constructing inferences
involves making connections between separate concepts. Elaboration refers to increasing the
meaningfulness of information by connecting new information to ideas already known.

CAUSES OF FORGETTING

Neural Decay / Memory Decay

The decay theory suggests that the passage of time is responsible for forgetting. A memory researcher
Daniel scharcter ( 2001) refers to forgetting that occurs with the passage of time as transience.

This is whereby, the next visual input “ erases” the first input ie once the new are plugged into
temporary hold ( short – term memory) older items decay and you thus forget them.

Interference

One of the major causes of forgetting is interference between memories, new memories interfere with
the old ones; old memories interfere with new ones and new input can actually distort or transform old
memories

Interference theory states that we forget, not because we actually lose memories storage, but rather
because other information get in the way of what we are trying to remember e.g. When a student is
studying for a biology test, then history test. The first one will be interfered with. There are two types of
interferences:

Proactive interference – this is where the previously learned material get in the way of recall for new
material

Retroactive interference – this is where the newly learned material to get in the way of recall for
material learned earlier.

Cue- Dependent

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Retrieval failure is caused by lack of effective retrieval cues through change of environment at the time
of recall from where learning took place

Rejection And Repression

The lower centers in the brain reject inputs that are meaningless or unimportant to you.

Cataloging And Filing

Meaningful items are usually transferred from the short-term to long –term through cataloging them in
terms of experiences and categories.

Your brain also seems to have a mental index card for each category under which each category will be
filed.

These index categories are used to retrieve items from memory storage banks. However this mental
index cards occasionally get cataloged in the wrong way, misfiled or totally lost.

Memory Disorders

The most common of these are amnesia and Aphasias. Amnesia is the failure to recall information, this
results from it being erased physically from your memory banks

Aphasias is the impairment in the ability to use or remember language.

Lack of sufficient time

Insufficient time to remember or recall can also lead to forgetting

ENHANCING RECALL

Teachers can assist students remember what they have learned in the following ways; -

 Motivate children to remember material by understanding it rather than rotely memorizing it .

 Assist students in organizing what they put into their memory eg hierarchically

 Teach mnemonic strategies ie use of memory aids for remembering information . these can
involve imagery and words

 Stimulate the students’ curiosity by association what is to be learnt with the pupil’s special
interest

 Beginning from the known to unknown

 Help students form their associations/discussion groups by presenting facts together

 Spacing out tasks , this improves remembering

 Using the principle of learning by doing. Encourage them to practice what they have learnt

 Making the subject matter meaningful

 Making use of relevant teaching aids

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Congratulations! We can now move to topic four

Dr. J. NABISWA KIBU 2023/2024 PSY 211 UNIT 3 &UNIT 4 GUIDE NOTES