Social Learning Theory of A. Bandura - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: Social Learning Theory Social Learning Theory [Institute’s Social Learning Theory Albert Bandura was a prominentpsychologist of his times whose works on the concepts like cognition, social learning, and social development have a multitude of fame and renounce from all over the world. He gave explicit ideas as to how a child develops himself and the process by which he/she evolves. This paper involves an extensive account of one of his theories called the Social Learning Theory. In addition, how it applies to a school environment and its application in the modern times. There involves a wide rage of technical aspects that need to be focused and incorporated to achieve the very educational goals of the overall education system. According to Bandura, school must do more than just imparting knowledge in the same old traditional ways, which according to him do not have a thorough influence over the long-term learning of the students. Let the paper first analyze the key points that the Social Learning theory (Ormrod, 2007) revolves around and subsequently, will move towards specific aspects of educational systems that one should incorporate, in order to achieve the highest rate of development in the light of this theory. Social Learning Theory (Ormrod, 2007) primarily advocates the idea that the learning capability of people is because of their observations. When people observe some one practicing something and achieving any kind of results, they like imitating the person’s behavior after a sequence of cognitive processes. This means that imitating makes people learn and thus observation is the key element. Moreover, since behaviorist theory and other learning theories like cognitive learning theory also emphasize upon people’s learning due to their abilities of memorizing and retention; social learning theory can play a vital role as a bridge between these theories since this element is mutually found in the mentioned three theories. In addition, the factor of motivation has to be present to make the individual move forward in adopting a behavior and evolving his personality (Learning-Theories, 2008). Furthermore, there are three significant variables, Bandura has put his theory upon and integrated them with proper reasoning. As discussed earlier, firstly behavior is the key element of learning (Ormrod, 2007). The second most important feature is personal variable. The preferences of an individual play a significant part in making them distinguish between what they want to learn and what they should and what they do not want to learn and they should not. Every individual has their own area of interest with a set boundary of ethical values and mores. Imitation and observations are greatly influenced by the values that the individuals hold previously. Third important variable is the environmental events that take place. This incorporates the answers to questions like what kind of an event is taking place, how frequently and how much the recipient is involved. Thus, according to Bandura, all these factors have a collective effect over the personality development of the individuals (Frick, 1991). Educators play a significant role in making the students realize that all of them can learn anything at any point in time and in any stage of their lives. Since, every individual possesses different qualities and even each one of them has their particular bent of mind to learn according to their own capacities, the focus should be on the factor of motivation. Thus, educators should primarily try to bring about the motivation factor in their students at first because if motivation were not present, individual learning process would hinder a lot (Books, 2010). Secondly, educators must try knowing about the specific learning trends of every student. This connotes that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and some learn through simulations and not by any other means. Once, the educators have a grip on these aspects, they can move on while focusing over every child. Moreover, educators should not try to achieve individual’s attention merely through rewards and punishments. This has more negative effects that the positive ones. It is a fact that there are two kinds of motivations: intrinsic and extrinsic influence individuals. Intrinsic motivation is the one that comes directly from inside when the individual feels satisfied after doing something or the activity perfectly corresponds to his/her values and gives him/her immense contentment (Frick, 1991). This way the individuals feel like doing the same very often. The other kind of motivation, that is extrinsic, involves rewards and other kinds of physical things that help in reinforcement. Both these parts of motivation have equal significance and thus educators should try to achieve and grab individual’s attention according to their forte rather than focusing on rewards and punishments. Moving towards the purpose of education and schools, according to the theory put forth by Bandura, it is quite evident that immediate reinforcements and immediate reactions occur in an educational institute. If a student outperforms other students, he/she immediately gets verbal and physical rewards. This has an immediate effect on other students who then start imitating the outshining student (Ormrod, 2007). Thus, the purpose of education and schools, according to the theory, is that they expose each individual to a variety of other individuals with different and unique characteristics to be learned. When an individual is exposed to a diverse environment with people of same age group, as in particular classes, they happen to learn a great deal out of them. The thought that if one fellow student can do something and get teachers’ recognition then why cannot the person himself, posits a positive impact over other the student and the motivation automatically generates within. The same is valid for an otherwise situation when an a student gets negative feedback or punishments from the teachers over something that he did wrong makes other students cautioned that they too should try not to behave the same way to avoid teacher’s punishments. Thus, it is a healthy cycle of improvement and this is what school is all about according to Bandura, Purpose of education is essentially to provide students with a platform to learn from other people’s mistakes and performances and filter out those that can make them fail in something. The whole cycle occurs merely through observing other people’s behaviors and the consequences that they get subsequently (Ormrod, 2007). According to social learning theory, the educational goals of an educational institute should integrate aspects like emphasis over cognitive skills of students. Students should be exposed to learning from each other and they should be provided with a platform where they could make use of their intellectual minds so that their critical thinking in adopting something as part of their lives should always be present. According to this theory, the educational methodologies that need to be implemented should be designed keeping in view the technical aspects of modeling and imitation. For example, a teacher who always uses phrases like “I know you can do it” or “You have got the best potentials, give it a try!” shows the students the brighter sides of their personalities enforcing that they have everything within themselves. This helps in shaping and molding students’ beliefs giving them a positive attitude about their personalities and making them have confidence over their abilities and