AKENTEN APPIAH-MENKA UNIVERSITY OF SKILLS TRAINING AND

ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT

EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY- EDC 241

LECTURER: DR. STEPHEN BAFFOUR ADJEI

GROUP ASSIGNMENT, JULY 2021

CLASS: ACCOUNTING 200 A

GROUP: EIGHT (8)

SUBMISSION DATE: FRIDAY, 30TH JULY, 2021 BEFORE 4PM

GROUP MEMBERS:

NAME INDEX NUMBER SIGNATURE

MOHAMMED ABDUL-LATIF 4201010003

KANTON TOMMY BAWA 4201010005

AFIRIM HAYFORD 200007366

ADDAE EGHAN FELIX 200014414

ACQUAAH SILAS DANIEL 200006058

1. Explain the concept and nature of learning.

2. Write brief notes about at least FIVE approaches that explain the process of learning.

ANSWER:

1. The Concept and Nature of learning:

Learning is a key process in human behaviour. All living is learning. If we compare the

simple, crude ways in which a child feels and behaves, with the complex modes of adult

behaviour, his skills, habits, thought, sentiments and the like we will know what difference

learning has made to the individual. The individual is constantly interacting with and influenced

by the environment. This experience makes him to change or modify his behaviour in order to

deal effectively with it. Therefore, learning is a change in behaviour influenced by previous

behaviour. As stated above, the skills, knowledge, habits, attitudes, interests and other

personality characteristics are all the results of learning.

Learning is a process that leads to change, which occurs as a result of experience and

increases the potential of improved performance and future learning (Ambrose et al, 2010, p.3).

Learning is also the relatively permanent change in a person’s knowledge or behaviour due to

experience. This definition has three components: I) the duration of the change is long-term

rather than short-term; II) the locus of the change is the content and structure of knowledge in

memory or the behaviour of the learner; III) the cause of the change is the learner’s experience in
the environment rather than fatigue, motivation, drugs, physical condition or physiologic

intervention (Richard E. Mayer, Learning in Encyclopaedia of Educational Research).

2. Approaches that explain the process of learning

 Behavioural Approach to Learning or Behaviourism. Behaviourism is a theory of

learning which states that all behaviours are learned through interaction with the

environment through a process called conditioning. Thus, behaviour is simply a response

to environmental stimuli. Behaviourism is only concerned with observable stimulus-

response behaviours, as they can be studied in a systematic and observable manner. The

behaviourist movement began in 1913 when John Watson wrote an article entitled

‘Psychology as the behaviourist views it,’ which set out a number of underlying

assumptions regarding methodology and behavioural analysis. It is a purely objective

experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is prediction and control. (p.

158). The components of a theory should be as simple as possible. Behaviourists propose

the use of operational definitions (defining variables in terms of observable, measurable

events). The following are some personalities and their contributions; Pavlov (1897)

published the results of an experiment on conditioning after originally studying digestion

in dogs, Watson (1913) launches the behavioural school of psychology, publishing an

article, ‘Psychology as the behaviourist views it’, Skinner (1938) wrote ‘The Behaviour

of Organisms’ and introduced the concepts of operant conditioning and shaping,

Thorndike (1905) formalized the Law of Effect, Readiness and Exercise.

 Cognitive Information Processing Approach. This approach is based on the idea that

humans process the information they receive, rather than merely responding to stimuli.
This perspective equates the mind to a computer, which is responsible for analysing

information from the environment. This theory addresses how as children grow, their

brains likewise mature, leading to advances in their ability to process and respond to the

information they received through their senses. The theory emphasizes a continuous

pattern of development, in contrast with cognitive developmental theorists such as Jean

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development that thought development occurs in stages at a

time. Below are some of the theorists associated with this approach and their

contributions; Baddeley and Hitch introduced the model of working memory in 1974.

Through their research, they contributed more to help understand how the mind may

process information. They added three elements that explain further cognitive processes.

