CHAPTER 9

Behaviorist Views of Learning

1. Basic Assumptions of Contextual Theories
o Basic Assumptions
▪ The brain functions in close collaboration with the rest of
Contextual
Theories the body.
Theoretical ▪ Acquired knowledge/skills are often tied to specific
frameworks
focused on how activities/environments.
people’s
general
 referred to as situated learning/cognition
physical, social, ▪ Learners often think and perform more effectively when they
and/or cultural
surroundings can offload some of cognitive load.
support their
learning,  referred to as distributed cognition (or distributed
development,
and behavior.
intelligence)
▪ Learners sometimes learn more effectively when they
collaborate with others to co-construct meaning.
 social constructivism
▪ With the help and guidance of more knowledgeable individuals,
learners benefit from the accumulated wisdom of their cultural
group.
 sociocultural theory

2. Social Interactions as Context

o Interactions with More Advanced Individuals
▪ Central to the classroom learning experience, with many
benefits:
 Can offer mediated learning experiences
 help learners relate what they’re observing to particular
concepts, principles, or theories
 Can teach cognitive and metacognitive strategies
 o Interactions with Peers
▪ Research indicates that students learn effectively from peers.
When peers share, they get:
 opportunities to clarify/organize their thoughts
 opportunities to elaborate on what was learned
 exposure to others’ perspectives
 opportunities to spot/reflect on inconsistencies in thinking
 effective thinking/studying strategies modeled
 practice in learning, reasoning, argumentation, and social
skills

o Community of Learners
▪ Specific instructional practice in which:
 All students actively participate
 Goal is to acquire body of knowledge
 all students contribute
 Many resources are collected/consulted
 Discussion/collaboration are common
 Diversity in students is expected & respected
▪ Students and teacher coordinate efforts
 Teacher provides some guidance
 Students contribute to direction
▪ Students should have a mechanism for sharing
▪ Critique of work is common
▪ Process as important as product

3. Cultures as Context
o Culture
▪ Behaviors and beliefs that are passed from generation to
generation
▪ Facilitates survival and progress
▪ Aspects of culture can be concrete or abstract

o Schemas and Scripts

▪ Students organize their knowledge of the world by schemas and
scripts
 Culture influences how this knowledge gets organized
▪ Schema
 organized set of facts about a specific topic
 ▪ Script
 type of schema; predictable sequence of events related to a
common activity

o Worldviews
▪ General sets of beliefs and assumptions about reality surround
and have or
 culturally transmitted hold within.

 influence the ways people make meaning from the environment

 often encompass implicit knowledge Implicit Knowledge is knowledge that is
gained through incidental activities, or
 could conflict with academic subject matter without awareness that learning is
occurring. Some examples of implicit
knowledge are knowing how to walk, run,
o Examples of Worldviews ride a bicycle, or swim.

▪ Humans have free will

▪ The world is fair and just
▪ Consciousness survives death
▪ Anyone who works hard can be a success and make a lot of money
▪ Humans should not consume animals (?)
▪ Government should provide resources for individuals/ families
who live in poverty

o Communities of Practice
▪ Groups of people, both professional and otherwise, who:
believe in
and follow  share common interests and goals and
the
practices of  regularly interact and coordinate their efforts in pursuit of
those interests and goals
 adhere to certain standards for action and interaction
a person new  transmit knowledge about the acceptable ways to behave
to and
inexperienced  opportunities for novices to get introduced to the community
in a job or
situation. via legitimate peripheral participation

4. Society as Context
o Society
▪ A large, enduring social group that shares:
 fairly explicit social structures
 fairly explicit economic structure, and
 collective institutions and activities
▪ Influences its members’ learning through the resources it
provides, the activities it supports, and the general messages
it communicates.
 Thus, distributed knowledge is a resource
 o Authentic Activities
▪ Classroom tasks/assignments that are similar or identical to
activities that students will encounter in outside world
 Promote meaningful learning & complex thinking
 With more resources, students can accomplish more
 Facilitate transfer to other situations
▪ Examples:
 Problem- or project-based learning
 Service learning

5. Academic Content Domains as Contexts

o Technological (Digital) Innovations
▪ Allows access to distributed knowledge
▪ Integrates media and pedagogical strategies
 smartboards, digital texts
▪ Allows instruction to be delivered anywhere
 distance learning
▪ Allows instruction to be individualized
 intelligent tutoring systems
▪ Allow learners to manipulate data while also keeping cognitive
load within reasonable limits
▪ Make diverse bodies of knowledge easily accessible
▪ Facilitate communication/collaboration.
▪ Provide opportunities for authentic activities
▪ Can be motivating
 Blur lines between “work” and “play”

6. Academic Content Domains as Contexts [pt.2]

o Content Domains as Contexts
▪ Different content domains require different thinking skills
 but all are constructive
 all require prior knowledge, metacognition, and collaboration
 7. Literacy
o Skilled Reading
▪ Sound and letter recognition
 phonological awareness
▪ Word decoding skills
▪ Automatic word recognition
▪ Meaning construction
▪ Metacognitive oversight

o Skilled Writing
▪ Goal setting
▪ Identification and organization of relevant knowledge
▪ Focus on communication rather than mechanics
 knowledge transforming versus knowledge telling
▪ Revision
▪ Metacognitive regulation of effort

o Promoting Reading Development

▪ Provide multimedia books
▪ Remind students of what they already know
▪ Have students retell or summarize what they’ve read
▪ Have students ask one another teacher-like questions
▪ Provide outlines or graphics to help organize what they’re
reading
▪ Explicitly teach strategies for comparing, contrasting, and
evaluating texts

