Children are active in constructing their own learning.

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Children are active in constructing their own learning.

To what extent do the four theories in Chapter 2 ‘Theories of development’ support this statement?

It is important to recognise that both the idea of children and their development changes throughout history and cultures.  For many years, psychologists have devised, debated and provided us with many theories about child development. These theories can assist adults when making decisions that affect children by allowing us to have some understanding of their behaviour and development.

This essay will examine 4 theories, Behaviourism, Social Learning Theory, Constructivism and Social Constructivism, which have been influential to explaining children’s learning. I will then compare to what extent each theory views children as active in constructing their own learning.

The idea that we can ‘shape’ children can be found as far back as the 17th and 18th centuries, Locke’s (1632-1704) tabula rasa discourse believed that children are born as blank slates and we could teach them by setting good examples and rewarding appropriate behavior. In a similar way, Behaviourism was one of the first attempts to explain child development, focusing only on observable behaviours and disregarding mental events. Behaviourists believed that learning was no more than a change in behaviour often referred to as conditioning.

There are two types of conditioning, Pavlov (1849-1936) highlighted that animals react to certain ‘stimuli’.  He conditioned dogs to salivate not only at the sight of food but also by ringing a bell just before presenting the food. This is known as classical conditioning as the dogs showed a conditioned response by associating the bell with food.  Extending upon Pavlov’s work, Watson (1924) demonstrated, through his ‘Little Albert’ experiment, which involved conditioning a 9 month old child to fear a white rat, using loud noises -, that humans will also respond to stimuli in the same way. This experiment showed that we can condition emotional responses, such as fear but the ethics of the experiment are criticized.

Nowadays, Behaviourism is associated with Skinner (1905-1990). By devising experiments such as ‘Skinners box’ (an enclosure for examining animal conditioning, where the animal will usually press a bar to obtain a reward or punishment) he demonstrated that we adopt our behaviour depending upon past experiences and consequences, known as operant conditioning.  He found that by using consistent positive or negative reinforcement techniques, where good behaviour is rewarded to increase the frequency and negative behaviour is punished to decrease the frequency, we can shape behaviour. We can see the effectiveness of operant conditioning in applications such as Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). One important aspect to note is that ABA does take into account cognitive factors and is often used to help children with learning difficulties. Yet there are criticisms of behaviourism, such as the fact it may be impossible for a parent to be around 24/7 to be consistent and effective reinforcers.

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In a similar way to behaviourism, Bandura’s (1924-?) social learning theory also takes in to account environmental factors whilst ignoring mental events. He explains that children can also learn by observation and imitation. He argued that by observing others behaviour or reactions to events, children can then demonstrate their behaviour appropriately. This was demonstrated through an experiment with a Bobo doll, in which an adult attacked the doll by hitting and punching it. The children were divided into three groups and shown a film with differing endings, the first saw the man being praised for his behaviour, the second ...

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