aptitudes (Berk, 2004). Moreover, the method of teaching should not be one sided, that is, lecturing, and imparting of knowledge done from the teachers, but cognition occurs when the individuals themselves try to find out answers to queries among themselves. In addition to this, teachers should try doing only the positive deeds, which are constructive for students since, children look towards their teachers to imitate them and replicate their behavior (Ormrod, 2007). Their teachers are like their role models who play a very important role in their lives. They want to be like their teachers and that is why they are their inspirations. Therefore, teachers should consciously try doing every constructive deed when they are in a classroom setup and students are possible to learn from them. Furthermore, inculcating the essence of leadership among students, the teaching methodology should incorporate the idea of making leaders of different groups to share their stances in front of other students and giving this chance to every other student so that they learn form one an other and apply the same behavior within them (Books, 2010). Since, the basic concept in modeling is the individual actually doing replicating other people’s behaviors, thus applying and doing it themselves matter a lot in learning. When a student does not do something and practice it, learning cannot be possible. This is the way, their cognition comes into practice, and they think and analyze their environment and influencing characteristics themselves. Though, there are theorist who suggest that only through imitating, people learn, however, Bandura’s point of view is unique in a way that he emphasizes upon the fact that the thought process that occurs inside an individual’s mind after observational incidents, grants him his own active role in applying the same (Berk, 2004). On the other hand, according to this theory, individuals learn novel perspectives and engage in new developments and learning when they start modeling and imitating other people. Bandura talks in his theory about this achievement. Students, after seeing their fellows excelling in something, they too star aspiring. Once, this aspiration takes birth in their minds they desire to be better than what they presently are. In the process of being better, they develop their skills and work on their efficiency (Ormrod, 2007). They diversify their talents and thus their learning starts giving them results that might have seemed unattainable at some point in time. Here, achievement gets synonymous to the learning and being acquainted with new things and ideas, this widens the horizons of students. They might start with imitating; however, once they begin with analyzing and assessing things on their own, their thought process gets active and oriented in a constructive direction. They make goals for their lives and strive to achieve those goals. Their personality development gets stimulation that keeps itself on the same track for good. The foremost thing in the whole process of learning is self-efficacy. Individuals, in particular students, start believing upon themselves. They start having convictions over what they do and what they are capable of doing (Ormrod, 2007). They feel positive about their talents, aptitudes, and continue to work in the same direction to improvise them. Imitating only helps as a starter; however, in the long run, these students have belief upon their skills. Furthermore, they do not feel hesitant upon putting up their stances in front of others and evolve in a way that they know a lot and still are adaptable to corrections and improvisations. Once they are successful in imitating, they will do it again and then again. This will thus, become a continuous process of excellence. Many factors contribute towards achievement. For instance, the willingness and keenness to do something and to imitate somebody originate from the fact that the particular act has quite a frequency and all the time the acts are positively acknowledged and rewarded. If someone seems someone getting acknowledgements every time on a particular deed, the individual would at least try the same deed once to see if he/she gets the same reward. Furthermore, motivation is the essential moving factor; intrinsic motivation plays the best possible role. If an individual gets an inner contentment in doing a deed, he/she would continue doing that for the rest of the life. The inner satisfaction in imitation of acts proves to be a stimulating factor on the way towards development and learning. Rewards and physical gifts, definitely, play an important role and are major factor towards the achievements mentioned above (Ormrod, 2007). On the contrary, if a student imitates somebody who gets rewards over something, while the individual himself is not able to perform the same deed well due to any reason, and subsequently gets punishment, this proves to be one of the major factors that contribute towards lack of achievement. Moreover, if a child sees other children behaving aggressively on something and he sees other people applauding that aggressiveness, he would readily adopt and would want to behave aggressively himself. Following that behavior, if he behaves aggressively in front of his parents or teachers, he would be pointed out as ill mannered and ill behaved and might not get proper attention of teachers. Moreover, other students in the class would also consider him bad and would not like to maintain a good relationship with him. This way his developmental process would get hinder and his learning might stop or go in an otherwise direction (Rotter, Chance & Phares, 1972). Furthermore, if an individual fails to imitate properly every time he does that and expects healthy results while do not get it, then the disappointment reflects in his learning. Achievements occur when the expectations made at the time of modeling and imitation harmonize with what an individual receives at the end of the day. If the expectations of receiving good remarks or some physical benefits overgrow, then failures contribute towards lack of achievements. In addition, there is always a unique forte of every individual, a person’s capability to do something. If an individual keeps on imitating something, which is actually not his/her forte or strength, he cannot achieve the desired results. In such circumstances, lack of achievement causes the child to be labeled as a failure. Concisely, one can say that Albert Bandura was one of those theorists who believed that not only through observational learning, children can develop themselves, but also the subsequent cognitive use of their minds proves to be an important factor in their learning. Their personality is greatly influenced by the environment they live in, and thus they adopt one thing or the other from their environment. Thus, school must have healthy practices every time so that whatever the student picks up to adopt, he can have positive learning following the same. References Berk, L. E. (2004). Development through the Lifespan. Pearson Education, Inc. Books. (2010). Social Learning Theory: Observational Learning, Asocial Cognition, Imitation, Emulation, and Cognitive Imitation. General Books. Frick, W. B. (1991). Personality Theories: Journeys Into Self: An Experimental Workbook. Teachers College Pres. Learning-Theories. (2008). Social Learning Theory (Bandura). Retrieved from www.learning-theories.com on April 29, 2011. Ormrod, J. E. (2007). Human Learning. Pearson Prentice Hall. Rotter, J. B., Chance, J. E., & Phares, E. J. (1972). Applications of a Social Learning Theory of Personality. Oxford. Read More