Are behaviourist principles still relevant in contemporary classrooms Essay

Are behaviourist principles still relevant in contemporary classrooms - Essay Example However, criticism of the behaviorist principles has surfaced with some psychologist expressing the weakness of this procedure of learning in the modern school environment. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate whether or not the behaviorist principles are still relevant in the contemporary classroom. The origin of the behaviorist principles is dated back to the 20th century when psychologist such as Pavlov conducted experimental research to investigate the stimulation of specific human behavior. Pavlov conditioned his test dog by providing food at a specific time during the day, after ringing a bell, and observing its reaction at that particular time of the day. After sometime, Pavlov observed that the dog would produce suggestive sound and salivate immediately after the bell at exactly the time that he served it with food and in turn concluded that the dog had associated the bell with food. Theorists such as Watson and Skinner have also supported the idea of Pavlov by expressing their opinion regarding development of personal human behavior (Shield, p. 13). The idea of these scholars is that it is possible to stimulate observable human behavior by introducing a conditional environment. ... The principles of behaviorism are based on classical and operant conditionings which may philosopher have come to regard as the roots of these principles. In classical conditioning, for instance in Pavlov experiment, a stimulus, in this case a bell, is used to trigger a natural response from a human being (Camp &Doolittle, p. 12). The impact of this kind of conditioning is that a trigger, not usually associated with a particular natural response is learnt by a human being through experience and becomes associated with some natural phenomenon. On the other hand, operant conditioning relies on the reinforcement of a particular response to a particular stimulus in, which can be termed as an enhancement of the classical conditioning. For instance, if a mother gets used to feeding a baby whenever it cries, the baby will learn that after crying it will be fed. From this perspective, these proponents of behaviorism came to believe learning process can be enhanced by eliciting responses from students and reinforcing these responses. According to Laurete (p. 5), the learning process can be stimulated by adopting the concept of stimulation that was developed by behaviorists. The foundation of the integrated learning system is to enhance the learning by using different approaches in transferring knowledge to the students in the classroom. Two approaches have been upheld as the superior means of transferring knowledge to the learner in any learning environment; first, learning through experience that aims at enhancing the learning process through exposing students to various experiences and secondly inducing students to learn through provision of stimulus. In integrated learning system, the learners are subjected to practical tasks that will help them