Understanding Sociological Theory For Educational Practices Pdf

[Percival Blanco]

Educationalpsychology can influence programs, curricula, and lesson development, as well as classroom management approaches. For example, educators can use concepts from education psychology to understand and address the ways rapidly changing technologies both help and harm their students' learning. In addition, educational psychologists play an important role in educating teachers, parents or guardians, and administrators about best practices for learners who struggle with conventional education methods.

Although educational psychology programs include numerous theories, many experts identify five main schools of thought: behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, experientialism, and social contextual learning theories. The following summarizes these five major theory groups and outlines the key theorists, definition, history, principles, and applications for each.

Behaviorist learning theories first emerged in the late 19th century from the work of Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov. They were popularized during the first half of the 20th century through the work of John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, and others.

Although they admit that thought and emotion influence learning, behaviorists either dismiss these factors as phenomena beyond the realm of scientific inquiry (methodological behaviorism) or convert internal factors into behavioral terms (neobehaviorism/radical behaviorism).

Assuming that changes in behavior signify learning, methodological behaviorists see no fundamental difference between human and animal learning processes, and they often conduct comparative research on animals.

Behaviorism relies on the prediction or analysis of behavior based on causal stimuli, while education uses the process of positive and negative reinforcement to encourage or discourage behaviors. This school of thought emphasizes behavior's learned causes over its biological one; therefore, behaviorism deeply values the ability of education to shape individuals.

Behaviorist learning theory distinguishes between classical and operative conditioning. The former involves natural responses to environmental stimuli, while the latter involves the reinforcement of a response to stimuli. Using a process often called "programmatic instruction," educators use operative conditioning to reinforce positive and correct negative learnings that often accompany classical conditioning.

Behaviorist theories ascribe to a reductionist approach, which dictates that breaking behavior down into parts is the best way to understand it. Other schools of thought critique behaviorism for underemphasizing biological and unconscious factors, denying free will, equating humans with animals, and overlooking internal learning processes or types of learning that occur without reinforcement.

Behaviorism has significantly shaped the disciplines of psychology and education, illuminating major influencing factors in human behavior and learning. In psychology, both behavior modification and behavior therapy owe their origins to behaviorism.

Meanwhile, behaviorist insights underlie many of the teaching methods still used today in homes, classrooms, workplaces, and other contexts. The widespread use of learning objectives, for example, breaks down larger learning goals into a series of specific skills and behaviors desired from a student.

Behaviorism also influences the sequence and methods used during the teaching and learning process. Teachers work toward their desired objectives by using external stimuli, explaining and demonstrating a skill or behavior, and then inviting student practice and providing feedback that reinforces the behaviors or skills they wish students to learn or unlearn.

Maxwell says, "The idea of measuring behaviors to assess acquired learning is deeply embedded through most educational systems, as is a system of rules with punishments and rewards designed to corral a learner into knowledge."

Cognitive psychology emerged in the 1950s and became dominant in the 1960s. Departing from the comparative emphasis of behaviorists, cognitivists see human beings as rational creatures quite different from animals. Consequently, cognitive theory explores the complexities of the human mind as it processes information.

It views behavior as a result of one's thoughts. Maxwell states that cognitivists "try to understand how we learn, think, and behave by looking at how our mind works to process, integrate, perceive, decide, emote, and understand existence. Cognitivism helps us see how we use our previous knowledge and experiences to learn new things and develop."

Using the computer as a metaphor for the human mind, cognitivists see learning as a product of mental faculties and activities, including thought, knowledge, memory, motivation, reflection, and problem-solving. Recasting learning as the acquisition of knowledge and the development of understanding, this approach emphasizes reading and lecture as learning modalities.

In this view, human behavior reflects internal processing of the human mind, rather than simply a conditioned response to external stimuli. Learning involves the integration of information into a stored and usable body of knowledge.

Cognitive psychology derives, in part, from Jean Piaget's stages of development, which depend on biological factors such as age. Learning capacity and activity change over time as a person moves through life. For example, although older people have accumulated more knowledge, they do not always remain as teachable due to their tendency to adopt a more fixed outlook over time.

Cognitivism emphasizes the importance of an expert in transmitting accurate information, yet sees a learner's success or failure in absorbing this information as largely dependent upon the learner's mental capacity, motivation, beliefs, and effort.

Although many contemporary educational psychologists see cognitivist approaches as outdated, teachers often deliver lectures in front of a classroom and expect students to demonstrate their retention of content through information-oriented tests.

Constructivism gained notoriety in the 1930s-40s and enjoyed a resurgence in the 1970s-80s. This view challenges both the behaviorist notion of the learner as a blank slate and the cognitivist notion of learning as the acquisition of objective information from an expert.

Rather, this school of thought suggests that learners create their own subjective information by interpreting their world and restructuring their thinking. For instance, "meaning is co-created, emergently between people, and between people and media, morals, ethics, societal norms, and eras," says Maxwell.

Originating in part from Piaget's understanding of intellectual growth as occurring through the interaction between old and new knowledge, constructivism views knowledge acquisition as a process of building upon a learner's previous knowledge.

Constructivists agree that learners create knowledge rather than passively receiving it, and that preexisting knowledge plays a crucial role in their learning. However, two differing strands of constructivism bear mentioning.

Cognitive constructivism agrees that learners construct rather than receive information, but it is interested in the cognitive processing involved in knowledge construction. "Your perspectives and ideas about the world aren't just what you've picked up, like an empty tank slowly being filled; but rather you're building your own house of knowledge and what you explicitly learn is only some of the bricks," Maxwell says.

Following Piaget, cognitive constructivism acknowledges age-based developmental learning stages and articulates learning as an expansion (through assimilation and accommodation processes) of a learner's experientially informed mental model of their world.

Constructivism influences the lesson plan methodologies employed by many teachers today. For example, constructivist influence shapes the common teaching practice of posing questions or problems and then inviting students to answer and solve them in their own ways.

Constructivism is also evident in popular classroom practices, such as having students create their own questions, welcoming multiple points of view and intelligence styles, and using group work as a collaborative learning tool.

This school of thought emerged in the 1970s out of the influence of the learner-centered and interactive principles of constructivism and social learning theories. Experiential learning theories identify meaningful everyday experience as the most central factor in increasing a learner's knowledge and understanding, as well as transforming their behavior.

Experientialist theorist Carl Rogers prioritizes experiential approaches to education because they work with humans' natural desire to learn. Rogers posits that humans are more likely to learn and retain information when they participate actively in the learning process.

Maxwell says, "In educational psychology, experientialism is applied when teachers get students to work on real-world problems through project-based learning, or when students are involved in immersive activities that engage more than just our thinking-brains, e.g., flight simulators, school kitchens or workshops for tech classes, and role-playing exercises to practice dealing with situations before really being in them like debating."

Experientialist David A. Kolb identifies four stages in this learning process: experiencing, absorbing and reflecting on experience, conceptualizing experience, and testing concepts in other situations. These are cyclical stages that function as an ongoing feedback loop, which in turn allows learners to improve skills and apply new or recent knowledge.

Rejecting instructor-centric approaches, experientialism argues that one person cannot effectively impart knowledge directly to another person; people must learn for themselves. A teacher can facilitate the learning process by engaging students through an experience, but they cannot control exactly what students learn from that experience.

3a8082e126