According to Vygotsky’s social constructivism, humans construct knowledge through interaction with other people, particularly the more knowledgeable other.  Teachers should model a cognitive process within the students’ zone of proximal development, and then assist students to complete tasks until the students can internalize the process and perform the tasks independently.  In a math class, for example, this could take the form of showing students how to complete a problem and then providing them a similar problem with some of the steps already supplied. As students show facility at inserting the needed information, they are asked to complete greater numbers of steps until they can solve the problem without assistance. William James likewise stressed the importance of imitation in learning, that teachers and peers can set an example, which is basically another expression for modeling.  James (1899/2001) claimed, “The teacher who meets with most success is the teacher whose own ways are the most imitable.  A teacher should never try to make her pupils do a thing which she cannot do herself. ‘Come and let me show you how’ is an incomparably better stimulus than ‘Go and do as the book directs’” (p. 26).  Both Vygotsky and James emphasized the importance of social influence in learning.

In Piaget’s cognitive constructivism, humans organize information about their experiences in schemata that they create.  Piaget demonstrated that children of different ages have differing abilities to form certain kinds of schemata.  James mentions stages of development, although his focus is on students’ changing interests and tendencies rather than abilities:  “In children we observe a ripening of impulses and interests in a certain determinate order . . . the proper pedagogic moment to work skill in . . . is when the native impulse is most acutely present” (James, 1899/2001, p. 31).  Piaget and James both explain that teachers should be sensitive to development in designing instruction.  For Piaget, this means not rushing students to tackle tasks for which they are not cognitively able.  For James, this means targeting instruction to a child’s current interests.

James, W. (1899/2001). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life’s ideals. Mineola, NY: Dover. ISBN: 0486-41964-9 

I’ve been really struck in my reading by one particular assertion that William James (1899/2001) makes:  “The ‘nature’, the ‘character’ of an individual means really nothing but the habitual form of his associations.  To break up bad associations or wrong ones, to build others in, to guide the associative tendencies into the most fruitful channels, is the educator’s principle task” (p. 42).  This is a new thought.  I’ve always assumed that bad behavior was either derived from some hereditary temperament or the product of poor training (which could include not having the child’s needs met).  I’ve never envisioned behavior as the result of the mental connections that one makes.  It’s really intriguing to consider how my approach to my students might change if I followed James’ advice to “acquire a habit of thinking of your pupils in associative terms” (p. 45).  I’ll need to spend a lot more time drawing out how this practice could affect my teaching, but as an initial reaction, I can think of people I know who tend to act in certain ways because they immediately jump to particular thoughts.  For example, I have a longtime friend who some people consider stubborn.  If someone “tells” him to do something, he will not do it, because he does not like being bossed around.  It has caused problems in our friendship because sometimes he reacts badly to my sincere efforts to tell him things that bother me.  If I am interpreting this passage correctly, I think that James would say my friend has formed an association between being asked to do something and being controlled by another person.  He has a negative association that influences his behavior.  If I could help him replace this negative association with a more positive association between expressing something I need in our friendship as evidence of how much I trust him and desire his friendship, he might react differently.  I’m still not certain how you can guide somebody’s associations, but I want to spend more time pondering this idea and what it’s practical implications might be in how I react to people.

James, W. (1899/2001). Talks to teachers on psychology and to students on some of life’s ideals. Mineola, NY: Dover. ISBN: 0486-41964-9

According to Piaget, knowledge does not exist somewhere outside of the mind.  As people interact with their environment, they interpret what they experience.  In doing so, they actively “construct” knowledge by forming categories of associations.  Rather than impart knowledge to students through lectures and reading, the teacher’s role is to help students build schemas by having them actively experiment and explore the world.  When students encounter new experiences, they feel cognitive disequilibrium, which is uncomfortable, so they attempt to restore equilibrium by either “assimilating” information about the new experience into their existing schemas, or by “accommodating” the information through changing their mental frameworks (altering their schematic structures).  The greater the variety of experiences the student has, the more information he or she will need to incorporate through assimilation and accommodation, leading to more accurate knowledge structures. 

