An Introduction to Educational Psychology:

Behaviorism and Cognitive Psychology

Ahmad Faiz (130221810453)Julien Arief Wicaksono (130221810486)

The Outline

1.1 Introduction

What is education?

Education, as many people believe, is something that is carried out by one person, a teacher, standing in front of a class and transmitting information to a group of learners who are all willing and able to absorb it.

Nevertheless, education is a highly complex process involving:

an intricate interplay between the learning process itself,

the teacher’s intentions and actions,

the individual personalities of the learners,

their culture and background,

the learning environment and a host of other variables.

Teachers, esp. language teachers, have to link those aspects based on psychological theories.

Social constructivism, an approach to psychology, is adopted to build a coherent perspective in different aspects of language learning. This approach will be the core discussion in Chapter 2 of the book later on.

1.2 Education psychology

Kaplan (1990) defines educational psychology as the application of psychology to education by focusing on the development, evaluation and applications of theories and principles of learning and instruction that can enhance lifelong learning.

But, do learning and education correspond to each other?

Learning and education are fundamentally different.

Learning is certainly part of the process of education, while education must give broader value and meaning to the learner’s life.

Further, education concerned with educating the person holistically.

Thus, one consequence of failing to make the distinction between learning and education is that many learning activities which take place in schools are not necessarily educative: they lack a real value to the life of the learner.

1.3 Approach to educational psychology

Educational psychology theory has passed through changes and fashions.

In the late nineteenth century, the fledging discipline of psychology was particularly keen to establish itself as a science.

As a science, it adopted what so-called called ‘scientific method’ as a means of gathering data about human behavior.

This chapter will begin with the positivist school and one of its main offshoots, behaviorism, and the influence this has had in language teaching.

It is then followed by cognitive psychology and the way different developments in this field have left their mark on language teaching.

1.4 The positivist school

Early psychologists sought to find the principles of human learning by investigating the behavior of animals lower down the biological hierarchy of the animal kingdom.

For instance, how rats learned their way through mazes to obtain food.

Psychologists assumed that the lessons learned from this could then be fairly easily applied to order human learning.

However, they did not give any focus on the human mind in their attempts to understand and predict human behavior.

This led to an adherence to an experimental methodology which is part of a philosophical form of enquiry known as ‘logical positivism’.

Basically, this approach begins with the premise that knowledge and facts exist within the real world and can be discovered by setting up experiments in which conditions are carefully controlled and where hypotheses are set up and tested.

1.4.1 Behaviorism

Behaviorism is an approach to psychology that has it roots within positivism.

This approach arose out of the ideas of early learning theories who attempted to explain all learning in terms of some form of conditioning.

Do you know who is this?

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (14 September 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist.

Pavlov demonstrated dogs’ response (e.g. salivation) generated by one stimulus (e.g. food) could be produced by introducing a second stimulus (e.g. a bell) at the same time.

1849-1936

Pavlov learned this concept when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned then when a buzzer or metronome was sounded in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the sound with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the presentation of that stimulus.

Thus, this came to be known as S-R (Stimulus-Response) theory or classical conditioning.

One of Pavlov's dogs, preserved at The Pavlov Museum, Ryazan, Russia

1.4.2 B. F. SkinnerBurrhus Frederic "B. F." Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

B. F. Skinner, the founder of modern behaviorism, introduces operant-conditioning.

Operant i.e. the range of behaviors that organisms performed or were capable of performing.

Operant-conditioning also emphasizes on the important of reinforcement (i.e. reward or punishment).

1904 – 1990

An individual will respond to a stimulus by behaving in a particular way. Whatever happens afterwards will affect the likelihood of that behavior recurring. If the behavior is reinforced (e.g. rewarded or punished) then the likelihood of that behavior occurring later will be increased or decreased.

In other words, any human action was the result of the consequences of that same action. If the consequences were bad, there was a high chance that the action would not be repeated; however if the consequences were good, the actions that lead to it would be reinforced. He called this the principle of reinforcement.

The Skinners' grave at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Skinner’s theory is the basis of the audiolingualism. Thus, language is seen as a behavior to be taught.

A small part of the foreign language, such as structural pattern, is presented as a stimulus, to which the learner responds, for example by repetition or substitution. This is then followed by reinforcement by the teacher.

Thus, the role of the teacher is to develop good language habits of the learner by giving pattern drills, memorization of dialogues or choral repetition of structural patterns.

In sum, it is TEACHER-ORIENTED.

Thus it can be seen that the approach has a number of weaknesses. They are;The role of the learners is a fairly passive since they are

merely directed to respond correctly to stimuli.There is little concern of the cognitive processes involved in

learning something. The relationship of how the cognitive processes can enhance learning will be discussed in Chapter 7.

