Bandura Learning Theory

There are three main principles Bandura proposed for SLT: a person’s ability to learn through observation, self-regulation, and reciprocal determinism. People can learn new behavior through observation; this can be acquired through direct or indirect observation (Grusec, 1992). This can be seen in Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment, in

Bandura 's theory is based on social learning. He emphasises the importance of observing and modelling the behavior, attitudes and emotional reaction from others. Children from large families or children who attend day care may do this a lot, they will always be observing other children or their siblings behavior, attitude or emotional reactions even if they don’t intend to. ". In society, children are surrounded by many influential models, such as parents within the family, characters on children’s TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at school. Theses models provide examples of behavior to observe and imitate, e.g. masculine and feminine, pro and anti-social etc. http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html, accessed

Learning, as defined by Slavin (2012), is “a change in an individual caused by experience” (p. 116). Learning can occur intentionally or unintentionally. All learning, however, is stimulated by something that is the learner (student) has encountered. As an instructor, your goal every day is to use the right stimuli to capture the student’s attention so they can absorb the knowledge you are trying to share.

When we consider Banduras’ observational learning theory we see it as a way to acquire and learn a new behavior by paying attention to the activities and behaviors of others. During this kind of learning, there are three actions that an observer must engage in, to actually learn about what’s being observed. He must pay attention, make a representation to memory, and be able reproduce the behavior, in short witness, recollect, and replicate. If the observer is not paying full attention to the behavior, chances are he will completely miss out the witnessed behavior and will not be able to commit it to his short or long-term memory. So, the observer needs to recall the action that took place and repeat it in order to fully process what he saw.

The concept of learning is a more difficult task than I realized. It has always been my firm belief that we learn every single day, even before we are even born. What I did not realize is the benefits of intentional learning. I still stand by my week 1 definition of learning, but now I would say that with intentional learning one can go so much farther in this world. I would explain that the concept of learning is life, intentionally intensified by yourself. Let me explain. Learning is more than just your day to day learning experiences once you apply more to the learning experience. Learning is about the changing of your skills, knowledge, and especially your behaviors. Every one’s learning experiences are different and they will retain that knowledge differently. Once you consciously begin to analyze what you are trying to learn, you will see you can learn one topic or skill in many ways.

When Bandura emphasized that people learn from other people in the society by observation and imitation, Bandura then hypothesized that people will know nothing when there are no one showing us what the meaning of the particular subject as the social learning theory tells us about the others' reaction to people's behavior has the influences on how people develop their knowledge.

Bandura’s theory, “places special emphasis on the important roles played by vicarious, symbolic, and self-regulatory processes which receive relatively little attention even in the most contemporary theories of learning. These differences in governing processes carry certain implications for the way one views the causes of human behavior… virtually all learning phenomena resulting from direct experiences can occur on a vicarious basis through observation of other people’s resulting from direct experiences can occur on a vicarious basis through observation of other people’s behavior and its consequences for them.”

Albert Bandura was the founder of the social learning theory, which has been renamed the Cognitive learning theory, which stresses the human functioning is the result reciprocal interaction between environment, behavior and a persons’ psychological process (Miloservic). Bandura has done many studies on observational learning, and there are several steps included in this process. The first step is the attention step. This step focuses on how much a person pays attention to one another in order to learn certain things. Anything that detracts your attention, it will have a negative effect on learning. The second step is the retention step. This step focuses on remembering what you’ve learned; images, behaviors, symbolic coding. The third step is reproduction, and this step focuses on how well you paid attention, meaning once you’ve learned and retained the information, them it’s time to perform the behaviors you’ve learned. The forth step is motivation, and this focuses on motivation towards continuing the learned behaviors. Reinforcement and punishment is most important in this step. An example of this is if you reward a student for showing up early for a class, the student that show up late are motivated to show up early to get that reward.

Albert Bandura leans towards the behaviourist learning theories when discussing the Social Learning Theory, he adds that learning occurs through observation and the observing of ‘models’, these can be parents, teachers, mentors or even characters on a TV show (McLeod, 2016). J L (2015) however, disagrees and views this learning theory as a bridge between behaviourist and cognitive learning due to its inclusion of motivation, memory and attention. This style of learning was depicted clearly through the 1961 Bobo doll experiment, here Bandura has models show violence to a portion of the 72 children selected, this aggression was replicated by the children, confirming the process of observational learning (Nolan, 2009). Ultimately this can be

According to Albert Bandura, observational learning is a learning process of identifying a model and reproducing their behaviour. Reproduction of the observed behaviour can result on the basis of whether the behaviour of the model carries with it positive or negative consequences. This can also be referred to as vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment of the model’s behaviour. An observer will more likely reproduce the actions of a model whose characteristics they find attractive or desirable. An observer can acquire a behaviour while not performing it, preferring to utilize the learnt behaviour at an appropriate time. Observational learning can be processed as modelling particular patterns of behaviours and learning emotional

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory is a theory that includes development theories in order to understand how children learn. Bandura’s theory is based on how people can learn by observing others, how internal mental states influence people, and how learning something does not change one’s behavior every time. Bandura was able to find out that people learn by three observational models. The first model is the live model which includes observing how someone demonstrates the behavior, the verbal instruction model which learning occurs through auditory directions, and the symbolic model where modeling occurs through media sources such as internet, movies, and books.

Albert Bandura is considered the developer of social learning theory, which is also known as social cognitive theory (Corey, 2013; Feist et al., 2013; Thoma et al., 2015). Badura’s theory, while based upon the principles of behaviorism, departs from the traditional behavioral model and leaves room for the exploration of unobservable mental states and their influence on behavior (Corey, 2013; Thoma et al., 2015). Social Cognitive theory bases its theory of learning on two types of learning processes: observational learning and enactive learning (Feist et al., 2013). In contrast to Skinner’s belief that reinforcement is required for learning, Bandura believes that learning is possible simply by observing the behavior of others; while reinforcement facilitates learning, it is not a necessary requirement (Feist et al., 2013). Enactive learning is learning through direct experience, and is similar to the concept of operant conditioning; people determine appropriate behaviors by evaluating their behavior and the potential consequences thereof (Feist et al., 2013). Where behavioral theory adopts the ABC approach to behavior, social cognitive theory uses a BPE approach known as Triadic Reciprocal Causation. In TRC, BPE stands for behavior, person variables, and environment (Feist et al., 2013). Within the TRC, the term person encompasses many variables including memory, judging, anticipation, gender, social position, physical attributes, and planning; the belief is that

Bandura wanted to check his belief that students learning cannot simply be explained through reinforcement. Through his discovery of the social learning theory, he learned the ramifications of the observed behaviors that the children watch determined the characteristics they would display.

Based on Bandura’s social learning theory, human development is continuous. This concludes that people are constantly changing, developing, gathering skills, watching and performing. Using Ben as an example, he gradually learned certain things in the ESL classroom. As I previously mentioned, writing was very difficult for him upon arriving to the U.S. Ben first learned how to hold a pencil properly, overserving from others and pictures that we provided to him, then he learned how to write his ABC’s, next he learned how to spell his name, and lastly proceeded to form words and write out short paragraphs independently. This demonstrates a smooth process, which Ben had to perform before attempting to write short papers in class.

Learning is a multifaceted perception unique to each individual. In looking to address the intricacies of learning, there have been a multitude of learning theories established over the centuries. To this day new theories are developed and traditional theories continue to be developed and expanded upon. (Swinburne Online, 2016)