Paradigms Of Psychology
Jermale Kunstler
Within a paradigm, a related set of theories all share fundamental assumptions about learning. Across the different paradigms, assumptions about learning differ in significant ways. The discussion in this module categorizes the theories into just four paradigms and highlights the differences among them. But the similarities across the paradigms are also noteworthy: the paradigms all address the big questions; they are all complex webs of ideas; they all provide descriptions of learning and explanations of why and how learning takes place; and they all support sets of recommendations for helping students learn.
The table below shows how each of these four paradigms answers the big questions. The decision to divide the theories into four paradigms is somewhat arbitrary, however. An even simpler scheme supports just two, which might be called "body" (the behavior of the body: the behaviorist paradigm) and "mind" (thinking and the workings of the brain: the other three paradigms).
The behaviorist paradigm takes the view that we can't really know what is in the human mind, so instruction needs to focus on behaviors. Furthermore, behaviorist thinkers and researchers have developed proven methods for shaping behaviors efficiently. Applied behavior analysis and reinforcement regimes really can change behaviors (including students' classroom behavior). Remember, though, that everything is a "behavior" for a behaviorist: from sitting still for 10 minutes to mastering a foreign language and writing good essays. Some behaviorists believe that students can learn from observing behavior-shaping routines that are used on others and not just themselves.
The information processing and cognitive psychology paradigm takes the view that complex learning manifests itself in the mind as meaning. The mind's creation of meaning, however, is said to follow regular patterns and plans. In recent years, neuroscience has supported earlier claims made by cognitive psychologists, showing that, indeed, the brain is very active during specific sorts of mental activity. Clearly there is a link between thinking (the mind) and behavior (the activity of the brain, which is part of the body). Since the arrival of the digital age, some cognitivists have equated cognition to digital computing. Brains store and retrieve information, and more significantly, chain the information and create webs of information and webs of meaning from such chains.
The social constructivist and situated learning paradigm also understands "development" as important; but instead of treating it as an individual process of meaning-making, it treats it as a form of collective meaning-making. From the perspective of social constructivists, knowledge is a product of group interaction, and learning involves active engagement with a social group, sometimes referred to as a "community of practice." Cultivating students as members of instructionally relevant communities of practice makes the most sense from the perspective of social constructivism. Note that this outlook accommodates informal, out-of-school learning environments (sometimes called "experiential learning") as well as classroom contexts.
One way to get a handle on learning theory is to link individual theorists with the paradigms to which they have made the greatest contributions. The table below categorizes some of the most important learning theorists by paradigm.
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The psychology of verbal reasoning initially compared performance with classical logic. In the last 25 years, a new paradigm has arisen, which focuses on knowledge-rich reasoning for communication and persuasion and is typically modeled using Bayesian probability theory rather than logic. This paradigm provides a new perspective on argumentation, explaining the rational persuasiveness of arguments that are logical fallacies. It also helps explain how and why people stray from logic when given deductive reasoning tasks. What appear to be erroneous responses, when compared against logic, often turn out to be rationally justified when seen in the richer rational framework of the new paradigm. Moreover, the same approach extends naturally to inductive reasoning tasks, in which people extrapolate beyond the data they are given and logic does not readily apply. We outline links between social and individual reasoning and set recent developments in the psychology of reasoning in the wider context of Bayesian cognitive science.
And psychodynamic psychologists take an interactions approach that favours both qualitative and quantitative research. In contrast, cognitive psychologists prefer the nomothetic approach, i.e. quantitative (numerical) research.
Psychodynamic psychologists argue that the inner battle between aspects of the human personality is what causes human behaviour. Some of their theories include the following:
The id is responsible for our impulsive desires; the superego is responsible for emotions, such as hilt and regret. The ego tries to balance the id and prevent giving in to temptations by rationalising with potential punishments resulting from impulsive desires.
The theory of falsifiability is a theory that proposes theories/hypotheses that should be testable and able to be proven wrong. For instance, they should be observable and able to be tested via observational methods.
The theory of falsifiability is a theory that proposes hypotheses should be testable and able to be proven wrong. They should be observable and able to be tested via experimental/observational methods.
The four predominant paradigms during the current intellectual and cultural zeitgeist are cognitive psychology, the biological approach to psychology, the behavioural approach to psychology, and the psychodynamic approach.
It therefore seemed appropriate to put my own groupings towards an Islamically based model of human psychology into a coherent form and to seek the collaboration of other Muslims, with an interest in the same field, in improving our collective understanding.
Aql can be defined as the reasoning centre, intelligence, which ordinarily comprehends and analyses external data and can articulate and according to Al-Ghazali (ref.) connects directly with the Qalb.
In themselves, the action of Nafs would operate according to Fitrah (as with animals), but in human beings they are inherently vulnerable to disruption resulting from, for instance, dysfunctional cognitions, and the effects of emotional traumata, which pervert their operations.
It seems to me that at least one major advantage of the Islamic model of the relationships between the Qalb, Aql and Nafs is that it permits a definition of mental health which is independent of socially defined notions of normal and abnormal and which truly can be applied universally. It also points to the diagnosis of pathology and to corrective therapeutic action.
The weaknesses of Jungian psychology are, however, that: (1) even in its simplest reduction it lacks the simple clarity of the Islamic model, and (2) perhaps inevitably the understanding of the self and its dynamics is skewed by the particular characteristics of the European psyche studied by Jung. The Shadow Archetype of Jungian theory, I have, for instance, found expressed in my Christian and Jewish patients, but never significantly so in my Muslim patients. This difference presumably reflects different cultural/religious attitudes to Nafs.
It can be seen that the Western corpus of psychological knowledge need not be disregarded, what is important for the Muslim is that he has the basic Islamic understanding of the self to enable him to make the right selection from that knowledge and to use it in a harmonious way.
There are, however, areas of therapy which are part of the Islamic tradition, of looking at man in total and in relationship with his environment, but which are largely disregarded in Western psychology: the use of music, for instance, and of environmental psychology in treatment. Ibn Sina (vide: Tibbs 1981) used colour in the treatment of emotional disorders, and I was once told by a German Engineer of a sixteenth-century asylum in Iran he had visited which produced tranquilising effects on severely disturbed psychotic patients by the use of proportion, shape, colour (predominantly blue) and running water in the design of the building.
To return to the starting point of this paper, it is a model with which I personally feel comfortable within clinical practice and in helping me to give meaning to my own experience of self: it accords with my own sense of Fitrah.
I met Malik Badri after presenting this paper. Professor Badri said he shared my outlook, but when he published his book in 1979 he felt that most Muslim Psychologists were not ready to receive more than a limited critique of Western Psychology. Professor Badri refers to this in a preface to the new reprint of The Dilemma of Muslim Psychologists.
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Falsification does not mean something is false; rather that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experimentation. Scientific theories should be falsifiable. Some theories in psychology are not falsifiable.
It is a set of norms that tell scientists how to think and behave, and although there are rival schools of thought in science, there is still a single paradigm that all scientists accept uncritically.
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