Another key idea presented by Piaget is that people go through stages of development.  They have different cognitive abilities at each stage.  A person cannot learn in a way for which she or he is not cognitively able, so teachers should be sensitive to what students are able to do at each age when presenting new concepts.

I just saw this article in Fast Company:  http://www.fastcompany.com/3013178/unplug/why-youre-sleeping-with-your-smartphone.  What a great example of behaviorism in action.  In the beginning the author describes how you can help someone to replace one behavior (being unplugged) for another (being constantly connected) using praise.  There’s even an example of negative reinforcement.  Notice the “you slap their hand”.  Later the author talks about making small changes, which sounds very much like shaping.  The part about having a common goal isn’t really behaviorism, but there’s definitely elements of behaviorism in her approach.

I recently took the Implicit Association Test on racial impressions at Harvard.  While I don’t necessarily disagree with my results, I still have strong doubts about the way the test was constructed.  I was shown to have a moderate preference for my own race, white, which doesn’t really surprise me.  After all, I grew up in a predominantly white community, so my early exposure to other races was limited.  I presume it’s probably biologically natural to prefer one’s own race, and there is also a clear historical advantage to being white in America which could quite logically, even as it is unfortunate, strengthen an unconscious desire to associate with white people.  What really bothered me about the test was that it seemed from watching the Dateline interview that the researchers had an agenda.  Every time the test was given, black faces were grouped with negative characteristics in the first part of the test.  Why?  Why don’t the researchers randomize the test so that some participants receive the grouping of black faces with positive characteristics early in the test and then switch the categories in the 2^nd half?  Does this reveal a bias on the part of the researchers?  Rather than testing the preconceptions held by participants, is it possible that the test actually places an association of black with bad in the participants’ minds that then impacts the 2^nd half of the test?  This would correspond well with the observation recorded by Gladwell in Blink that participants who were primed to think about old age in a sentence construction test subsequently behaved in line with that association.  Is the IAT priming participants to form associations between pictures of black people and negative terms?  I would like to know if the results change at all when the order of the test is changed.  William James makes a point of explaining how memory enables us to learn in Talks to Teachers.  Through recalling a series of reactions, we can substitute one behavior for another, “eliminating all the intermediary steps” (p. 21).  For James, one interaction can be instructive, so it is logical to conclude that a test item could potentially teach participants how to behave rather than simply measure that behavior.

Skinner (1984) lamented that behaviorism had not been more quickly accepted by society.  Pryor (2004) acknowledges the long rejection of behaviorism, but demonstrates how it is now being embraced to productive ends in many contexts.  As an interesting example of behaviorism in practice not mentioned by Pryor, Skinner commented on how particularly disparaging linguists were of his methods, but there are many popular language programs now that take students through carefully programmed instruction.  The most famous is Rosetta Stone.  While I’m not personally familiar with the program, one researcher described it as “using pictures to create contexts where meaning is clear, elicit responses, and provide immediate feedback” (Stoltzfus, 1997).  The use of stimuli to elicit responses and then provide immediate feedback sounds like something straight from Skinner’s writing, demonstrating the change that language instruction has undergone.  Pryor (2004) endorses reinforcement because it is effective, interesting to those trained by it, and creates a bond between trainer and trainee.  Kohn (2011) rejects these assertions, claiming that reinforcing children with praise causes them to become dependent on the approval of other people and less sure of their own opinions.  I can see Kohn’s point that some forms of praise can be demeaning.  Sometimes saying “good job” is really more dismissive and condescending than heartfelt and uplifting.  However, I found myself wondering if it’s realistic or beneficial for children to be completely self-reliant.  Humans are social creatures.  Our desire for the approval of other people is an instinct that serves an important function, to drive us toward intimacy because we are more effective as a group than as individuals, and to check our own fallacious tendencies through the feedback of other people.  It is natural for children to want approval.  As a result, while there can be an over-reliance on approval, total deprivation from praise may be just as destructive to a child’s self-esteem.  I agree more with Pryor in advocating behaviorism.  I found his examples of how some animals have tried to use reinforcement to train humans incredibly intriguing.  There may be less that distinguishes people from animals than we realize.

