The pedagogical approach that focuses on observable behaviour and the power of repetition, cues and reinforcement, linked to Pavlov and Skinner, most effective for building secure habits, accurate recall and strong attention when learners encounter new content.
Facts
Central QuestionWhat observable change in behaviour has learning produced, and how do reinforcement, cues and repetition produce it? 1 Most Effective ForSkill-building and competency-based instruction that relies on frequent, varied practice and clear, measurable behavioural objectives. 1 Connections
Held Differently
Revises rather than rejects reinforcement-based accounts of learning by adding observation, modeling and self-efficacy as cognitive mediators.
Developed By
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Includes
Source Classical Conditioning (Wikipedia)
Additional Source WikipediaOperant conditioning, lead section
Additional Source InstructionalDesign.orgOperant Conditioning page, behaviourist school
Open Questions
Source Structural Learning, Pedagogy Explained
Policies Informed
Audio-Lingual Method's own live entity-description: developed in the US during and after WWII, drawing on behaviorist learning theory and structural linguistics.
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. infed, the encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education
The behaviourist orientation to learning page
Observable behaviour rather than internal thought processes are the focus of study. In particular, learning is manifested by a change in behaviour.
The behaviourist orientation to learning page, principles of learning
Frequent practice, and practice in varied contexts, is necessary for learning to take place. Skills are not acquired without frequent practice.
View the SourceStructural Learning, Pedagogy Explained
Structural LearningPedagogy Explained, Five Pedagogical Approaches Explained, Behaviourism
focuses on observable behaviour and the power of repetition, cues and reinforcement
- Open Questions: Does Direct Instruction or Discovery Learning Work Better for Novice Learners?, Pedagogy Explained, classroom guide, direct instruction side of the debate
View the Source Teaching in a Digital Age
Tony Bates Associates LtdCh 2.4 Cognitivism, section 2.4.1 What is cognitivism?Quote, Ch 2.4 Cognitivism, section 2.4.1 What is cognitivism?
An obvious criticism of behaviourism is that it treats humans as a black box, where inputs into the black box, and outputs from the black box, are known and measurable, but what goes on inside the black box is ignored or not considered of interest.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Operant Conditioning, Operant conditioning, lead sectionQuote, Includes: Operant Conditioning, Operant conditioning, lead section
In the 20th century, operant conditioning was studied by behavioral psychologists, who believed that much of mind and behaviour is explained through environmental conditioning.
InstructionalDesign.org
Includes: Operant Conditioning, Operant Conditioning page, behaviourist schoolQuote, Includes: Operant Conditioning, Operant Conditioning page, behaviourist school
The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning relative to previous forms of behaviorism is that the organism can emit responses instead of only eliciting response due to an external stimulus.
Classical Conditioning (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Classical Conditioning, Lead section, foundation-of-behaviorism sentenceQuote, Includes: Classical Conditioning, Lead section, foundation-of-behaviorism sentence
Together with operant conditioning, classical conditioning became the foundation of behaviorism, a school of psychology which was dominant in the mid-20th century and is still an important influence on the practice of psychological therapy and the study of animal behavior.
Open Questions (1 open question)
Does Direct Instruction or Discovery Learning Work Better for Novice Learners?
Researchers disagree on how much guidance novice learners need. One line of research holds that minimally guided discovery approaches are less effective for novices than explicit teaching with worked examples, citing cognitive-load evidence; another finds well-designed guided inquiry can still be beneficial, arguing scaffolding quality and task design matter more than the direct-instruction-versus-discovery label itself.
What would resolve this Comparative studies that isolate the amount and quality of instructional scaffolding, rather than only labelling a method direct instruction or discovery learning, would show whether the disagreement is about guidance itself or about how well each approach is implemented.
Educational psychology and instructional designStructural Learning, Pedagogy Explained
Frequently Asked Questions
Does behaviourism ignore what happens inside a learner's mind?
A standard criticism says yes: behaviourism treats the mind as an unobserved black box between input and output, which is exactly what cognitivism was built to open.
A standard criticism of behaviourism, made in Tony Bates's open textbook Teaching in a Digital Age, is that it treats humans as a black box: inputs and outputs are measurable, but what happens inside is not considered of interest. The same source argues that because learners have conscious thought, decision-making and the ability to express ideas, a fuller account of learning needs to look inside that box, which is the shift the cognitivist approach later made.
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