These elements are the central executive (controls cognitive processes), phonological

loop (holds auditory information) and the visuo-spatial working memory (keeps visual

and spatial information). Baddeley later added a fourth element known as episodic

buffer (transfers information between perception, short-term memory and long-term

memory). Others include George Miller who researched the capacity of the working

memory discovering that people can only hold up to 7 plus or minus 2 items. He also

created the term chunking when explaining how to make the most of our short-term

memory. In 1968, Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed a multi-stage of memory. They

explained that from the time information is received by the processing system, it goes

through different stages to be fully stored. They broke this down to sensory memory and

long-term memory. (Wikipedia; Peterson, G. W., Sampson, J. P., Jr., & Reardon, R.

C. (1991). Career development and services: A Cognitive approach. Pacific Grove,

CA: Brooks/Cole.
 Social Cognitive Approach to Learning. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) started as the

Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the 1960s by Albert Bandura. It developed into the

SCT in 1986 and posits that learning occurs in a social context with a dynamic and

reciprocal interaction of the person, environment, and behavior. The unique feature of

SCT is the emphasis on social influence and its emphasis on external and internal social

reinforcement. SCT considers the unique way in which individuals acquire and maintain

behavior, while also considering the social environment in which individuals perform the

behavior. The theory takes into account a person's past experiences, which factor into

whether behavioral action will occur. These past experiences influence reinforcements,

expectations, and expectancies, all of which shape whether a person will engage in a

specific behavior and the reasons why a person engages in that behavior. Many theories

of behavior used in health promotion do not consider maintenance of behavior, but rather

focus on initiating behavior. This is unfortunate as maintenance of behavior, and not just

initiation of behavior, is the true goal in public health. The goal of SCT is to explain how

people regulate their behavior through control and reinforcement to achieve goal-directed

behavior that can be maintained over time. Bandura (1968) outlined specific processes

involved in observational learning; attention, retention, motor reproduction and

reinforcement. [sphweb.bumc.edu- Wayne W. LaMorte, MD, PhD, MPH

(September 9, 2019) Boston University School of Public Health; Nana Opoku

Owusu-Banahene, Educational Psychology, P. 209-210].

 Cognitive Constructivism. Constructivism is an approach to learning that holds that

people actively construct or make their own knowledge and that reality is determined by

the experiences of the learner (Elliott et al., 2000, p. 256). In elaborating constructivists’
 ideas Arends (1998) states that constructivism believes in personal construction of

meaning by the learner through experience, and that meaning is influenced by the

interaction of prior knowledge and new events. The principles of constructivism

knowledge are constructed, rather than innate, or passively absorbed. Constructivism’s

central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge

upon the foundation of previous learning. This prior knowledge influences what new or

modified knowledge an individual will construct from new learning experiences (Phillips,

1995). The second notion is that learning is an active rather than a passive process. The

passive view of teaching views the learner as ‘an empty vessel’ to be filled with

knowledge, whereas constructivism states that learners construct meaning only through

active engagement with the world (such as experiments or real-world problem solving).

Information may be passively received, but understanding cannot be, for it must come

from making meaningful connections between prior knowledge, new knowledge, and the

processes involved in learning. Learning is a social activity - it is something we do

together, in interaction with each other, rather than an abstract concept (Dewey, 1938).

For example, Vygotsky (1978), believed that community plays a central role in the

process of "making meaning." For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up

will influence how they think and what they think about.

 Social Constructivism. According to social constructivism, knowledge is a human

product, which is socially and culturally constructed in an active manner and not

something which can be discovered (Geary, 1995; Gredler, 1997; Ernest, 1999).

Knowledge is therefore neither tied to the external world nor wholly to the working of the

mind, but it exists as the outcomes of mental contradictions that result from one’s
interactions with other people in the environment (Schunk, 2012). Social constructivism

maintains that learning is based on real life adaptive problem solving which takes place in

a social manner through shared experience and discussion with others such that new ideas

are matched against existing knowledge and the learner adapts rules to make sense of the

world. Social constructivism places the focus on the learner as part of a social group, and

learning as something that emerges from group interaction processes, not as something

which takes place within the individual. Learning is seen as an active socially engaged

process, not one of a passive development in response to external forces (McMahon,

1997; Derry, 1999). To the social constructivist, to learn is to see the meaning or

significance in a social experience or concept. Therefore, social constructivism

acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the individual learner and values,

utilizes and rewards it as an integral part of the learning process (Wertsch 1997)