References

Kohn, A. (2011). Five reasons to stop saying “Good job!” Young Children. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gj.htm

Kohn, A. (2012, Feb 3). Criticizing (common criticisms of) praise. Huffington Post, 75, 783-787. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/criticizing-common-critic_b_1252344.html

Pryor, K. (2002). Don’t shoot the dog: The new art of teaching and training. Gloucestershire, Scotland: Ringpress Books Ltd.

Skinner, B. F. (1984). The shame of American education. American Psychologist, 42, 947-954.

Stoltzfus, A. (1997). The learning theory behind the Rosetta Stone Language Library from Fairfield Language Technologies. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Bilingual Education, Albuquerque, NM. Retrieved from ERIC.

In “The Shame of American Education,” B.F. Skinner criticizes the proposals that have been made for fixing American schools.  Recommendations to make students attend school longer, fire ineffective teachers, disband colleges of education, or study cognitive processes fail to address the root of the problem, a reliance on the wrong theory of learning.  Behaviorism, which proposes that all learning is merely a change in behavior resulting from schedules of reinforcement, can be the basis for a more effective education system.  Through the use of carefully designed instruction, students can learn more in shorter periods of time.  They will be motivated and less disruptive in schools because they will be reinforced by their success through the instructional sequence.  Because the culture has not embraced the theory of behaviorism, colleges of education are not training teachers appropriately, teachers don’t have the tools to perform their job, and students are not learning in the most effective manner.

                Very little has changed in the 29 years since Skinner wrote this article.  Behaviorism is still considered outdated, and our schools are still disintegrating.  Skinner would be disappointed.  There are a few exceptions.  The School of One in New York has adopted some of Skinner’s tenets.  It enables individual students to progress through the curriculum at their own pace and receive reinforcement through daily feedback on their efforts.  As Skinner predicted, students are more motivated and teachers have more time to really teach.  It does not fully incorporate Skinner’s model because the instruction is not carefully designed to elicit the appropriate response and avoid reinforcing wrong answer, but I think Skinner would consider it a major step in the right direction.  By using computer-generated algorithms to respond to the behavior of each student, the School of One emphasizes patterns of behavior rather than the concept of “choice”.  Skinner would agree with this approach.  He considered “free will” an illusion.  All behavior has a cause, and if the causes can be known, then behavior can be controlled.

Behaviorism is an epistemology that proposes that everything we know about living and nonliving things comes from how they act.  All behavior is a reaction to environmental factors.  Animals and humans can be “classically” conditioned to respond to a neutral stimulus by pairing that stimulus through association with another stimulus that naturally produces the desired behavior.  Furthermore, since some behaviors influence or “operate on” the environment, these behaviors can be strengthened or extinguished through positive or negative reinforcers or punishments in a process called “operant conditioning”.

In creating a pie chart on the role of habit vs. free will in my life, I was tempted at first to assign 25% to habit and 75% to conscious choice. This is certainly the way I perceive life as it unfolds. There are some things, I clearly do out of habit. Often when I’m driving a familiar route, I don’t really pay attention to the directions I am taking. I know this because I sometimes find myself taking the wrong familiar route (ex. going to work when I am supposed to be going to a friend’s house) and don’t catch it until I am halfway there. However, I still consciously think about the choices I am making most of the time, hence the 75%. Yet, I decided to reverse these figures because, while the former may be my perception of my day, ultimately my upbringing and culture play a much bigger role than I consciously realize. In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates how generational heritage can have a major influence on the decisions people make and accounts for a large part of the success of some people. While decisions may feel like “choice”, if they are determined by the values instilled in us by our upbringing, they are really still a form of habit. Now, I need to clarify that I don’t believe this chart is true for all people. Some people have no free will at all. Their actions are completely dictated by habit. We are only enabled to make choices in our lives when we encounter God and are given spiritual life. Even then, while we have the capability to choose, we are still greatly influenced by other factors, so “habit” still remains a predominant force in our lives.