Contribution of theories and principles of learning

In our course CED 211, one of the objectives stated in our syllabus is for us to be able to identify and analyze the contribution of theories and principles of learning. This objective clearly calls for a clear comprehension of the theories and principles of learning as well as a careful analysis or breaking down of these different theories and principles.

Theorists disagree about how to define the word learning. Some theorists propose a definition such as this one: Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior due to experience. Others propose a definition along these lines: Learning is a relatively permanent change in mental association due to experience.

To analyze these two definitions, require a comparison and contrast of their similarities and differences.

Both definitions are similar because they both describe learning as a relatively permanent change -- something that lasts for a period of time. Both shows that change is due to experience. It results from specific experiences that students have had.

They are also different because the first one describes learning as a change in behavior, the second one as a change in mental associations.

This difference shows the opposing view on learning and represents the different learning theories adhered to and practiced by educators. Although these theories are like night and day when it comes to their differences, they are also like night and day when it comes to their relationship with one another. They complement one another.

Behaviorism, cognitive and social cognitive theory encompass different views on learning.

So let us take a look at each theory or rather family of theories and see how these theories are used by educators.

Behavioral Learning Theory

According to this theory, learning occurs when environmental stimuli produce a relatively permanent and observable change in a learner's response or behavior. Stimuli are observable environmental event that has the potential to exert control over a behavioral response. A response is an overt behavior by a learner. For the behaviorists, response and behavior should be observable.

Let me discuss basic concepts about the types of stimuli:

1) Eliciting stimuli - are observable environmental stimuli that comes immediately before a response and that automatically elicit or produce that response. An example is a hand towards another person's face (stimulus) and the other person moves his/her head or put his/her hand to protect his/her face (response).

2) Consequences - a stimulus that occurs immediately after a response and has the effect of making a response more or less likely to occur again. This is defined in terms of effect on the response. To qualify as a consequences, a stimulus must either increase or decrease the likelihood of response.

3) Antecedents - stimulus that precedes a response and cues learners to respond in a certain ways if they want to earn reinforcement or avoid punishment. Example is when a teacher gets very quiet when her students are noisy. Then the students quiet down and pay attention if they want reinforcement or avoid punishment.

Together, Antecedents, Behavior (response), and Consequences are ABCs of learning. When you use the ABCs to understand your student's behavior, your are looking for the antecedents that cue a behavior and the consequences that affect the livelihood of a behavior occurring again.

Under the behavioral learning theories, there are three main theories: Classical Conditioning by Ivan Pavlov, Operant Conditioning by Burrhus Frederick Skinner, and Contiguity Learning Theory by Edwin Guthrie.

Both Contiguity Learning and Classical Conditioning focus on the role of eliciting stimulus in learning while in Operant Conditioning, the focus are on the role of antecedents and consequences to explain learning.

Contiguity Learning (Edwin R. Guthrie). Learning occurs when an eliciting stimulus and response become connected because they have occurred together. As a result of this connection, when the eliciting stimulus occurs in the future, the connected response tend to occur. Example of this is when students learn to respond to fire alarms by practicing certain response during fire drills. Students may learn their math facts by producing correct response to the eliciting stimulus of a flash card or worksheet. Practicing them together connects the problem (stimulus) and answer (response).

Contiguity learning often occurs in classroom through drill and practice activities. This has been criticized because they tend to emphasize the learning of low-level skills at the expense of meaningful, conceptual understanding.

Classical Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov). Involves situation in which two stimuli become associated, and as a result, they both now elicit similar response. Pavlov and colleagues noted that the dogs in the laboratory start salivating to environmental stimuli other than food. So they began pairing the presentation of food with a second stimulus such as bell, light, buzzer. They found that if food was presented with one of these other stimuli, the two stimuli become associated and they then both elicited salivation.

Operant Conditioning (Burrhus Frederick Skinner; has its historical roots in empiricism and ideas of E.L. Thorndike and J.B. Watson). In operant conditioning, the response comes first followed by a reinforcing consequence. The reinforcing consequence in actually a stimulus. (R - S).

There are three conditions for operation conditioning to occur:

- The individual must make a response. To be reinforced -- to learn-- the learner must first make a reponse. Behaviorists belive that little is accomplished by having students sit quietly and listen passively to their teacher. Instead, students are more likely to learn when they are making active, overt responses in the classroom. For example, Pamela will learn her cursive letters most easily by writing them.

Just to add on Thorndike, from his theory on instrumental conditioning, he specified three conditions that maximizes learning:

- Law of effect - stated that the likely recurrence of a response is generally governed by its consequences or effect generally in the form or reward or punishment.
- Law of recency - stated that the most recent response is likely to govern the recurrence
- Law of exercise - stated that the stimulus and response associations are strengthened through repetition.

The basic assumptions of behaviorism are:

- People's behaviors are largely the result of their experiences with environmental stimuli. Many behaviorists believe that, with the exception of a few simple reflexes, a person is born as a "blank state" or tabula rasa, with no inherited tendency to behave one way or another. Over the years, the environment "writes" on this slate, slowly molding, or conditioning, the individual into an adult who has unique characteristics and ways of behaving.

- Learning can be described in terms of relationships among observable events -- that is, relationships among stimuli and responses. Behaviorists have traditionally believed that the processes that occur inside a person (thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, etc) cannot be observed and so cannot be studied scientifically. Psychological inquiry should instead focus on things that can be observed and studied objectively; more specifically, it should focus on the responses that learners make and the environmental stimuli that bring those responses about.

- Learning involves a behavior change. From a behaviorist perspective, learning itself should be defined as something that can be observed and documented; in other words, it should be defined as a change in behavior.

- Learning is most likely to take place when stimuli and responses occur close together in time.

- Many species of animals, including humans, learn in similar ways. Behaviorists assume that many species share similar learning processes; hence, they apply the learning principles that they derive from observing one species to their understanding of how may other species (including humans) learn.


Principles of Learning

- Learning is measurable and observable.

- Learning complicate behaviors occurs gradually and step-by-step.

- Learning results from the effects of stimuli on responses.


Classroom Implications

- Teachers and educators must keep in mind the very significant effect that students' past and present environments are likely to have on the behaviors they exhibit. So by changing the environmental events that our students experience, we may also be able to change their behaviors.

- Provides a useful explanations for how students acquire important emotional responses and attitudes

- Students can learn to associate an initially neutral stimuli with stimuli that already elicit strong emotions. Eventually, they respond to those school stimuli with the same emotions.

- Classical conditioning can also explain how we implicitly learn certain attitudes

- From a classical conditioning perspective, if people or items are paired with other stimuli that produce positive or negative emotional response, those people or items eventually can produce the same emotional response.

- Serves as a reminder to teacher that they can unintentionally produce attitudes or emotional associations for school that they do no want their students to learn.