We have quite a bit to talk about from Module 4. Let us start with the differences between the behaviorist and cognitive perspectives of learning. The behaviorist perspective deals with teaching by rewarding favorable actions and punishing unfavorable actions, while the cognitive perspective focuses on learning by experiences. This video should help explain it better.
It is important to apply them to teaching because we need to teach our students not only how to behave, but how to think problems out for themselves, especially in my field of physical education and coaching. There are limitations to both theories. The limitations for behaviorists are that not everyone has the ability to perform certain actions and some people may feel left out. The limitations for the cognitive perspective are that some people may not understand how to solve problems, and takes a lot of time to teach to students.
When it comes to my personal beliefs, I know I need to have both in my teaching philosophy, as you need to know both how to act properly, but also how to think for yourself and solve problems on your own, but I don’t know which should be more important. Maybe neither should be more important than the other.
When it comes to times I will need to teach these philosophies in physical education, I can think of some examples. For the behaviorist theories, you will deal with some athletes who will want mess around during practices, and you will have to find set rules for practice and enforce any necessary punishments, and you can also apply this example to the cognitive theory, as you will need to find ways to keep EVERYONE on task, since some people don’t have as good of an attention span as others. As I mentioned before, I believe you need to master knowledge of both behaviorist and cognitive processes to succeed in teaching.