Psychological Perspectives on Teaching and Learning: Understanding how Children Think and Learn.
“How we understand children and their learning affect the choices that teachers make, day by day, encounter by encounter in the classroom.” (Pollard et al., 2014, p.34)
Learning is a complex and interactive concept involving a teacher, the learner and the subject being taught. A standard consensus would suggest learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour, others argue it is changes in capacity, knowledge or understanding. Educational practice is not defined by any particular technique but rather its impact upon the learner. There exist numerous views as to what approach best facilities learning. Psychology depends upon a number of alternative theoretical perspectives which offer different visions of the learner.
Learning is the process by which people, and children in particular, understand and apply knowledge, skills and concepts. It is an intricate mixture of social and cognitive ideas and although a teacher must focus on what they are teaching their class and why, they must also give consideration to what the children themselves bring to their education. For many years psychologists have been analysing how people learn and the processes by which the learning occurs and so today we have various theories all aiming to answer the question, ‘How do children learn most effectively?’
My aim is to reflect critically on three different perspectives on learning, Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism. Using my own personal experiences in schools I will assess how each of these perspectives, or perhaps a mixture of all three can help me to better understand pupils and plan more effectively for their learning.
Behaviourists suggest that,
“Living creatures, animal or human, learn by building up associations or ‘bonds’ between their experience, their thinking and their behaviour.” (Pollard et al., 2014, p.35)
Behavioural psychology has contributed enormously to the understanding and promoting of education. As early as the 1890’s behavioural psychology was assuming that the context in which an individual learns should be considered as an influencing factor and that complex behaviours are just a combination of simpler ones. Both Pavlov and Skinner through ground-breaking experiments changed the face of behavioural psychology.
Pavlov succeeded in conditioning dogs to salivate to a bell. Initially interested in digestion and developing ways of measuring salivation, Pavlov found that when the food was paired with a bell later the dog salivated upon hearing the bell before the food arrived. He then went to investigate if the pairing of the food and the bell was removed could the dog learn to stop salivating. This study gave rise to concepts of stimuli and response within learning. In this instance the food was the unconditioned stimulus then the dog salivating – the unconditioned response, the bell was the conditioned stimulus and the resulting saliva was the conditioned response. This process was known as classical conditioning. It highlights the importance of the events that precede an observed behaviour.
Skinner argues that knowledge gives us rules for action, these being largely mechanical responses to environmental stimuli. If knowledge is construed as a repertoire of behaviour, then an individual is said to understand something if they possess the appropriate repertoire of behaviours. Skinner stressed the importance of the events after the behaviour occurs. Both rewards and sanctions are essential to learning. If an action is followed by a reward, then it is more likely to be repeated. Skinner came to his theories following his study with rats. Within a box, rats had to push a lever linked to a device giving sugar pellets. An effective reinforcement schedule would insist upon positive reinforcement, without this then learned responses will quickly become extinct.
From a behaviourist perspective information from teacher to learner is essentially the transmission of appropriate responses to a certain stimulus. Thus, the point of education is to present the student with the appropriate repertoire of behaviours to specific stimuli and to reinforce those responses. If we combine both operant and
classical conditioning then we can see the relationship between the environment and a behaviour. Known as A – B – C, or Antecedent, Behaviour and Consequence. An approach that gives rise to Applied Behavioural Analysis.
Dissatisfied with behaviourism’s strict focus on observable behaviour and omission of the impact of cognitive processes led educational psychologist Jean Piaget to demand an approach to learning theory that paid more attention to the mental processes of the learner. Some of the most important contributions psychology has made to education come in the form of Piaget’s cognitive development theory. His work offered understanding on the processes by which we acquire knowledge and understanding of the world, and the ways in which the nature of our mental processes change with age.
Constructivism aims to illustrate how people learn through the interaction of thought and experience. The most influential constructivist theorist was Jean Piaget, whose aim was to create,
“An understanding of the origin of knowledge derived from research into the interaction between people and their environment” (Pollard et al., 2014, p.37)
The concept of a constructivist approach is that when children encounter a new experience they use their prior knowledge to familiarise themselves with an it and, like building a scaffold, they recalibrate their thoughts adding to their knowledge.
My focus is on a specific child who displayed various behaviours and provided a range of challenges for the teacher during class. This particular child struggled to grasp many areas and themes of numeracy. Due to the low level of success the child was unable to stay attentive during numeracy lessons and was easily distracted by other children in the class during this time. When this child became distracted they had a tendency to distract others around them and this formed a cycle of distraction during numeracy lessons. These distractions included talking to the person beside them while the teacher was giving instructions so that neither themselves or their peers were equipped to carry out the task as instructed. The child was also unable to stay focussed on the task and needed regular prompts to ensure they could complete the task within the given time. An individual education plan was in place for this child covering all areas of the curriculum to varying degrees but with special consideration given to both numeracy and literacy as being key areas of the curriculum.
There is no single agreed definition of learning. For a Behaviourist, to learn is to demonstrate a more or less permanent change in behaviour; for the Constructivist, to learn is to see the meaning or significance of an experience or concept. As a facilitator, our role is dependent upon the theory of learning you hold. ‘Theory matters because
without it education is just hit or miss; …we risk misunderstanding not only the nature of our pedagogy but the epistemic foundations of our discipline’ (Webb, 1996; cited in Carlile and Jordan, 2005).
It is important to note that constructivism is not a particular pedagogy, but rather a theory describing how learning happens. However, constructivism is often associated with pedagogic approaches that promote active learning, or learn by doing so. Social constructivism not only acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the learner, but actually encourages, utilises and rewards it as an integral part of the learning process. Whole class interaction, peer tutoring and cooperative group work all depend on the social constructivist principle of maximising focused interaction between the learner and a more expert other. Unlike teaching predicted by Piagetian principles, the effectiveness of these techniques is widely supported by research.