Hall of Fame
Bandura (1925 -)
Albert Bandura is a Canadian psychologist, who has
been teaching at Stanford since 1953. 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.
Observational learning
Bandura has often been seen as a bridge between behaviourism and
cognitive psychology. Bandura moves us beyond classical and operant
conditioning claiming that we also learn by observation. This is
not to say that we learn violent behaviour from observation or exposure
to violence as we may acquire but not perform that behaviour. We
may not perform because we know the consequences.
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:
- Attention – you must be cognitively attentive to learn
- Retention, coding, and storing the patterns so they can be retrieved
- Motor reproduction - kinaesthetic and neuromuscular patterns
are practiced with until the model's behaviour is learnt
- Motivation and reinforcement – to push the learner to
practice and retain knowledge and skills
Modelling theory
Modelling Theory operates in three steps.
- You observe a model
- You imitate the model's actions
- You 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.
Conclusion
In training he has been responsible for the emphasis on behaviour
modeling. This was widely used in video 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.
http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/bandurabio.html
Excellent biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura
Encyclopedia article
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