Week 6

Snakes and Ladders: Albert Bandura and Social Cognitive Theory

This week my group prepared a presentation on cognitive learning theory.  I'd already studied this a bit at the beginning of the teaching credential program (in psychological foundations of education).

Since then, including the time spent student teaching, I've begun to understand the practical value of cognitive learning theory (as opposed to behaviorism, where students respond to stimuli for rewards or punishments).  The students I've worked with spend a great deal of time and effort thinking about what they're learning in order to effectively practice those skills, and said skills are gained by modeling and scaffolding by me/support staff and by their peers.  Subsequently, a sense of self-efficacy (the belief that one has the power to achieve something) is gained and a task can be accomplished.

The most interesting thing I learned about Bandura for this project was his experiment with someone who had a phobia of snakes.  This person watched through a window an actor (the subject knew the actor was an actor) walk into a room where a snake was in a box on a table.   The actor pretended to be terrified of snakes, but opened the box and cautiously took the snake out.  The actor eventually draped the snake around his shoulders and neck.  The subject watching this display was able to go into the room and repeat this behavior because of seeing the actor do it and escape unscathed.  I think this experiment explains quite a lot about how we learn--we see someone doing something to the point where we believe we can effectively copy that behavior.