1

Running head: Thought Paper 1

Thought Paper 1: Behaviourist Principles in Educational Settings

Gurpreet Koonar
University of British Columbia
ETEC 512 64A
Instructor: Jennifer Shapka
September 14, 2014

Behaviourism is a simplistic approach to understanding human behaviour. It does not

account for alternate styles of learning with the absence of punishment and reinforcement.
Behaviourist strategies have been proven to elicit a desired student response when educators
implement approaches which can be observed quantitatively. According to Standridge (2002),
behaviour is concentrated on stimuli as well as the connections made by the learner. Methods
such as rewards, contracts, group points and the color wheel management system strengthen
classroom management and assist educators in controlling behaviours which disrupt learning.
However, despite the efforts of these approaches to facilitate learning, these techniques are
inadequate to explain how a learners thought process created an appropriate learning behaviour.
Independently, behaviourist classroom management techniques do not describe why or
how learning has occurred. Within the video, the English teacher praised her students for their
success on the bar charts, however there was no indication to the process which took place to
reach the goal. Similarly, the color wheel management system provided greater on task behavior
but failed to account for whether students valued the system. With classroom rules displayed on
the walls, would students respond proactively without the incentive? The lack of evidence
suggests that behavioural theories do not take into account influences such as feelings, thoughts
and moods.
Learning is a covert process which brings together emotional, intellectual and
environmental experiences for obtaining, enhancing or making changes in ones knowledge.
Learning how to study for an exam, for instance, requires knowledge of organization, selfdiscipline, planning and time management. Similarly, the construct of learning requires more
than reinforcements and punishments which rely on a stimuli-response formula to measure
behaviour. Behaviourists would benefit from an information processing perspective to

understand that observable behaviours can be used to make implications about cognitive
processes which cannot be observed.

References
Standridge, M.. (2002). Behaviorism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning,
teaching, and technology. Available online: http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?
title=Behaviorism

White, E. (2010, March 24). Classroom Observation [Video file]. Retrieved

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY3t2sijb4M&feature=related