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Behaviorism / Cognitivism / Constructivism

Source: Ertmer, P.A. and Newby, T.J. (1993). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an Instructional Design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 5072. Aspects of learning theory How does learning occur? Behaviorism Learning is change in the form or frequency of observable behavior Learning is demonstrated following the presentation of a specific environmental stimulus. The primary concern is how the association between the stimulus and response is made, strengthened or maintained. Responses followed by reinforcement are more likely to occur in the future. Which factors influence learning? Environmental conditions. The arrangement of stimuli and consequences within the environment. Which point to begin instruction and which reinforcers are most effective. Cognitivism Learning is discrete changes between states of knowledge rather than probability of response. Knowledge acquisition is a mental activity that entails internal coding and structuring by the learner. Concern about what learner know and how they come to acquire it. Address issues of how information is received, organized, stored and retrieved by the mind. Emphasize on environmental conditions such as explanations, demonstrations, examples, non-examples, practice and feedback. Focuses on mental activities that lead up to a response. Acknowledge the process of mental planning, goal-setting and organization strategies. Both learner and environmental factors interact to create knowledge. Context is important. Content knowledge must be embedded in the situation in which it is used. Critical that learning occur in realistic settings and selected tasks relevant to the students experience. Learning must include activity, concept and culture. What is the role of memory? Not addressed. Forgetting is due to nonuse of a response over time. Learning results when information is stored in memory in organized, meaningful manner. Use strategies like advance organizers, analogies, hierarchical relationships and Memory is always under construction as a cumulative history of interactions. Emphasizes on flexible use of pre-existing knowledge rather than recall of prepackaged Constructivism Learning is creating meaning from experience. Mind filter input from the world to produce its own reality. Learners build personal interpretations of the world based on individual experiences and interactions.

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matrices. Forgetting is inability to retrieve information from memory. schemas. Learners create novel and situation-specific understandings by assembling prior knowledge from diverse sources appropriate to the problem at hand. Transfer is facilitated by involvement in authentic tasks anchored in meaningful contexts. Understanding is indexed by experience and authenticity of experience is critical to the ability to use ideas. Appropriate and effective use comes from engaging the learner in the actual use of the tools in real world situation. Advanced knowledge acquisition in illstructured domains.

How does transfer occur?

Transfer is the result of generalization. Situations involving identical or similar features allow behaviors to transfer across common elements.

Transfer is a function of how information is stored in the memory. When a learner understands how to apply knowledge in different contexts, transfer has occurred. Not only knowledge itself is stored in the memory, but the usage of that knowledge (conditional knowledge).

What types of learning are best explained by this position?

Prescribe strategies for building and strengthening stimulus-response associations, e.g. cues, practice, reinforcement. Facilitate learning outcomes like discriminations, generalizations, associations and chaining. Does not adequately explain acquisition of high level skills or deep processing.

Complex form of learning like reasoning, problemsolving, informationprocessing.

What basic assumptions or principles are relevant to instructional design?

Emphasis on observable and measurable outcomes. [behavioral objectives, task analysis, criterion-referenced assessment]. Pre-assessment to determine where instruction begins [learner analysis]. Master simple steps before complex levels of performance [sequencing of instruction, mastery learning]. Use of reinforcement [rewards, feedback].

Similar to behaviorism but for different reason. Use of feedback to guide and support accurate mental connections. Analyze learner to determine predisposition to learning, and learners mental structures so as to design instruction that can be easily assimilated. Active involvement of learner [learner control, metacognition] Hierarchical analyses to

Emphasize on context in which the skills will be learned and applied [anchoring learning in meaningful contexts]. Learner control and manipulation of information . Presenting information in variety of ways [cognitive flexibility]. Supporting problem solving that allow learners to go beyond the

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identify prerequisite relationships [cognitive task analysis]. Structuring, organizing and sequencing information to facilitate optimal processing [cognitive strategies like outlining, summaries, advance organizers]. Encourage link to existing knowledge [recall prerequisite skills, use examples, analogies]. How should instruction be structured? Presentation of target stimulus and provision of opportunities for the learner to practice making proper response. Use cues to prompt the response. Use reinforcement to strengthen the association. Role of instructor/ instructional designer. Determine which cue can elicit response Arrange prompts to pair with stimulus. Arrange environmental conditions so that students can make correct responses and receive reinforcement. Acknowledge prior knowledge can affect learning outcomes. Determine most effective way to organize information to tap on prior information. Arrange practice and feedback so that new information is assimilated or accommodated. Instruct student on how to construct meaning, and how to effectively monitor, evaluate and update their constructions. Align and design experiences for the learner so that authentic, relevant contexts can be experienced. Make knowledge meaningful and help learners organize and relate new information to existing knowledge in memory. Model construction of knowledge, promote collaboration, design authentic learning environment. information. Cognitive apprenticeship, collaborative learning, cognitive flexibility, social negotiation.

