Those of you who are fans of the Office may remember the infamous prank that Jim pulled on Dwight. If you have never seen the scene or you would like to watch it again, you should definitely click on the clip above to watch it. The inspiration for Jim’s prank was a science experiment that he learned about as a kid. That science experiment was the “Pavlov’s Dogs” experiment that came to shape the foundation of the field that we know as Behaviorism (McLeod, 2018). We can get a hint of what the premise of Behaviorism is from the video scene above but let us have a little bit more in depth look in the paragraphs below.
Though Pavlov is generally more well known because of his experiment with the dogs, when it comes to the field of education B.F. Skinner is truly the theorist who laid the foundation for Behaviorism as it applies to theories of learning. Skinner believed that by controlling stimuli in the environment of learning the learning itself could be controlled (Driscoll, 2005). In Skinner’s opinion, experimentation with variables that influence behavior was how the path to true learning would be discovered and he “defined learning as more or less a permanent change in behavior that can be detected by observing an organism over a period of time” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 34).
The influence of Behaviorism in the field of education and training can be seen in almost every area of this field to include the area of instructional design. Consider, for an example, the instructional designer who is tasked to develop training to improve job performance for new editors in a publishing firm. The instructional designer is going to first analyze the job itself to establish what are the expected tasks that need to be performed and to what level they need to be performed. Essentially, these tasks are “behaviors” that the editors will be expected to complete with proficiency. The designer will then analyze to see what the differences are between the expected “behaviors” and the “behavior” that the editors currently exhibit. It is then the designer’s job to decided how best to get the editors to change their “behavior” so that it matches the expected behavior. Whether or not the editors had learned how to do their job better would primarily be demonstrated by to what degree their behavior changed. “In fact, behaviorists would argue the only evidence we have of learning comes from students’ behaviors” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 58). As the field of instructional design very much relies on being able to meaningfully measure whether the design of the instruction is accomplishing the learning that it was intended to accomplish, then aligning more with a Behaviorist view of measurement provides a concrete method of gauging actual impact. In my view, this is probably the strongest tie to Behaviorism that instructional design has.
My own view of Behaviorism as a theory of learning is that though it does explain some of human learning very accurately, I do not believe that it is able to explain all of human learning. The Behaviorist viewpoint is valid yet too simple in my opinion. Skinner wrote of how great advances were being done in regards to animal training with methods in alignment with Behaviorism (Skinner, 1954). These methods were then applied to humans as well and in many cases were also successful. I believe that the problem with the Behaviorism theory is that for the most part it stops there. Humans and animals can only be compared to a certain point with learning, and once that point is reached then humans have to be thought of differently than animals. Behaviorism does not take into account the facets of human nature that encompass the moral, spiritual, and reasoning part of our nature. These tend to be facets of our nature that can influence learning no matter what stimulus is applied. The concept of “intrinsic motivation” is one that Behaviorism does not and cannot address.
I believe that instructional designers ought to consider multiple theories of learning when deciding how best to create a program of learning. There are many theories of learning because each theory of learning is addressing a different facet of the human mind and how it processes information. All of these theories have truth to them and ought to be used appropriately. As Foshay wrote (2001), “As a field of practice, we need to recognize that no theoretical framework will meet all our needs, and pragmatically apply the framework to each problem which seems to work best” (p. 2). I believe that the human mind is far too complex to be simplified into one theory of learning. Rather, it is an amalgamation of many theories on how the mind works.
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Radical behaviorism. In Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 29-69). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Skinner, B.F. (1954). The science of learning and the art of teaching. Harvard Educational Review 24:1: 86-97.
Foshay, R (July 2001). Is Behaviorism dead? Should HPT care? ISPI News & Notes, 1-2
McLeod, S. A. (2018, October 08). Pavlov’s dogs. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/pavlov.html
The Learning World Is My Oyster 