Procedure of topic

◎Behaviorism
What is behaviorism? Briefly speaking, is through A(Antecedent)-B(Behavior)-C(Consequence) model to decide which behavior need to reinforce and keep reinforcing it to goal behavior, and maintain it.

◎Early concepts about Behaviorism
Behaviorism come from some early experiment theories, one is Pavlov's classical conditioning, another is Thorndike's Law of effect. Classical Conditioning was found by Pavlov, he proposed Unconditioned Stimulus, Unconditioned Response, Conditioned Stimulus and Conditioned Response.these four concepts can explain a lot of things, including why dog aware stranger approach then chase for self protection, we can use picture to explain it.

Classical conditioning

This concept was used by watson, and he used this concept to interpret human behavior.

Thorndike researched animal behavior as well, who invented a experiment called "puzzle". In this experiment he not only found the relation between stimulus and reaction, but also found law of effect.

◎Skinner
Skinner belongs to radical behaviorism, he divided the process of conditioned response into two parts, one is respondent behaivior, another is operant behavior

◎Operant conditioning
operant behavior is when learner receive environment stimulus, he will have a lot of active response, we choose one of these and reinforce it to do connection about stimulus and response. And Skinner’s theory also effected by Thorndike, but a little different, he didn’t use the word "reward"that Thorndike used before but changed it into reinforcement, because award usually means good, but Skinner thought reinforcement shouldn’t limited in award, because not only good factor (eg: reward) that can change behavior, bad factor (eg: punishment) also can achieve the same effect, so that’s why Skinner call reinforcement instead of reward, and used this concept to create a reinforcement principle .

◎How to teach and maintain behavior?
Now we know the concepts of reinforcement, so things can reinforce behavior called reinforcer, and how to use this concept to teach new behavior? We can use shaping、chaining and discrimination learning and fading, after teaching, how do we maintain the effect of learning? We can use reinforcement schedule.

◎Application in Instruction
We talked about the behaviorism, and we knew how to use reinforcement, but how to really use it in instruction? Since we know behaviorism main point lies on stimulus and response connection, so teacher should arrange external contingencies in the learning process and lead students to goal behavior, but how? There are three methods: First.State objective. Second. Guide student behavior with cues. Three. Arrange reinforcing consequences to immediately follow students’ behavior.

◎Weakness of Behaviorism
Behaviorism sounds perfect, but it can’t explain something and some weakness, just like language learning, because language response is not depend on the environment to decide what you want to talk, the other weakness is it's too narrow about human learning behavior, because human learning is more complicated than animal, third, learning is not all controlled by external environment, sometimes internal mind also effect us to do some behaviors.

After all of this. can you retrieve and arrange what you just learn? Maybe you can try to write it down and compare with our arrangement.

Print this table

	Explain
What is Behaviorism	Behaviorism is a process through A(Antecedent)-B(Behavior)-C(Consequence) model to decide which behavior need to reinforce and keep reinforcing it to goal behavior, and maintain it
Theorist	Pavlov(Classical Conditioning), Watson, Thorndike(Law of effect), Skinner(Reinforcement)
Apply in instruction	State objective Guide student behavior with cues. Arrange reinforcing consequences to immediately follow students’ behavior

Arrangement about behaviorism

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