Use of cues, shaping and practice to ensure strong stimulus-response association [sequence of practice, prompts.

OVERVIEW OF COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORIES Description Cognitive development theories first identify the capabilities that represent the highest levels of human thought. Then they describe the events and conditions necessary to attain these levels of thinking. Schools may facilitate the process, however the implication is that higher levels of human thinking cannot be taught directly (Gredler, 1997). Cognitive psychologists share with behaviorists the belief that the study of learning should be objective and that learning theories should be developed from the results of empirical research.

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However, cognitivists differ from behaviorists in one critical respect. By observing the responses that individuals make to different stimulus conditions, cognitivists believe that they can draw inferences about the nature of the internal cognitive processes that produce those responses. Cognitive theories of learning focus on the mind (the mind is a "black box" according to behaviorist views), and attempt to model how information is received, assimilated, stored, and recalled. The implication is that by understanding the mechanics of this process, we can develop teaching methods more suited to fostering the desired learning outcome, which is a shared desire with behaviorists. Cognitivists argue that while things like the environment are important inputs to learning, learning is more than simply the collection of inputs and the production of outputs. The mind has the ability to synthesize, analyze, formulate, and extract received information and stimuli in order to produce things that cannot be directly attributed to the inputs given. Under cognitive learning theory, it is believed that learning occurs when a learner processes information. The input, processing, storage, and retrieval of information are the processes that are at the heart of learning. The instructor remains the manager of the information-input process; but the learner is more active in planning and carrying out his/her own learning than in the behaviorist environment. Instruction is not simply something that is done to a learner but rather involves the learner and empowers their internal mental processes. Information Processing System The Information Processing System is a model for describing how information is received (through the sensory registers), transferred into short-term or working memory, and ultimately placed in long-term memory for later retrieval and further use. Metacognition Metacognitionthe awareness and ability to control cognitive processesis a component of the various cognitive theory applications. This "thinking about thinking" allows one to better manage his own learning, and take an active, rather than passive role in the assimilation process. This metacognition would include various techniques for enhancing memory such as the chunking or grouping of information in some meaningful way to make it more memorable' or the repetitiveness of repeated rehearsal to hold some key fact in short term memory for immediate usage. According to Gredler (1997), six of seven contemporary theories influential in learning are based on the cognitivist perspective.

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Theory
Skinner: operant conditioning Gagn: conditions of learning

Type
Learning-process theory Learning-process theory

Focus
The arrangement of consequences for learner behavior The relationship of the phases of information processing to type of learning task and instruction The processes of acquiring information, remembering, and problem solving The role of the culture in the development of higher mental functions The role of the culture in the development of higher mental functions The observation of and internal processing of modeled behavior The influence of learner beliefs about success and failure on achievementrelated behavior

Information processing theories

Learning-process theory

Piaget: developmental epistemology Vygotsky: sociocultural theory

Cognitive-development theory Cognitive-development theory Social-context theory Social-context theory

Bandura: social-cognitive theory Weiner: attribution theory

Origins Early behaviorists chose not to incorporate mental events into their learning theories, arguing that such events were impossible to observe and measure and so could not be studied objectively. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, many psychologists became increasingly dissatisfied with such a "thoughtless" approach to human learning. As a result, major cognitive works began to emerge. The work of the Gestalt psychologists, Edward Tolman, Jean Piaget, and verbal learning researchers was laying a foundation for cognitive learning theories. During the 1960s, discontent with the inadequacies of behaviorism became more widespread. The behaviorist perspective could not easily explain why people attempt to organize and make sense of the information they learn or why people often alter the form of information they learn. One example includes remembering general meanings rather than verbatim information. Among learning psychologists there emerged a growing realization that mental events or cognition could no longer be ignored. By the 1970s, most learning theorists had joined the cognitive field of thought. In the 1980s three cognitive theories gained prominence: Bandura's social-cognitive theory, Weiner's attribution theory, and Vygotsky's sociohistorical theory. Tolman Edward Tolman, developed the concept of cognitive learning in research where he found that rats used in an experiment appeared to have a mental map of the maze he was using. When he closed off a certain portion of the maze, the rats did not bother to try a certain path because they "knew" that it led to the blocked path. Visually, the rats could not see that the path would result in failure, yet they chose to take a longer route that they knew would be successful. Therefore, Tolman thought of learning as developing from bits of knowledge and cognitions

