Wiki : Behaviorism

Wiki > Behaviorism

What is Behaviorism?
What is the special Meaning for eLearning?
Which eLearning Tools make use of Behaviorism and in what point exactly?
References
Other Learning Theories

What is Behaviorism?

(Pawlow, Skinner, Staddon and Instructionalism)

Behaviorism or Behaviourism, also called the learning perspective, is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The school of psychology maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observational correlates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling).

From early psychology in the 19th century, the behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently and shared commonalities with the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements in psychology into the 20th century; but also differed from the mental philosophy of the Gestalt psychologists in critical ways. (...) Its main influences were Ivan Pavlov, who investigated classical conditioning, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson who rejected introspective methods and sought to restrict psychology to experimental methods, and B.F. Skinner who conducted research on operant conditioning... (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Below we can find out more from two of the main protagonists from above, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov and Burrhus Frederic Skinner (taken, and adapted, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov is widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning in the 1890s and 1900s. While investigating the gastric function of dogs by externalizing a salivary gland, he noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food coated with chili powder was actually delivered to their mouths. He then manipulated the stimuli occurring before the presentation of food. He thereby established the basic laws for the establishment and extinction of what he called "conditional reflexes" — i.e., reflex responses that only occurred conditionally upon specific previous experiences of the animal.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner, on the other hand, conducted pioneering work in psychology and innovated his own school of Radical Behaviorism, which aims to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences. Skinner is known for inventing the operant conditioning chamber (the so-called Skinner box), he used this research tool to examine the orderly relations of the behavior of organisms (such as rats, pigeons and humans) to their environment. He discovered what is now called operant conditioning and articulated the now widely accepted term reinforcement as a scientific principle of behaviour.

"Staddon calls into question Skinner’s basic concept of reinforcement contingency, challenging the adequacy of contiguity to explain the effects of reinforcement. He rejects prediction and control as sufﬁcient goals for a scientiﬁc theory, and he argues for a deeper theoretical understanding. Contrary to Skinner’s proscriptions against theorizing, Staddon advocates theoretical inferences of internal states and mechanisms to supply causal explanations rather than the teleological explanations provided by contingencies of reinforcement."
<G. E. ZURIFF, "PHILOSOPHY OF BEHAVIORISM" external link

, 2002>

What is the special Meaning for eLearning?

- tools for eLearning should emphasize routines
- behavior is an important part of learning processes, e.g. eLearning should be easy to add to other individual learning strategies
- humans are not machines and they are not reacting "objective" but with feelings, interests and former experiences to learning settings (and eLearning settings)

Which eLearning Tools make use of Behaviorism and in what point exactly?

CBt learning might be in the sense of behavorism. Because if you have a cd rom for learning a language on the computer the manage it for your behaviour. You learn somehting, if you are doing it again and again.

The software that uses methaphors a lot make use of behavioristic ideas, for instance the calender-option which reminds on "real" paper-calender or the "desktop" which reminds on a desktop of my table at home,...
Even though there are a lot of limits in the theory (mechanic humans, simple reinforcement-arguments) there is also some use in recognizing behavior as a part of learning processes, f.e. in microlearning with its "small portions" concept, the mobile learning with its integrative character in daily life routines and in communication tools like voice-via-internet (skype) which uses the metaphors of a real telephone even with the graphical items.