Theories of Learning in... A(sociocultural approach)...B(ehavioristic apprach) ... C(ognitivistic approach)...

Behavioristic approach... Pigeons pecking...

Just to share a pretty random illustration (for this approach) which struck me...

When I was having lunch in school, I saw the prescription of such an approach by the cleaners for Arts Deck. I observed the metal shelves we sent our trays to after our meals have been modified over the semesters. There were yellow streaks of plastic chains dangling from each segments of the shelves, there were nasty-looking nails placed on top of these shelves as well.

My friends and I made a guess and it was spot-on, the explanation for modifying these shelves to exude such an ominous presence was simply to keep birds away from the plates of leftovers. Therefore, the birds, if they were to land on these nails and suffer the painful consequences, will learn through experience that the Arts Deck cleaners are not to be messed around with.

In this instance, the educator aka the Arts Deck cleaners have a goal in mind - to shape the behavior of the birds and ensure they do not further add on to their workload.

I personally do not concur with the behavioristic point of view where, in its radical and extreme form, regards humans as merely reacting to an unintelligent system. Comparing animals to humans, in my view, is equivilant to comparing apples with oranges. Albeit both of them are fruits, but are different on many levels, the only similarity which I might consider drawing them together would probably an intelligent creator who has designed an intelligent system.

The simplistic form of explaining human behavior disregards the various thought processes which includes the free will to make complex, informed decisions based on past experiences and knowledge.

However, sad to say, I do agree that the human sense of superiority should be punctured!

Despite having head knowledge and free will to make wise choices, we often land up in a situation where "history repeats itself" and end up making wrong decisions that lead to dire consequences.

The cognitivism approach takes it a step further from merely recognizing stimulus-response to the study of the intention and context of various situations. Therefore, similar stimulus may actually result in different responses considering every individual's own experiences in their own contexts.

A key tenet which identifies behaviorism and cognitivism is that the unit of analysis is the individual. Moving on to the socio-cultural apporach, which takes into consideration the big picture, identifies learning where social tools enables and empowers complex ways of thinking individually and augments participation in an environment as a whole.

To connect these approaches with E-learning, we can see that at the advent of personal computers, it appears that the educators adopted the behaviouristic approach, using computers as a learning tool for "drill and practice".

As E-learning develops further, the cognitivistic approaches were implemented where learners were able to participate and provide feedback to their educators. Various systems can also be programmed to gain an insight on the internal mental representations of the individual after a learning exercise.

This goes on until networks becomes widespread, and the collective knowledge of indivudals are being harnessed, thus explaining the socio-cultural approach where information transcends time and space and converge on a common ground where knowledge can be fully exploited to a certain extent (limited by the digital gap due to various socio-cultural-economic factors).