Behaviorism

Behaviorism introduced in the early 1900s in the work of the Russian experimental psychologist Ivan Pavlov (1848-1936) and the American psychologist, John Watson (1878-1958). According to a pure behaviorist, human beings are shaped entirely by their external environment. Alter individuals’ environment and you will alter their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. They believed in the consequences of a behavior whether its punishment or reward is very important and mentioned that it is learning by itself. Moreover, since they believed in humanity more they mentioned that punishment works, but it is not good; even though the results are maintained but the harmful effects are much more present than the opposite result, logical consequences are the best. They provided positive reinforcement whenever students perform a desired behavior, and soon they will learn to perform the behavior on their own and that good behavior should be repeated while bad one should be stopped.
Behaviorist said that brains and minds are black box. This means that they do not know what people think unless they saw their behavior. As they did not believe in people differences, they believed that everybody could become anything.

Behaviorist aims to promote and modify observable behavior. It considers learning to be a behavior that shows acquisition of knowledge or skills. The primary aim of education for behaviorists is to change the behavior and point it into more desirable directions, and how changing the direction all over the forces is controlling the person’s environment such as parents, media, schools, peers, society, religion institutions. They depend highly in the principle of verification where checking is important and even they trust your words they need to make sure of them.

Behaviorists goes to accepting good habits under the concept of innate freedom, but that to be aware in which direction control will lead us. Another important aim is to reinforcing behavior and that of education by training, because people are controlled by technology and other forces by which they are not even conscious to it.

According to the behaviorists, teachers have many rewards or reinforcement at their disposal, arranges environmental conditions so that students can make the responses to stimuli including praise, a smile, a touch, or candies. Studies shows that rewards needs to be given every time. According to some recent approach “Cognitive theory” stresses the human qualities in people which is characterized by an emphasis on the inner person, where behavioral conditions can be changed by person’s own thinking, creativity and willpower, thus, people can change their own lives by starting from their inner person.

One of the most important things a teacher can do is learn the techniques of the conditioning process and use them effectively. Teachers condition students through grades, attitude, and many other ways. Behaviorists believes that if teachers act cooperatively and intelligently they would make a big difference in students’ behavior and influence them positively.
Some behavior modifications procedure outcomes in classroom as specifying the desired outcomes, what need to be changed, removing unfavorable stimuli, choose proper reinforcement, shaping new desired behaviors, and evaluate results.