Behaviourism

Dates

1897: Ivan Pavlov publishes the results of an experiment on conditioning.
1913: John B. Watson publishes Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.
1936: Burrhus F. Skinner publishes The Behavior of Organisms.
1943: Clark L. Hull publishes Principles of Behavior: An Introduction to Behaviour Theory.
1959: Noam Chomsky publishes Review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior.

Key researchers

Ivan Pavlov, Russian Physiologist
John B. Watson, American Psychologist
Burrhus F. Skinner, American Psychologist
Clark L. Hull, American Psychologist
Noam Chomsky, American Linguist

Connection to learning

In Behaviourism, learning is identified as the acquisition of new behaviour through outside stimulus.
Behaviourisn focusses on objectively measurable behaviours such as the ability to memorize, generalize and associate.

Example scenario

Take a digital quiz targeting ELL learners: Imagine the quiz contains several slides, featuring texts, audio files and video clips in English. Each of these slides comes with an exercise, such as questions, gap-fills or sequencing. Each of the exercises aims to evaluate the ability to comprehend English, and to use this comprehension to create appropriate responses.

The responses are graded by percentage, colours and points, and the observed evaluation result is shared with the instructor to affect learning behavour. The grading options represent the stimulus for learning.

A positive evaluation result in terms of percentage, points and colour will lead to praise for a positive learning outcome. It will mean the learner has reached the established learning goal, and is considered to be on track with his learning efforts.

A negative evaluation result in the same terms will lead to punishment for a negative learning outcome. It will lead for the quiz to be re-assigned to the learner for completion. The learner is not considered to be on track with his learning efforts until the quiz is completed with a satisfying result.

Additional resources

M Keramida. (May 28, 2015). Behaviorism In Instructional Design For eLearning: When And How To Use. Retrieved May 27, 2019 from https://elearningindustry.com/behaviorism-in-instructional-design-for-elearning-when-and-how-to-use