LEARNING AND LEARNER ACADEMIC WRITING

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. According to Charette (2005), when a project fails, it risks an organization's scenarios and eventually, it will also affect the future. From that, we can clearly see that we must have a good plan and why we should prepare a lesson plan as teachers. Proper planning is important to ensure that our objective can be achieved through a good teaching and learning activities (Goldenberg, 2008). Basically, in teaching there are many learning theories existing and their view are different with each other. Anyway, all these theories are vital to be understood because if we only used one theory, we may fail to observe the improvement on the students. One of the learning theories is behaviourism.

In Behaviourism theory, there are few scholars that come out with their own understanding and view in this theory. In this piece of writing, there will be a comparative analysis between the view from different scholar. Not only that, the existence of this theory will also be explained on how it is being applied in teaching and learning process. In this theory, there are two terms that were introduced by the behaviourist. It was classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In early 1900s, classical conditioning was introduced by Ivan Pavlov. Few years later in 1983, operant conditioning was found by B.F. Skinner. Both scholar had made their own research and come out with their own understanding.  

According to Moore (2011), behaviourism is a psychological approach that focused on the change of behaviour and can be observed through how someone response in the learning process. In this matter, two behaviourists Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner have the same belief in this matter. Ivan Pavlov, who is a professor in pharmacology believes that thought cannot be measured but behaviour can meanwhile B.F. Skinner believes that learning is a progression of ‘conditioning’ in a situation of stimulus, punishment and reward. Basically, both of them focus on stimulus, response and the behaviour that can be measured. Experiments done by both of them stated that conditioning is a worldwide education process. There are a few differences between classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

First and foremost, classical conditioning is based on involuntary reflexive behaviour while operant conditioning involves behavioral outcomes. Involuntary reflexive behaviour causes unconscious responses to stimuli (Morsella & Bargh, 2011). Ivan Pavlov used a dog for experimenting purpose which it will salivate automatically when they saw their guardians to demonstrate this term. In the classroom, this term affect students without they realise. For example, when teacher describe sugar, then the students will automatically imagine the taste of sweet. In contrast with operant conditioning,  it involves behavioral outcomes which is the students will be active rather than classical conditioning. In operant conditioning, the subject need to make a move in order to get what they want. This means the implication of this technique in classroom will produce active student and student-centered learning. Emmer and Stough (2001) agree that the implication of this theory will encourage the student to be active in classroom.

Other than that, in operant conditioning, B.F. Skinner stated that reinforcement or punishment come after the behaviour meanwhile in classical conditioning there are no tempt. According to (), when students are given reward or being punish when do something, it will make them remember better things they have learnt. For example, if a student managed to score full marks in examination, teachers give rewards to them. Due to this, the student will be motivated and take action which is study more to ensure that they get full marks too. This reward and punishment only can exist in operant conditioning and does not exist in classical conditioning. This affect the teaching and learning session when students are motivated.

In conclusion, we can clearly see that these two scholars sub theories under Behaviourism brings high impact towards education. Not only that, it is also a guidance for the teachers to take and use the most effective learning theories to be applied to their student. From the explanation above, we can see that both classical and operant have their own implication on how they affect the teaching and learning session. This is actually very important in order for teacher to observe the improvement of their student in classroom. Not only that, this will also inspire the teacher if they are finding ways on how to attract their students interest in study through reward and punishment.

REFERENCES

Charette, R. N. (2005). Why Software Fails. IEEE Spectrum, 42(9), 42–49. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2005.1502528

Emmer, E. T., & Stough, L. M. (2001). Classroom management: A critical part of educational

psychology, with implications for teacher education. Educational psychologist, 36(2), 103-112.

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does and does

not say. American Educator, (Summer), 8–44. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308325580

Moore, J. (2011). Behaviorism. The Psychological Record, 61(3), 449-463.

Morsella, E., & Bargh, J. A. (2011). Unconscious action tendencies: Sources of ‘un-integrated’

action. The handbook of social neuroscience, 335-347.

Sutton, R. S., & Barto, A. G. (1998). Reinforcement learning: An introduction (Vol. 1, No. 1).

Cambridge: MIT press.