Behaviorism
Behaviorism
The core ideas
- All behaviours are acquired through conditioning.
- Conditioning happens through interaction with the environment.
- Behaviour can be measured, trained, and changed.
- Because behaviour is observable, learning is easy to collect data on and quantify.
The behaviorist curriculum
- Learning occurs through reinforcement and punishment for behaviour.
- Learning is organized so learners experience success while mastering the content.
Behaviorism turns the focus from the inner mind to outward, observable behaviour. It is built on a simple, powerful idea: all behaviours are acquired through conditioning, and conditioning happens through a person’s interaction with their environment. What looks like learning is, on this view, a change in behaviour produced by the environment acting on the learner.
The core ideas
A few claims hold behaviorism together:
- All behaviours are learned through conditioning.
- Conditioning takes place through interaction with the environment, not from inside the mind.
- Conditioning can be used to teach new information and new behaviours.
- Behaviours can be measured, trained, and changed.
The last point gives behaviorism a practical edge. Because behaviour is observable, it is comparatively easy to collect data about learning and to quantify it. You can see whether a learner does the thing or not, count how often, and track change over time. Inner states are hard to measure; behaviour is not.
All behaviour is acquired through conditioning
Conditioning happens through interaction with the environment. Because behaviour is observable, it can be measured, trained, and changed, which makes learning easy to quantify.
The behaviorist curriculum
A behaviorist curriculum is built to shape behaviour. Learning is understood to occur through reinforcement and punishment: desired behaviours are reinforced so they happen more often, and unwanted ones are discouraged. The environment is arranged to drive behaviour in the planned direction.
It also pays close attention to success. A behaviorist curriculum organizes learning so that learners experience success as they master the subject matter. Content is broken into manageable steps and sequenced so that learners can succeed at each one, because success is itself reinforcing and keeps the learner moving forward.
Through reinforcement and punishment, organized for success
Desired behaviours are reinforced, and content is broken into steps so learners experience success at each stage. Success itself reinforces and drives further learning.
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