Albert
Bandura is a Canadian psychologist who marked a sea-change in psychology,
towards cognitive investigation. Although steeped in, and influenced by,
behaviourism, his theories transcend traditional behaviourism into what was
called ‘Social Learning Theory’, although he now calls it ‘Social Cognitive
Theory. The dropping of the word ‘learning’ is significant. Bandura’s awareness
of the personal factors in learning, especially motivation, differentiates him
from traditional behaviourism. He also forms a link to those theorists who
emphasise social learning, such as Vygotsky.
Learn
by observation
Bandura has often been seen as a bridge between behaviourism and
cognitive psychology as he moves us beyond classical and operant conditioning,
claiming that we also learn by observation. Bandura sees learning as the acquisition of
behaviours. We see others and model our behaviour on this observation. Learning
by watching involves the observation of a model, which is then duplicated. This
may involve no teaching at all. Observational learning is influenced by:
1.
Attention – you must be attentive to learn
2.
Code, store and retain the patterns so they can be retrieved
3.
Motor reproduction - kinaesthetic and neuromuscular patterns are practiced until
the model's behaviour is learnt
4.
Motivation and reinforcement – to push the learner to practice and retain
knowledge and skills
Note that this is not to say that we learn violent behaviour from
observation or exposure to violence, as we may acquire the behaviour but not
perform that behaviour. We may not perform because we know the consequences.
Modelling theory
Modelling Theory operates in three steps:
1. Observe a model
2. Imitate the model's actions
3. Get a consequence
But there’s far more to the theory than
this suggests. The content of the learner’s perceptions of the learning are
also important. Learning may also involve the active coding of the learnt
behaviour into words, diagrams or images. Learners are also more motivated to
learn behaviours they admire and value.
Self-efficacy and feedback
Learners have views on their own
competence and capability. It is important that learners adopt optimal
strategies, based on judgments of effort, not ability, to acquire knowledge and
skills. This is important and helped shape powerful recommendations on feedback
from Black and Williams on effective strategies for both the learner and
teacher. It could be summed up by saying, ‘Don’t praise the child, praise their
effort’.
TV, video games & aggression
The Bobo-doll experiments, on child
aggression, in 1961 and 1963made his name. Children were exposed to adults
being aggressive towards a Bobo-doll, then observed for learned aggressive
behavior, physical and verbal, based on their observations. He concluded that
aggression was a socially learned behavior, especially among males. The
experiment has been extensively criticized for its weak methodology and the
possibility that the subjects were reacting to expectations and dolls that were
deigned to be bashed. He also failed to factor out dispositions such as genetics.
However, this was to spark off
experimentation into various hypotheses concerning media and aggression. Initially
this was on exposure to TV but more recently, video games. The TV evidence
produced inconclusive, similarly with video games, where some proved
inconclusive, others claiming a cathartic effect and others a significant
effect. Interestingly, if one does learn aggression from video games one could
also conclude that one can learn other things.
E-learning,
mirror neurons & video
Bandura’s work has also had a revival around the discovery of ‘mirror
neurons’ in monkeys in the early 1990s, that seem to facilitate learning from
others. Learning from expert models, either live or from video, works because
we can imitate but also infer intention, even leading to mental simulation.
However, an interesting debate exists around the flow of video and animation
that may overload working memory, limiting encoding. In any case, it does
suggest that video be limited in length. It has also been suggested that video
and animation woks better for human movement i.e. surgery, procedures such as
origami and sport. More speculatively, mirror neurons may play a role in
cognitive tasks, such as maths, giving demonstrative videos, such as those used
by the Khan Academy and Sebastian Thrun, some potency.
Conclusion
In training Bandura has been responsible
for the emphasis on behaviour modeling and self-regulation in learning. This
was widely used in video learning and training programmes but also in other
training delivery channels. His theories go some way towards explaining violent
behaviour and responses to advertising and Bandura has explored these
experimentally. The theory is still essentially behaviourist, with some motivational
and social dimensions which means that it underplays other more participative
forms of learning.
Bibliography
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The
exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Bandura, A.
(1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A.
(1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A.
(1977). Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press.
Bandura, A.
(1969). Principles of Behavior Modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston.
Bandura, A.
& Walters, R. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development.
New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Bandura, A. (1962). Social learning through imitation. In
M. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 211-269). Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press.
Bandura, A., Ross, D.,
& Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of
aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582.
Isom, M.D. (1998). Albert
Bandura: The Social Learning Theory.
Van
Gog, T., Paas, F., Marcus, N., Ayres, P., & Sweller, J. (2009) The Mirror-Neuron System and Observational
Learning http://dspace.learningnetworks.org/bitstream/1820/1858/1/VanGog-etal_EPR_2009.pdf
Excellent biography.
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