Educational Psychology Post #5

For this post I chose to answer part a.) How would you define successful mastery of your lesson objectives from a behavioral view of learning? From a social cognitive view of learning?


Our book tells us that behaviorism is a theoretical perspective in which learning and behavior are described and explained in terms of stimulus-response relationships. We can use these behaviorist ideas to understand how we, as teachers, can help students acquire behaviors that surpass the behavior they had when they entered the classroom.


I think there are many different ways that you could define successful mastery of your lesson objectives from a behavioral view. First as I mentioned above, you are shaping your students' behaviors and if you see that their negative behaviors have decreased and that they not have a more positive attitude in your classroom and about their school work, they you have succeeded in that lesson objective that was to better their behavior. You could also look at it from the perspective of classical condition where you have a reinforcement and a punishment. Such as Penny from the Big Bang Theory. Her reinforcer was the chocolate for everything she did something the right way. She learned to master the lesson objective that was given to her. Penny's behavior was not great and everyone was happy. In the classroom you could do this with your students, but in a different way. You can have them all pull out their pencil boxes as soon as the bell rings. They can be rewarded with a smiley face sticker or a move up on the daily chart. If they fail to pull out their pencil box they will not receive the reward. As a teacher you will be able to define that you have been successful in this when every single one of your students reaches for their pencil box as the bell rings.


If your students are able to demonstrate the behavioral view of learning to you after you have taught your lesson, and if they can explain to you what you did while teaching them the objectives I think that is how you see mastery. If you let them experience an activity that involves the behavioral view of learning it will really hit home for them and help them to master that view of learning.


Next, our book tells us that the social cognitive theory is a theoretical perspective that focuses on how people learn from observing others and how they eventually assume control over their own behavior. The cognitive theory includes aspects of both behaviorism as well as cognitive psychology.


In the social cognitive view of learning students can learn from observing others. Goals are a large part of this theory as well and lead to motivation and learning. Students will and can set goals for themselves in what they think their current ability level is. It is your job as an educator to help them feel that their ability increases over the year.


Going off of what I said above, the social cognitive view emphasis the amount of influence peers have on students. The book tells us that students will make decisions about how to behave based, in part, on the responses for which their peers are reinforced or punished. It can be kind of hard to define mastery if your students are concerned with the responses that they will get from others.


However, modeling is also a part of this view. Modeling can be very affective in helping you as an educator define the mastery of your lesson objectives. For example, if you model to the students how to do a math problem and you show them the steps walking them through it, they will have a better understanding of that process. Hopefully they will soon be able to solve that math problem on their own using the steps that you have previously modeled for them. That is how you see if they have successful mastery of your lesson objectives.