o Promoting Writing Development

say or read ▪ Ask students with limited writing skills to dictate their
aloud (words
to be typed, stories
written down,
or recorded ▪ Ask students to set specific goals, and help them organize
on tape)
their thoughts before beginning to write
▪ Help students brainstorm ideas for communicating effectively
▪ Provide an explicit structure for students to follow as they
write
▪ Suggest that children focus first on communicating clearly, and
turn attention to writing mechanics for later drafts
▪ Provide specific questions to consider as students critique
their writing
 ▪ Encourage use of programs/software that can support effective
writing
▪ Have students work in small groups to:
 critique one another’s work or
 co-write stories and essays

o Technological Literacy
▪ Knowledge and skill needed beyond traditional reading and
writing skills.
 Use of common computer functions
 Use of device-specific operating systems
 Use of specific computer applications
 Effective search for relevant and credible Internet websites

o Scaffolding Online Research

▪ Restrict the websites to which students have access
▪ Provide specific questions for students to answer as they read
▪ Provide questions to consider when evaluating the credibility
of content
▪ Give students structured practice in comparing and contrasting
websites
▪ Ask students to write summaries of what they’ve learned from
multiple websites

8. Mathematics
o Essential Knowledge and Skills
▪ Understanding numbers and counting
▪ Understanding central concepts and principles
▪ Mastering problem-solving procedures
▪ Encoding problems appropriately
▪ Metacognitive oversight and regulation of problem solving

o Essential Knowledge and Skills

▪ Mathematics is a collection of meaningless procedures to
memorize and recall as needed
▪ Math problems always have one and only one right answer
▪ There’s only one correct way to solve any particular math
problem
▪ Mathematical ability is largely a genetically endowed gift
 o Promoting Learning in Mathematics
▪ Encourage students to use strategies they’ve constructed on
their own; foster gradual automaticity
▪ Have students apply fundamental concepts and procedures in
working with concrete objects and computer simulations
▪ Use a number line to help students understand how numbers
relate to one another
▪ Play games that require knowledge of numbers
▪ Combine problems that require different strategies into one
practice set
▪ Present problems that include irrelevant as well as relevant
information
▪ Have students work together to solve complex, real-world
problems with multiple possible answers
▪ Encourage students to use calculators and computers to assist
them in solving problems, after they’ve mastered the basic
procedures
▪ Present worked-out examples to illustrate multistep problem-
solving procedures
▪ Teach/scaffold metacognitive processes
▪ Have students tutor classmates or younger children in math

9. Sciences
o Scientific Reasoning
▪ Hypothesis formation and testing
▪ Careful, objective documentation of observations
▪ Construction of theories and models
▪ Metacognitive reflection
▪ Advanced epistemic beliefs about the nature of scientific
knowledge
▪ Conceptual change when warranted

o Promoting Learning in Science

▪ Ask students to explain current beliefs/theories.
 remember to look for elements of truth in any unproductive
misconceptions
▪ Illustrate relationships among concepts and principles with
concrete stimuli
▪ Present phenomena that are inconsistent with students’ current
understandings
 ▪ Have students design and carry out experiments
 real-world objects if possible
 computer-simulated environments when available
▪ Scaffold students’ efforts to separate and control variables
and to draw appropriate conclusions
▪ Engage students in small-group or whole-class discussions in
which they propose and try to justify various explanations for
empirical findings
▪ Explicitly draw students’ attention to results that contradict
their predictions and expectations and ask students to make
sense of those results

10. Social Studies

o Historical Knowledge and Thinking
▪ A solid mastery of history requires:
 Comprehending the nature of historical time
 Perspective taking
 Drawing inferences from historical documents
 Identifying possible cause–and–effect relationships among
events
 Evaluating the credibility of various documents and
interpretations

o Promoting Learning in History

▪ Focus on elementary students’ personal histories and on
recent, local events
▪ Introduce upper elementary students to primary sources
▪ Have middle/secondary students read multiple accounts of events
and then draw conclusions about what definitely happened and
about what might have happened
▪ Have students act as “journalists” and “participants” and
conduct interviews about a historical event
▪ Role-play family discussions and decision making during
critical times
▪ Have students write fictional diary or journal entries from the
perspective of a particular time period or historical figure
▪ Ask students to consider how things might have been different
if certain events had not taken place
 o Geographical Knowledge and Thinking
▪ Key elements:
 Understanding maps as symbolic representations
 Identifying interrelationships among people and their
environments
 Acknowledging cultural differences and their implications for
human behavior patterns

o Promoting Learning in Geography

▪ Have students create maps of their environments
▪ Provide explicit instruction in common map symbols
▪ Emphasize complex, dynamic interrelationships among the
earth’s physical features and human activity
▪ Teach students how to use age-appropriate mapping websites and
software

o Promoting Learning in Social Studies, Generally

▪ Focus on key principles—big ideas—that underlie social studies
 adaptation, interdependence, globalization
▪ Relate concepts and principles to students’ everyday
experiences
▪ Avoid characterizing individuals/groups as simplistic figures,
and combat stereotypes
▪ Assign works of fiction that realistically depict people living
in particular times and places
▪ Engage students in authentic activities

11. Taking Student Diversity into Account

o Cultural and Gender Differences
▪ Students have different early experiences
▪ Native language may affect literacy skills
Mostly ▪ Science and math may be socialized as “male” domains
students
with ADHD ▪ Females and many non-Western cultures are underrepresented in
and
dyslexia history texts

o Accommodating Special Needs

▪ Some students with special needs may have difficulties with
reading and writing
 Address reading and writing deficits early, with deliberate
and intensive training
▪ Chronic difficulties with literacy can affect self-esteem and
motivation
 Help students find joy in literacy activities—ideally with
authentic reading and writing activities.

THE END OF THE CHAPTER