Behaviourism Theory Reinforcement theories such as those of Skinner (1904-1990) proposed that in addition to the role played by maturation in children's development, their behaviours are shaped by environmental conditions and systematic reinforcements. From a behaviourist perspective, growth and development are seen to be a result of connections established between stimulus input and behavioural responses that are shaped by a wide variety of reinforcers such as food, drink, praise, a smile or a new toy. The role of the adults is to provide these reinforcements. Therefore, development is seen as a process of the individual learning increasingly complex and refined ways of acting as a result of the consequences and rewards that have followed the behaviour. If you use a behaviourist perspective in teaching, you would: assess and provide what you feel is necessary in response to behaviour in the belief that children acquire many favourable and unfavourable responses simply by watching and listening to others around them apply a set of practical procedures that combine reinforcement, modelling and the manipulation of situational cues to change behaviour make decisions about when it is appropriate to use consequences, reinforcement, rewards or punishment to either reinforce positive behaviour or deter negative behaviour.
Many experiments were, and some still are conducted on animals and to a lesser extent on humans, to determine their response to stimuli like food and pain. Keep this in mind when you are reading about these theories in the readings. Two examples of these include Harry Harlow's controversial experiments conducted in the 1960s and John Watson's little Albert experiment. Harlow demonstrated the powerful effects of love. By showing the devastating effects of deprivation on young rhesus monkeys, Harlow revealed the importance of a mother's love for healthy childhood development. Watson taunted a young child with a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers to observe the baby's fear reactions. Behavioural theories provide good explanations for certain kinds of learning but poor explanations for other types of complex learning. Operant conditioning, for example, is better than other theories at explaining the rote acquisition of information such as times tables or song lyrics, the learning of physical and mental skills, and for guiding children's behaviours. In these situations, the focus is on performing behavioural tasks rather than developing a learner's cognitive structure or understanding. Although classical conditioning is frequently dismissed as irrelevant to human learning (Pavlov's initial research paradigm involved dogs salivating), this type of learning provides an explanation of how and why people respond emotionally to a wide variety of stimuli and situations. The many types of emotional reactions acquired through classical conditioning include: reactions, such as racism for a particular person or group; phobias and fears; and being influenced by another person. However, they are very poor at explaining how individuals come to understand complex ideas and phenomena.