Audio-lingual drills can be carried out with little attention to the meaning that the language conveys.

There is no room for the actual process of interaction and negotiation of meanings which is important feature of communicating in a language.

The making of mistakes is an important part of learning. However, audiolingualism, with its emphasis on correct responses, does not allow for learning from mistakes.

Despite its weaknesses, audio-lingual approach has a number of practicalities. They are;

All teachers, including those who have inadequate or even no professional training, can use this approach. It can be quicker and easier to teach teachers to use the steps involved in audio-lingual approach: presentation, practice, repetition, and drills in a fairly mechanical way.

Teachers who lack confidence tend to be less frightened of these techniques.

This approach can be used by teachers whose own knowledge of the target language is limited.

Perhaps the strongest indictment of behaviorism has been that it is only concerned with observable behavior.

Thus, it denies the importance the fundamental element in the learning process.

The sense that learners themselves seek to make of their worlds, and the cognitive or mental processes that they bring to the task of learning.

1.5 Cognitive Psychology

▪ Cognitive psychology is concerned with the way in which human mind thinks and learns, or it is commonly called as mental processes that are involved in learning.

▪ Here the learners are required to use their minds to observe, think, categorize, and hypothesize, and in this way gradually work out how the language operates.

1.5.1 Information Processing

It is concerned with the way in which people take in information, process it, and act upon it.

Attention

▪ Klatzky (1980) suggests that attention should be seen as a process of filtering out an overwhelming range of incoming stimuli and selecting out only those stimuli which are important for further processing.

▪ Best (1986) claim that attention as a cognitive resource which can be drawn upon as a means of concentrating our mental efforts.

1.5.2 Memory

▪ Stimuli are initially recorded for a brief amount of time before being passed into short-term (or working) memory if attention is given to them.

▪ It is necessary to find ways of breaking down complex material into related ‘chunks’ before consigning these to the long-term memory store.

Memorizing Problems

▪ The “Linkword” Method (Gruneberg, 1987; Gruneberg and Jacobs, 1991)

This technique involves linking words in both the first and second language to construct a picture in the mind.

▪ Advance Organizer (Ausubel, 1968)

This technique gives a bridge between what learners already know and what they need to know.

1.5.3 Intelligence and Intelligence Testing

▪ intelligence, most people would probably refer to some inborn, general ability which enables some of us to learn better than the others.

▪ Such a view would tend to assume that intelligence is fixed at birth and unlikely to change after about the age of five.

▪ This belief in the unchanging nature of intelligence has led to the development of intelligence (IQ) test and their use for the purposes of prediction or placement and even as diagnostic tools to explain learning failure.

Intelligence?

INTELLIGENCEGardner• Linguistic/verbal

• Logical/mathematical

• Visual/spatial

• Musical/rhythmic

• Bodily/kinesthetic

• Naturalist

• Intrapersonal

• Interpersonal

• Existential

Sternberg• Metacomponents

• Performance components

• Knowledge acquisition components

Vernon• Intelligence A

• Intelligence B

• Intelligence C

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Jean Piaget Jerome Bruner George Kelly

Jean William Fritz Piaget

▪ The Constructive Nature of the Learning Process

▪ The stages of learners’ development:

1. Sensori-motor stage

2. Intuitive or pre-operational stage

3. Concrete operational stage

4. Formal operational thinking stage

(9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980)

Some central aspects from Piaget’s theory which could be significant to language teacher:

▪ Learners should be helped and encouraged to be actively involved in constructing meaning in learning new language.

▪ The central focus of learning is on the development of thinking and its relationship to language and experience.

▪ The tasks should be appropriate with the learners’ cognitive level.

▪ Accommodation and assimilation must be applied in learning new language.

Jerome Seymour Bruner

▪ Three Different Modes of Thinking according to Burner:

1. Enactive level, learning takes place by means of direct manipulation of objects and materials, (e.g. the use of drama, play, total physical response, and the handling of the real objects),

2. Iconic level, objects are represented by visual images one step removed from the real thing (e.g. the use of pictures, or words in color),

3. Symbolic level, symbols can be manipulated in place of objects or mental images (e.g. paralanguage to express ideas in context).

(born 1 October, 1915)

George Alexander Kelly

▪ Kelly’s famous premise is “man-as-scientist”

▪ Kelly notes some important implications of taking personal construct approach to teaching and learning.

1. Meaningful activities must be used in teaching and learning process.

2. Learning should be based on shared understanding with others.

3. The syllabus or curriculum should be adjusted to the learners need.

(28 April 1905 – 6 March 1967)