Since I wasn't in class this week I will comment on the readings. I'm sorry I missed the class though because I really enjoy this stuff! This is actually where I think it gets interesting. Behaviorism is one thing, I mean who can't train a monkey to do tricks?? But the cognitive stuff is where it's at for me. I read something in one of the chapters that mentioned that learning can take place without a specific change in behavior and I tend to agree with that. I think the behavior change can be noticed over time but it owlud seem that behaviorists are looking for instant gratification and I don't necessarily believe it always has to work out like that. I think back to my training as a steamfitter. There was a lot of repition on the job and in the classes but there were certain things I learned that I didn't apply for years. We never drilled certain things (I mean skill drilling, not actual machine drilling...hard to know which one I'm speaking of due to the nature of the trade!) and we never got the chance to practice certain things either so it was just the idea that we learned the information then when we needed it we would be expected to recall it for future use. Granted, we always had a journeyman with us in the beginning to help refresh our memories but the point is that there was no immediate behavior change when we were initially taught the information. It seems that behaviorism is more tuned in with the elementary tasks and while I think many cognitive skills can be reduced to such elementary tasks, I think that in order to fully grasp it for use and significance at a later time, cognitive learning had to be present. I think the cognitivist point is much more imrtant when we study things like learning disabilities because we need to attempt to understand what the person is thinking and how that person learns. The behaviorist ideal would suppose that everyone, regardless of disability, can learn by doing. we all know that some people simply are not wired to learn that way so we need to better understand how they think.
I took a learning class as an undergrad and I remember the professor giving us this cognitive test in every class. She would say 15 items slowly while we listened, then she would go about her lesson for the next 15 minutes. Then we would be asked to recall and write down what words she said. The catch though is that some of the words would be used again in her lesson in such a way that themes were built around the word, or including the word. So for instance if one of her words was "social" she would use that word a few times related to her lesson. In each class we were encouraged to not simply concentrate on the word we heard so we could recall it easier, we were encouraged to formulate groupings of the words. To categorize them if you will. After our recalls it was always so interesting to see how each person grouped things together so differently based on their own schema. I always loved that class because we were able to see on a weekly basis how different people learn simply based on what attributes they bring into the mix or based on what existing knowledge they already had.
So alas, I'm glad we're on to the fun stuff!
I agree, this is where things get interesting...
ReplyDeleteTashera asked the question "but can't someone learning something but it doesn't change how they behave?" Yes. That is the dilemma. You can't know someone learned it unless you can somehow see evidence of that. And that is why behaviorist ignore internal processes. Of course there may be other ways to get at whether someone learned something than just behaviors. Now, there are tools you can use such as having students draw a concept map.