Behaviorist and Cognitive Perspectives Of Learning

In my Educational Psychology class we have been discussing and learning about behaviorist and cognitive perspectives of learning. There are some differences in these to perspectives. Behaviorist perspectives tend to frame the learning in terms of a stimulus response, teachers like to see the students try an activity and then receive either a reward or a punishment. The student will try this activity again, but on the second time the teacher will emphasize what worked and deemphasize what did not work for the student. This will keep happening until the student is satisfactory in what the teacher expects, or what the norm of the classroom is. Below is a video that I found that helped construct thoughts about behaviorist perspectives of learning, and supply more information about the topic.

On the other hand cognitive perspective is framed as learning how to construct your understanding as a student. An example is if new material is presented in class, and it fits with the viewpoint of the student, then their confidence about the topic will increase and they will feel more comfortable about the material. But if the new material presented in class does not fit the viewpoint of the student then they will try to shift how they are thinking until the material become more clear to them. Over all cognitive perspective  learning is more effective for developing students different ways of thinking. When focusing on behaviorist perspectives of learning it is more effective in students learning behaviors/actions.

I think that it is important to include these perspectives of learning into teaching because each and every student in the classroom is different. Each student learns differently and they need the chance to be able to learn if the different ways. Behaviors for some students may be able to connect material better to them and make them understand the material better. As goes for the cognitive perspective learning, students may learn better in adjusting they way they are looking at the material and then apply a new viewpoint to help better understand the concepts being taught. The limitations that I see with these perspectives of learning are if they are not used together the teacher is limiting the success of their students. I think independently each perspective is not the strongest because of the fact that they need each other to work hand in hand.

Personally I agree with both views of behaviorist and cognitive perspectives of learning, but if I had to lean one way, I agree more with the cognitive perspectives of learning. I agree with these because I think that it is more important in the academic setting for students to be able to adjust their viewpoints and see things from from a different perspective to enhance their learning.

In our class we have a very useful textbook that I tend to refer to often, while reading through the textbook for class I found a table that laid out the four different ways of learning (behavioral, cognitive, constructivist, and social cognitive). I found in the table that I most relate to the cognitive section that lines up with knowledge section. I think that it is important to have knowledge to acquire and also to use prior knowledge to influence how new information is processed. I think that I will apply these strategies in my future teaching because it is important for students to be able to apply prior knowledge to their current learning to influence how they process information. Also I will use different types of behaviorist and cognitive perspectives of learning in my classroom because I think that they are both essential keys to learning for the student.