2.4: Summary, Key Words and References

Chapter summary

Although the term learning has many possible meanings, the term as used by teachers emphasizes its relationship to curriculum, to teaching, and to the issues of sequencing, readiness, and transfer. Viewed in this light, the two major psychological perspectives of learning— behaviorist and constructivist— have important ideas to offer educators. Within the behaviorist perspective are two major theories or models of learning, called respondent conditioning and operant conditioning. Respondent conditioning describes how previously neutral associations can acquire the power to elicit significant responses in students. Operant conditioning describes how the consequences and cues for a behavior can cause the behavior to become more frequent. In either case, from a teacher's point of view, the learned behaviors or responses can be either desirable or unwanted.

The other major psychological perspective— constructivism— describes how individuals build or "construct" knowledge by engaging actively with their experiences. The psychological version of constructivism emphasizes the learners' individual responses to experience— their tendency both to assimilate it and to accommodate to it. The social version of constructivism emphasizes how other, more expert individuals can create opportunities for the learner to construct new knowledge. Social constructivism suggests that a teacher's role must include deliberate instructional planning, such as facilitated by Bloom's taxonomy of learning objectives, but also that teachers need to encourage metacognition, which is students' ability to monitor their own learning.

On the Internet

The website for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, and as such it is an excellent source of examples of how behaviorist learning principles can be applied to a wide variety of behavior-related difficulties. Any article older than one year is available in full-text, free of charge from the website. (If it is from the most recent three issues, however, you have to subscribe to the journal.)

The website for the Jean Piaget Society, which in spite of its name is not just about Piaget, but about all forms of constructivist research about learning and development, including social constructivist versions. They have excellent brief publications about this perspective, available free of charge at the website, as well as information about how to find additional information.

Key terms
Appropriate (verb)	Extrinsic Motivation
Behaviorism	Generalization
Bloom's taxonomy	Learning
Classical conditioning	Intrinsic Motivation
Constructivism Psychological constructivism John Dewey Jean Piaget Assimilation Accomodation Equilibrium Schema Social constructivism Jerome Bruner Instructional scaffolding Lev Vygotsky Zone of proximal development	Metacognition Operant conditioning Cue Operant Reinforcement Schedule of Reinforcement Ivan Pavlov Readiness Respondent conditioning Conditioned response Conditioned stimulus Unconditioned stimulus B.F. Skinner
Discrimination
Extinction	Transfer

References

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