 Behaviorism
 Innate Theory
 Cognitive Theory
 Social Development Theory
 Constructivism

Behaviourism

 This theory implies that the learner responds to
environmental stimuli without his/her mental state
being a factor
 The learning is demonstrated through the learner’s
behaviour.
 There is a disregard for the existence of any innate
capacity for learning.
 Children learn by imitation and exposure of the
environment.
 A child’s mind is like a clean slate.

 Individuals learn to behave through conditioning
 Two types of conditioning
a. Classical Conditioning
b. Operant Conditioning

Imminent Behaviourists:
 Ivan Pavlov
 John B. Watson
 B.F. Skinner

 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
 ( Sept 14, 1849 -Feb 27, 1936, Russia)
physiologist
psychologist
physician
 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
1904 for research on the digestive system
 An advocate of Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

Pavlov’sDog

 John Broadus Watson
(Jan 9, 1878 -Sept 25, 1958 )
 Born in Greenville, South Carolina
 American psychologist
 Established the psychological school of
behaviourism

LittleAlbert
Experiment
John Watsonand
RosalieRayner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner
( March 20, 1904 -August 18, 1990 , Pennsylvania)
 American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate
for social reform and poet.
 Innovated his own philosophy of science called
Radical Behaviorism
 Demonstrated the idea of
Operant Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning is a reward and punishment
mechanism

 An operant conditioning chamber permits
experimenters to study behaviour conditioning
(training) by teaching a subject animal to perform
certain actions (like pressing a lever) in response to
specific stimuli, such as a light or sound signal. When
the subject correctly performs the behaviour, the
chamber mechanism delivers food or another reward.
In some cases, the mechanism delivers a punishment
for incorrect or missing responses. Operant
conditioning is training or demonstration of behaviour
through reward/punishment mechanism.

Skinner’s Box

Innate Theory

 Founded by Chomsky
 Existence of Innate capacity in human brain
 Concept of ‘Universal Grammar’
“Basic rules, principles and parameters are
common to all languages”

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928)
 His concept of Universal Grammar and LAD (Language
Acquisition Device) posed serious concerns to already
established theories of Behaviourism.
 According to Chompsky, there is an existence of innate
understanding in infants who learn their mother tongue
without instruction or any systematic guidance. He termed
that inherent awareness of language in infants as
Universal Grammar.
 This implies in turn that all languages have a common
structural basis, the set of rules known as "universal
grammar".

•The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a hypothetical
presense of a mechanism that accounts for children's innate
predisposition for language acquisition.
•First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept
is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant
to acquire and produce language.
•This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or
"innate facility" for acquiring language. The main argument in
favor of the LAD is the argument from the poverty of stimulus,
which argues that unless children have significant innate
knowledge of grammar they would be unable to learn language as
quickly as they do and rarely received direct instruction in their
first language.

Cognitive Theory

 Believes that Mental Process is involved in learning
 Concerned with Mental Activity
 Learning depends upon the effort, aptitude and
intelligence of the learner
Cognitive Theory =Behaviorism +
Innate Theory

 The cognitivist revolution replaced behaviorism in
1960s as the dominant paradigm.
 Cognitivism focuses on the inner mental activities –
opening the “black box” of the human mind and
considers it valuable and necessary for understanding
how people learn.
 Mental processes such as thinking, memory, knowing,
and problem-solving need to be explored.
 Knowledge can be seen as schema or symbolic
mental constructions. Learning is defined as change in
a learner’s schemata
 A response to behaviourism, people are not
“programmed animals” that merely respond to
environmental stimuli; people are rational beings that
require active participation in order to learn, and
whose actions are a consequence of thinking.

Major Contributors in Cognitive theory
Jean Piaget
Howard Gardner
Benjamin Bloom

JeanPiaget’s Model
Concrete Operational Stage
Pre Operational Stage
Sensory Motor Stage
Formal Operational Stage

Assimilation occurs when a person perceives a new object in
terms of existing knowledge.
Accommodation occurs when you modify existing cognitive
structures based on new information.
Equilibration includes both assimilation and
accommodation and is considered the master developmental
process.

Howard Gardner proposed this model in his 1983 book
Frames of Mind:
The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Multiple
Intelligence
verbal
Logical/math
ematical
Spacial
Kinesthetic/N
on-Verbal
Interpersonal
Intra
personal/Self
smart
Musical
Naturalistic
T
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OF
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Bloom's
taxonomy is a set of
three hierarchical
models used to
classify educational
learning objectives
into levels of
complexity and
specificity. ... The
models were named
after
Benjamin Bloom,
who chaired the
committee of
educators that
devised the
taxonomy

Social Development Theory

 Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory is the work of Russian
psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). Vygotsky’s work was
largely unkown to the West until it was published in 1962.
 Social Development Theory argues that social interaction
precedes development; consciousness and cognition are the end
product of socialization and social behavior.
 Vygotsky’s theory is one of the foundations of Constructivism.
 Vygotsky focused on the connections between people and the
sociocultural context in which they act and interact in shared
experiences. According to Vygotsky, humans use tools that
develop from a culture, such as speech and writing, to mediate
their social environments. Initially children develop these tools
to serve solely as social functions, ways to communicate needs.
Vygotsky believed that the internalization of these tools led to
higher thinking skills.

 THE MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE OTHER (MKO)
The MKO refers to anyone who has a better understanding
or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a
particular task, process, or concept. The MKO is normally
thought of as being a teacher, coach, or older adult, but the
MKO could also be peers, a younger person, or even
computers.
 THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD)
The ZPD is the distance between a student’s ability to
perform a task under adult guidance and/or with peer
collaboration and the student’s ability solving the problem
independently. According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in
this zone.

Constructivism

 Constructivism as a paradigm or worldview posits that
learning is an active, constructive process.
 The learner is an information constructor. People
actively construct or create their own subjective
representations of objective reality.
 New information is linked to the prior knowledge.
 Hence a new knowledge is constructed.

Kolbe’s Learning Cycle

Thank you!