Proponents of Behaviourism

The origins of behaviourism as an education theory was the work of Watson (1924), Pavlov (1927) (1932) and Tolman (Tolman, 1922), and for the first half of the twentieth century it was the leading educational theory in the USA (Schunk, 1991). Later in the twentieth century there was a ‘revival’ of behaviourism as a theory, with new proponents such as Skinner (1985) and Gagne (1975).

It remains one of the three main theories of education, with recent articles in support of behaviourism coming from Duit & Treagust (1998), Hodge (2007) and Pugsley (2011). One thing that does appear to be clear is that there is a difference between teaching children (pedagogy) and teaching adults (andragogy (Elias, 1979)), and even higher education generally (Heutagogy (Hase & Kenyon, 2001)), and that behaviourism seems to be more closely associated with older learners. It is a theory of education that puts the teacher in control of what is learnt. There also seems to be a link that makes behaviourism seem more effective for some kinds of teaching than it is for others.

References       

Duit, R. & Treagust, D. F., 1998. 1.1 Learning in Science - From Behaviourism Towards Social Constructivism and Beyond. In: B. J. Fraser & K. G. Tobin, eds. International Handbook of Science Education. London: Kluwer, pp. 3-25.

Elias, J. L., 1979. Andrabgogy Revisited. Adult Education Quartlery, 29(4), pp. 252-256.

Gagne, R. M., 1975. Essentials of Learning for Instruction. New York: Holt, Rienhart and Winston.

Hase, S. & Kenyon, C., 2001. Molving from Andragogy to Heutagogy in Vocational Education. ERIC, p. n.p..

Hodge, S., 2007. The origins of Competency-Based Training. Australian journal Of adult Learining, 47(2), pp. 179-209.

Pavlov, I. P., 1927. Conditioned Reflexes (G.V. Anrep, Trans). London: Oxford University Press.

Pavlov, I. P., 1932. Neuroses in Man and Animals. Journal of The American Medical Association, 99(1), pp. 1012-1013.

Pugsley, L., 2011. How to...Begin to grips with educational theory. Education for Primary Care, Volume 22, pp. 266-268.

Schunk, D. H., 1991. Self-efficacy and academic motivation. Educational Psychologist, Volume 26, pp. 207-231.

Schunk, D. H., 2004. Learning Theories An Educational Perspective. 4th ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Skinner, B. F., 1985. Cognitive science and behaviourism. British Journal of Psychology, 76(3), pp. 291-301.

Tolman, E. C., 1922. A new formula for Behaviourism. Psychological Review, 29(1), pp. 44-53.

Watson, J. B., 1924. Behaviourism. New York: Norton.