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BEHAVIOURISM

        In 1913, John B. Watson (1878 – 1958), who is considered the father of behaviourism, published a paper titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” with which behaviourism was formally established. The following quote summed up its approach:

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."

Behaviourists believe that a behavior is a result of experience. It is not knowledge that guides actions instead knowledge is action or rules for action. Information that is transmitted from teachers to learners is the appropriate response to a certain stimulus and this response is continuously modified by learners until they receive reinforcement. This means that a teacher or an educator is the centre of learning with which stimulus and desired responses are indicated.

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John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)

The Three Types of Behaviourism:

  1. Methodological Behaviourism: which is the dominant form in Watson’s researches and writings. It claims that psychology should concern itself with understanding behavious and not the mental or cognitive states. It means that beliefs and desires don’t add to what should be studied about behavior.

  2. Psychological Behaviourism: it tends to explain the human and animal behaviour in terms of external stimuli, responses and reinforcement. This form was present evidently in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849 - 1936).

  3. Logical/ Radical Behaviourism: this approach was created by the scientist B. F. Skinner (1904 - 1990). It says that metal states and conditions are behavioural dispositions or tendencies to behave in certain ways in certain conditions.

Classical Conditioning

    A technique which claims that learning occurs when a neutral conditioned stimulus is associated with a natural unconditioned stimulus producing a conditioned response to be measured as a behaviour. This means that the conditioned stimulus produces a conditioned response that was an unconditioned response with the neutral unconditioned stimulus before. This is called “Learning by Association” and was emphasized through the experiment held be Ivan Pavlov in 1905.

Persistence of the conditioning is affected by the strength of association which means that by reducing the response associated with the conditioned stimulus presented with the unconditioned one results in extinction of that response. However, the increase of a response after a pause may result in spontaneous recovery. Also, the tendency to respond to a stimulus that resembles the original one or not respond to a stimulus that is not identical explains that the creature can generalize or discriminate the conditions.

Operant Conditioning

      This method of learning, as B. F. Skinner describes it, occurs through reinforcement and punishment as a consequence of a behaviour. In other words, the behaviour is linked to the consequences were they positive or negative. So to avoid negative consequences, a behaviour is avoided and to receive a positive reinforcement the behaviour is strengthened. There are 4 types of consequences: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment.

STRENGTHS

  • Behaviouism offers an adequate set of expectations from learners that are measurable and reliable in data collection as well. That is because the results and behaviour are observable regardless other factors

  • Its techniques are effective when clear inputs are introduced and certain outputs are expected as a result

  • It has evident positive results in behavioural therapy for children and adults which requires replacing and managing behaviour

  • It is quite beneficial in learning when the material is about rules, facts and knowledge with the least amount of critical thinking and analysis.

  • Example where behaviourism methods present very acceptable results because acquiring knowledge is the main objective are:

  • setting rules and classroom management in classes

  • teaching a new topic to elementary students

  • teaching vocabulary and grammar rules in a language

  • facts and rules in natural sciences

  • orientation and onboarding trainings to new university students/ employees technical product training

LIMITATIONS

  • Behaviourism excludes any prior experiences or metal states. It is only concerned with the observable behaviour upon certain conditions which doesn’t necessarily give evidence on learning of higher level skills. Experiments that were made on animals cannot fully apply to humans because animals have limited cognitive skills and experiences with their basic needs as a key for motives.

  • Its techniques will be less effective when the results are not conditioned or expected

  • It is not the proper approach when the learning process required higher cognitive skills or critical thinking which consider the prior knowledge and experiences of the learners

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Implications for Instructional Design

     The connection between behaviourism and e-learning is very clear from the very start of using Computer Assissted and Programmed Instruction. Technology is a brilliant learning tool to measure learning outcomes achievement to conditioned objectives of a course. Considering the other approaches and learning theories significance and effectiveness especially, in adult learning   still a big part of our learning nature is subject to behaviourism in order to manage reaching the expected outcomes. However, the other approaches must be applied in order to ensurethat higher-order learning objectives, which have different measuring aspect, are achieved. Gamification is one good application to behaviourism that offers learning in an engaging and motivating way and that can be presented in different forms and levels.

REFERENCES
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