BEHAVIOURAL LEARNING THEORY

BEHAVIORISM

Behaviourism is a worldview that assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding to environmental stimuli. The learner starts off as a clean slate (i.e. tabula rasa) and behaviour is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. Both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability that the antecedent behaviour will happen again. In contrast, punishment (both positive and negative) decreases the likelihood that the antecedent behaviour will happen again. Positive indicates the application of a stimulus; Negative indicates the withholding of a stimulus. Learning is therefore defined as a change in behaviour in the learner. Lots of (early) behaviourist work was done with animals (e.g. Pavlov’s dogs) and generalized to humans.

Behaviourism precedes the cognitivist worldview. It rejects structuralism and is an extension of Logical Positivism.

Behaviourism is primarily associated with Pavlov (classical conditioning) in Russia and with Thorndike, Watson and particularly Skinner in the United States (operant conditioning). 

• Behaviourism is dominated by the constraints of its (naïve) attempts to emulate the physical sciences, which entails a refusal to speculate about what happens inside the organism. Anything which relaxes this requirement slips into the cognitive realm. 

• Much behaviourist experimentation is undertaken with animals and generalised. 

• In educational settings, behaviourism implies the dominance of the teacher, as in behaviour modification programmes. It can, however, be applied to an understanding of unintended learning.

For our purposes, behaviourism is relevant mainly to: 

•  Skill development, and

• The "substrate" (or "conditions", as Gagné puts it) of learning