Introduction
MEANING OF SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
Many theory explain why people behave as they do populized by personality doctrines depicted to be behaviors according to Bandura it was difficult to demonstrate that person psychodynamically oriented treatment benefited more than nontreated case (Bandura 1969a, begin1966).also resolved that behaviors highly affected by psychodynamic, man’s superior cognitive capacity, product of direct experience, environment determinants. When diverse social influences produce correspondingly divers behaviors, the inner cause implicated in the relationship cannot be less complex than its effects. And an internal motivator cannot possibly account for the marked variation in the incidence and strength of a given behavior in different situation towards different persons at different times, and social roles.
By Bandura, among the various process involved in socialization, learning is generally assigned a prominent role regardless whether explanatory theory favor psychological or sociological variables. This evidenced in informal observation that the complex repertoire of behavior displayed by members of society are to the large extent acquired with no or little direct tuition through observation of response patterns. From him the provision of social models is also an indispensable means of transmitting and modifying behavior in situations where errors are likely to produce costly or fatal consequences. That is if social learning proceed exclusively on the basis of rewarding and punishing consequences, most people would never survive the socialization processes.
HISTORY OF THE THEORY
Behaviorism, with its emphasis on experimental methods, focuses on variables we can observe, measure, and manipulates, and avoids whatever is subjective, internal, and unavailable – i.e. mental. In the experimental method, the standard procedure is to manipulate one variable, and then measure its effects on another. All this boils down to a theory of personality that says that one’s environment causes one’s behavior. Bandura found this a bit too simplistic for the phenomena he was observing – aggression in adolescents – and so decided to add a little something to the formula: He suggested that environment causes behavior, true; but behavior causes environment as well. He labeled this concept reciprocal determinism: The world and a
person’s behavior cause each other. Later, he went a step further. He began to look at personality as an interaction among three "things:" the environment, behavior, and the person’s psychological processes. These psychological processes consist of our ability to entertain images in our minds, and language. At the point where he introduces imagery, in particular, he ceases to be a strict behaviorist, and begins to join the ranks of the cognitivists. In fact, he is
often considered a "father" of the cognitivist movement! Adding imagery and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize much more effectively than someone like, say, B. F. Skinner, about two things that many people would consider the "strong suit" of the human species: observational learning (modeling) and self-regulation.
Of the hundreds of studies Bandura was responsible for, one group stands out above the others – the bobo doll studies. He made of film of one of his students, a young woman, essentially beating up a bobo doll. In case you don’t know, a bobo doll is an inflatable, egg-shape balloon creature with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock him down. Nowadays, it might have Darth Vader painted on it, but back then it was simply "Bobo" the clown. The woman punched the clown, shouting "sockeroo!" She kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer, and so on, shouting various aggressive phrases. Bandura showed his film to groups of kindergartners who, as you might predict, liked it a lot. They then were let out to play. In the play room, of course, were several observers with pens and clipboards in hand, a brand new bobo doll, and a few little hammers. And you might predict as well what the observers recorded: A lot of little kids beating the daylights out of the bobo doll. They punched it and shouted "sockeroo," kicked it, sat on it, hit it with the little hammers, and so on. In other words, they imitated the young lady in the film, and quite precisely at that. This might seem like a real nothing of an experiment at first, but consider: These children changed their behavior without first being rewarded for approximations to that behavior! And while that may not seem extraordinary to the average parent, teacher, or casual observer of children, it didn’t fit so well with standard behaviorist learning theory. He called the phenomenon observational learning or modeling, and his theory is usually called social learning theory. Bandura did a large number of variations on the study: The model was rewarded or punished in a variety of ways, the kids were rewarded for their imitations, and the model was changed to be less attractive or less prestigious, and so on. Responding to criticism that bobo dolls were supposed to be hit, he even did a film of the young woman beating up a live clown. When the children went into the other room, what should they
Find there but – the live clown! They proceeded to punch him, kick him, and hit him with little hammers, and so on.
Task
ORGINATOR OF THE THEORY
Albert Bandura was born December 4, 1925, in the small town of Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada. He was educated in a small elementary school and high school in one, with minimal resources, yet a remarkable success rate. After high school, he worked for one summer filling holes on the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.
He received his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 1949. He went on to the University of Iowa, where he received his Ph.D. in 1952. It was there that he came under the influence of the behaviorist tradition and learning theory. While at Iowa, he met Virginia Varns, an instructor in the nursing school. They married and later had two daughters. After graduating, he took a postdoctoral position at the Wichita Guidance Center in Wichita, Kansas. In 1953, he started teaching at Stanford University. While there, he collaborated with his first graduate student, Richard Walters, resulting in their first book, Adolescent Aggression, in 1959. Bandura was president of the APA in 1973, and received the APA’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions in 1980. He continues to work at Stanford to this day.
