Behaviorism believes that good behaviours can be reinforced through positive reinforcement and inapproriate behaviours can be extinguished by withdrawing reinforcement. I can think of a lot of behaviorism learning as it exists everywhere in our education system. For example, we may get a good grade for the test we studied very hard for, this positive reinforcement is likely to make us keep studing hard for the next exam.
Cognitivism focused on mental processes. One example that comes to mind is that every class has discussions with peers about the things we just learned. During the discussion session, I can reflect what I learned and make sense what I learned with my related experiences. This largely reflected on the idea that human brains are constantly envolving by integrating new knowledge with prior knowledge.
Constructivism proposes that learners are constantly “strive for meaning” and create order of the knowledge and outside world. As a psychology major student, I can relate to this idea about we learned from the scientific research. By firstly ask a question, make hypothesis, decide research design, perform data analysis and draw conclusion. The above steps allows us to solve research questions properly with order, and build a correct scientific mindset.
Connectivism is a theory built upon behaviorism and cognitivism (knowledge viewed as external to the leaner and it is viewed as symbolic mental constructs in the learner’s mind) and constructivism (Assumes learners are actively attempting to create meaning when learning and learning is believed to be a socially enacted process). An example comes to mind is that one of my psychology professor asked us to register in Perusall and then we can all annotate the same academic article, ask questions about specific part of the article and others can answer it. This not only helped us created a connected learning network but also combined technology in learning and made our learning more productive and easier.
I chose this topic because this topic provides a great insight of different ways of learning/teaching, which I believe is beneficial to all of us to explore and fond the right way to learn, teach and communicate. So far I have learned about “learning” from above four perspectives, I believe connectivism is the best way for me especially in this digital era. Connectivism helps us build our personal learning networks, meanwhile combines technologies and different forms of learning together making us much more productive in learning.