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about the environment and how the organism relates to it. This was in contrast to the theories of Thorndike and Hull who thought of learning as a strict stimulus-response connection. Bruner Jerome S. Bruner called for a theory of instruction in 1960. Bruner who stressed the element of social interaction as an integral part of information processing first espoused interactional cognitive development theories. Bruner developed the discovery theory of learning, which he defined as obtaining knowledge for oneself by the use of one's own mind (Bruner, 1961). Bruner contended that a true act of discovery is not a random event. It involves an expectation of finding regularities and relationships in the environment. He endorsed problem solving with structured searching strategies is an integral part of discovery learning. The roots of constructivism are evident in discovery theory. Bandura Bandura's social-cognitive theory addresses the issues that the social settings in which individuals live, work, and play are powerful influences on behavior, attitudes, and beliefs about one's self and the world. The primary point is that individuals learn from observing the behaviors of others and the social consequences of those actions.
Weiner

Bernard Weiner's attribution theory is a theoretical framework for understanding what learner's believe causes their achievement. The framework focuses on the ways that individuals arrive at causal explanations. This is relevant to ISD because it has (1) implications for strategies to alter misperceptions and (2) provides a framework for understanding different classroom goals. Vygotsky Lev S. Vygotsky is another prominent cognitivist, namely because of his sociohistorical theory that stresses cultural processes determine the nature of learning. Vygotsky introduced the idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in which the learner, teacher, and content interact with a problem that needs resolution. Vygotsky (1978) maintained the child follows the adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help or assistance. He called the difference between what a child can do with help and what he or she can do without guidance the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD). In other words, ZPD is the discrepancy between children's actual mental age and the level they reach in solving problems with assistance. This ZPD concept also reinforces the importance of the principle of readiness. The readiness principle reinforces the need for a learner to be at a point of readiness for learning certain material. Another basic principle introduced by Vygotsky is the general law of genetic development, which describes the social process of cognitive development. It states that every complex mental function was first an interaction between people. Bruner also believes the learner's participation in culture aides their psychological development. Much of Vygotsky's work influenced the constructivist paradigm.

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Piaget Jean Piaget, a Swiss developmentalist, began a research program during the 1920s that has had the greatest impact on contemporary theories of cognitive development than that of any other single researcher. He developed his cognitive theory by actually observing children. After many years of observation, Piaget concluded that intellectual development is the result of the interaction of hereditary and environmental factors. As the child develops and constantly interacts with the world around him, knowledge is invented and reinvented. In Piaget's Theory of Development, there are two cognitive processes that are crucial for progressing from stage to stage: assimilation, accommodation. Cognitivism refocuses research on the mind in the learning process, which the behaviorists had neglected to address. The results of cognitive theory research are widely applied in instructional technology, particularly with respect to how learners organize and synthesize information to facilitate their own learning, as well as how to teach higher order learning outcomes (analysis, synthesis, evaluation). The discovery learning theory is a forerunner to constructivist thinking of learning and recognizes that knowledge is constructed by the learner in their own mind (i.e., knowledge structures). Instruction based on discovery learning requires a skilled facilitator and guide. Although much of Piaget's work is no longer held in high regard, it still stands as an influential factor for understanding that children have developmental phases. Instructors can design their content to best suit the individual learner's particular phase. Vygotsky's work shows educators that the best way to lead a learner to acquiring new knowledge is to guide them to the place just beyond what they already know, the Zone of Proximal Development. Bandura's social-cognitive theory puts every classroom instructor in the spotlight for students to see what a teacher acts like. This theory, if even partially reliable, has tremendous impact on how students are taught. Clearly, students are learning about how to approach education, teaching, and learning itself, from the modeled behavior of the instructor. Instruction now takes on the personal aura of conveying an educator's behavioral characteristics, not just the plain content. Educational psychology, as it is taught today, gives great credence to the cognitivist theories. Instructional system design is dependent on the educational psychology foundation to generate methodologies and models for the design and delivery of instruction.