Process
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY (Albert Bandura)
Attention: Individuals must be paying attention to the model in order to learn something new. This has important implications for SBCC programming: programs and messages with models must be engaging, tailored to local context, understandable and interesting for the intended audience.
Retention: Individuals must be able to “store” new information about the modeled behavior and review it later. This can be done by ensuring that the model is memorable or by handing out materials that SBCC program participants can review after an event is over. It also might involve something like organizing listening groups or group discussions after a radio drama that reinforces the new behaviors that were described.
Reproduction: Individuals have to re-enact the new behavior in order to practice and master it themselves. Repeated performance of the behavior will lead to sustained change. SBCC programs can be evaluated in part by measuring whether or not people try to replicate the modeled behavior and then continue to practice it over time.
• Motivation: For reproduction of the behavior to be successful, individuals need to be properly motivated to perform it themselves. SBCC can increase motivation by showing the characters in a message being successful or by encouraging members of the community to share their experiences so that others can learn from their success.
Evaluation
EDUCATION IMPLICATION OF THE THEORY
Social learning theory has numerous implications for classroom use.
Students often learn a great deal simply by observing other people. When the student observing some people’s action example when then they watch people who are aggressive even in the film the student learn much faster.
Describing the consequences of behavior is can effectively increase the appropriate behaviors and decrease inappropriate ones. Social respect can be much increase through social learning
This can involve discussing with learners about the reward and consequences of various behaviors.
Modeling provides an alternative to shaping for teaching new behaviors. Instead of using shaping, which is operant conditioning; modeling can provide a faster, more efficient means for teaching new behavior. To promote effective modeling a teacher must make
Sure that the four essential conditions exist; attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation.
Teachers and parents must model appropriate behaviors and take care that they do not model inappropriate behaviors.
Teachers should expose students to a variety of other models. This technique is especially important to break down traditional stereotypes.
Students must believe that they are capable of accomplishing school tasks. Thus it is very important to develop a sense of self efficacy for students. Teachers can promote such self-efficacy by having students receive confidence-building messages watch others be successful, and experience success on their own.
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Teachers should help students set realistic expectations for their academic accomplishments. In general in a class that means making sure those expectations are not set too low. If they want to realistically challenge their students. However, sometimes the task is beyond a student's ability, example would be the cancer group.
Self-regulation techniques provide an effective method for improving student behavior.
Conclusion
HOW CAN THE THEORY (SOCIAL LEARNING) BE EFFECTED IN THE CLASSROOM BY INTEGRATING IT WITH ICT?
In social learning theory Albert Bandura (1977) agrees with the behaviorist learning theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. However, he adds two important ideas:
v Mediating processes occur between stimuli & responses. Behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning.
v Children observe the people around them behaving in various ways. This is illustrated during the famous Bobo doll experiment (Bandura, 1961).
- Individuals that are observed are called models. In society, children are surrounded by many influential models, such as parents within the family, characters on children’s TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at school. These models provide examples of behavior to observe and imitate, e.g. masculine and feminine, pro and anti-social etc.
- Children pay attention to some of these people (models) and encode their behavior. At a later time they may imitate (i.e. copy) the behavior they have observed. They may do this regardless of whether the behavior is ‘gender appropriate’ or not, but there are a number of processes that make it more likely that a child will reproduce the behavior that its society deems appropriate for its sex.
- First, the child is more likely to attend to and imitate those people it perceives as similar to itself. Consequently, it is more likely to imitate behavior modeled by people of the same sex.
- Second, the people around the child will respond to the behavior it imitates with either reinforcement or punishment. If a child imitates a model’s behavior and the consequences are rewarding, the child is likely to continue performing the behavior. If parent sees a little girl consoling her teddy bear and says “what a kind girl you are”, this is rewarding for the child and makes it more likely that she will repeat the behavior. Her behavior has been reinforced (i.e. strengthened).
- Reinforcement can be external or internal and can be positive or negative. If a child wants approval from parents or peers, this approval is an external reinforcement, but feeling happy about being approved of is an internal reinforcement. A child will behave in a way which it believes will earn approval because it desires approval.
- Positive (or negative) reinforcement will have little impact if the reinforcement offered externally does not match with an individual's needs. Reinforcement can be positive or negative, but the important factor is that it will usually lead to a change in a person's behavior.
- Third, the child will also take into account of what happens to other people when deciding whether or not to copy someone’s actions. A person learns by observing the consequences of another person’s (i.e. models) behaviour e.g. a younger sister observing an older sister being rewarded for a particular behaviour is more likely to repeat that behaviour herself. This is known as vicarious reinforcement.
This relates to attachment to specific models that possess qualities seen as rewarding. Children will have a number of models with whom they identify. These may be people in their immediate world, such as parents or older siblings, or could be fantasy characters or people in the media. The motivation to identify with a particular model is that they have a quality which the individual would like to possess.
Identification occurs with another person (the model) and involves taking on (or adopting) observed behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes of the person with whom you are identifying.