Michelle Andersen Knowing and Learning Spring 2014

Summary of Behavioral, Cognitive, and Constructive Education Perspectives Behavioral Cognitive Constructive Narrative describing The behavioral The cognitive Constructivism the perspective and perspective in perspective of focuses on three its components education educational main processes: psychology focuses psychology focuses construction, on the idea that the on the idea of storage, and environment in learning based on retrieval. which one is in how people Construction influences ones perceive, remember, denotes a mental behavior. For think, speak, process in which a example, feedback problem-solve, and learner combines such as rewards or how they acquire, several separate punishments make perceive, remember, pieces of knowledge an impact on the and communicate in order to construct future behavior of information. Unlike an overall an individual. An the behavioral understanding of a example given was perspective, the new idea. Storage is the purchase of cognitive the process of lottery tickets- you perspective mentally putting are more likely to acknowledges the new information continue buying existence and into memory (or them if you are influence of mental storage). Retrieval rewarded by (non-observable) is the process a winning money. In states such as belief, learner uses in turn, you are less desire, ideas, and finding and using likely if you lose motivation. To information that has money (therefore expand on this, the been stored in experiencing a cognitive memory. Some punishment). perspective focuses famous Elaborating, this on how our minds constructivist perspective is based change stimuli into psychologists are on the idea that meaningful John Dewey, Maria learning and information rather Montessori, David behavior are the than on how our Kolb, and Ernst von result of stimulusbehavior changes Glassersfeld. response due to certain relationships. In stimuli. The focuses other words, of cognitive learning happens psychologists when an event include perception,

Beliefs (general beliefs about nature of knowledge and knowing)

occurs that triggers a response in the learner. Behaviorists believe that unless an observable behavior change is observed, learning has not occurred. Some famous behaviorists include John Watson (known as the father of behaviorism), Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, and Edward Thorndike (who is famous for the law of effect.) Core beliefs of the behavioral perspective are that the environment influences behavior, learning is described through stimuli and responses, learning must involve a behavioral change, learning must occur when stimulus and response occur close together in time, and that animal and humans behave in similar ways.

categorization, memory, knowledge representation, language, and thinking processes. Two main focuses of this perspective are sensation and perception. Famous cognitive psychologists include: Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Noam Chomsky, and Jerome Bruner.

Cognitive psychologists claim memory structures determine how information is perceived, processed, stored, retrieved, and forgotten. Cognitive psychologists believe that internal mental states influence the way one learns.

Principles (what ideas are used to

Edward Thorndikes The principles of experiments with cognitive

Constructivists believe a learner to be self-directed, creative, and innovative. In addition, they believe the learner to be encouraged to learn facts about their environments and the world as a whole by arriving at conclusions based on his or her background knowledge (such as culture or worldview). Lastly, constructivists believe the teacher to simply be a facilitator, where the responsibility of learning falls on the learner. The principles of the constructive

explain why events/objects exhibit what is observed)

Limitations (what are known or accepted limitations to the depth or scope of what can be explained by this perspective)

cats are some of the most famous principles in which this theory is based. His research indicated that humans and animals have the tendency to take note of what happens after certain behaviors in order to decide whether or not to continue that type of behavior. He tested how quickly cats could adapt their behavior to escape puzzle boxes. In addition to escaping as a result of certain behaviors, they were rewarded with food. He found that even though a particular behavior was likely to be accidental the first time, if it was rewarded, that behavior was more likely in the future, and the cats would escape the same puzzle box more quickly after being rewarded several times. Behaviorism does not acknowledge the existence or evaluate the influence of internal mental states (such as belief, desire, motivation, etc.). Behaviorism does

psychology are expressed by Gestalts Principles. Some of them are the figure/ground (picking out the most important aspect of a visual) principle, the similarity principle (the tendency to automatically group similar images), the closure principle (when our brains fill in missing lines, gaps, etc. to create a complete image even though the image is not complete), the proximity principle (the tendency to group images that are close to each other), and the continuity principle (tendency to follow a continuous path).

perspective include: that knowledge is constructed through human activity, and reality is invented jointly by the members of that society, that individuals create meaning through their interactions with others and their environments, and that learning is active and social.

The cognitive theory is all about the individual learner, I can see this being a limitation in teaching because teachers are simply not able to cater to

A limitation I can see with constructivism is that it requires building upon of prior knowledge. Students that do not already have this knowledge, or who

not take into account individuality of the learner(s).

each students individual learning preferences.

have misconceptions, may fall behind and/or experience reconstruction errors. Additionally, it turns the learning around onto the learner, but for those struggling students this may be too large a task.