[Keywords:]: learning theory; behaviourism
As the saying goes, it is never too old to learn. People have been studying all their lives. It is not limited to the teaching of knowledge in school, but involves action, language, skills, life, memory, cognition, thinking and so on. There is no doubt that college students learn the most from contact. Whether the learning method is correct or not directly affects the learning efficiency and learning effect. I believe that everyone will often have such a question in the process of learning: "Why can't I remember this word?" Why can't I practice this song to meet the teacher's requirements, but the more I practice, the worse I get? "Wait a minute. This is especially true for students who are engaged in music education in the future. It is related to whether you can successfully help students solve their learning problems and become a qualified people's music teacher in the future.
Nowadays, the rapid development of social economy has also brought some negative effects on education, which are caused by many factors, such as family factors, physical and mental factors, school factors and so on. Under the influence of these factors, a series of learning problems have arisen, and these problems are multiplying with the growth of age. Such as weariness of learning, helplessness in learning, attention disorder, anxiety of excessive learning, phobia of learning, etc.
In the artistic practice of piano teaching, the author once encountered such a case: Yan Yan is seven years old this year. He is a little boy with high IQ, strong self-esteem and self-confidence. Although he is young, he is the best in the second grade of the whole primary school and won the first prize in the National Children's English Competition. He had been studying piano for three months when he first transferred to me. In the first class, I found his extraordinary talent, but one thing that made me dissatisfied was that he often laughed at other children's shortcomings in class. In the second class, he had a song that was too fast and the notes were not grainy. I motioned for him to practice slowly, but he wouldn't listen. So I demonstrated two kinds of playing effects, one is a slow music with very clear notes, and the other is a fast music with vague notes. Then I asked him what kind of playback effect he liked. He was silent for a minute, frowning and suddenly crying. This is my first time. Feeling a little helpless, he threw himself into his mother's arms and cried loudly, "Mom, I will never learn piano again. It is boring to learn. The teacher says I can't play well ... "Learning the piano is boring, because I am most afraid of hearing what the students say. I quickly explained, "The teacher didn't say you didn't play well. It would be better if you played slowly. Little boys shouldn't cry. " Great, he cried even harder and took his mother home. So I asked Yanyan's mother about him. His mother said that she used to cry in class, but the teacher always praised him because he was smart and the whole family loved him. By this time I understood the reason, but it was too late. His problem is that his family and school education have given him too much reinforcement and made him lack the courage to overcome setbacks. Since then, although he often came to the basic music class of art class, he never touched the piano again, and his mother could do nothing about it. Now every time I see this child, my heart is full of guilt. He is the first student I lost and will be the last.
In view of the above-mentioned learning problems, the author sums up three schools of learning, namely behaviorism, cognitivism and humanism. It focuses on behaviorism. I hope it can be used for reference and help for everyone's study.
Learning theory is a theory about learning essence, learning process, learning mechanism, learning conditions and their influence. However, the learning phenomenon itself is complex, especially the changing process in learners' minds cannot be directly observed, so people have formed different schools of learning theories from their own viewpoints and positions.
Learning theory is one of the oldest and most developed research fields in psychology. Long before Feng Te (W. Feng Te,1832-1920)1879 founded the psychology of science, educators and thinkers in ancient China and ancient Greece made incisive exposition on learning, especially in ancient China. As far as the essence of learning is concerned, they put forward the view that learning is a process of accumulating knowledge and skills and applying them. The so-called "it is much more difficult to accumulate habits", "beyond words" and "suddenly connected" (Zhu and Zhu Si's books or topics, Volume II, universities or topics) should prove the above viewpoints. And the learning process is divided into seven stages, namely, determination (forming learning motivation), erudition (widely acquiring knowledge), interrogation (finding problems in learning), careful thinking (deeply processing learning materials), discernment (analyzing the process in thinking activities and mastering knowledge), constant learning (reviewing and consolidating what you have learned) and perseverance (putting into practice). These seven stages comprehensively and systematically summarized the whole process of learning activities, which was enough to show the advanced consciousness of China educational thinkers at that time.
From the perspective of western academic history, science is a derivative of philosophy. Later, science became an independent discipline parallel to philosophy. There is interaction between science and philosophy. Science produces knowledge and philosophy produces ideas. So when studying the theory, let's first explore its ideological roots. It belongs to the category of epistemology to discuss learning from the perspective of philosophy. "How do we know the world?" "How do we learn new knowledge?" "What is the source of knowledge?" Wait, it has always been a controversial issue for philosophers. Among them, two opposing views have the greatest influence: empiricism and rationalism.
Empiricism holds that experience is the only source of knowledge. Although they don't deny that some knowledge can be deduced from rational thinking about various empirical relationships, they attach special importance to sensory experience. Its ideological roots can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. He firmly believes that ideas cannot exist independently of the external world, and the external world that people feel is the source of all resources. The main representatives are Locke and Hume. Among them, Locke put forward two viewpoints that have great influence on empiricism. First of all, he thinks that the ideas that constitute knowledge come from two types of experience, namely external experience (feeling) and internal experience (introspection). The second is the association theory, that is, people mainly acquire complex knowledge through association, and assemble fragmentary ideas into systematic knowledge. These viewpoints made theoretical preparations for associative psychology, and by the end of 19, it evolved into connectionism, and at the same time, the association between ideas turned into the connection between stimulus responses, thus producing behaviorism.
Rationalism holds that reason is the source of knowledge and the natural intuition and deductive reasoning of self-evident reason. The only reliable basis of knowledge, belief and behavior is rational data, not sensory data, revelation or intuition. Its ideological roots can be traced back to Plato. He believes that although the material world is reflected by human feelings, it can only be truly understood through human rational thinking. The main representatives are Kant, Herbart and Hegel. Among them, Kant is a master of rationalism. He believes that the external world is actually disordered, and it is understood as orderly because reason thinks it is orderly, reason plays an important role in understanding the world, and some forms of experience given by reason are natural. The innate structure of rationalism has a great influence on gestalt psychology in Europe.
The typical and core view of behavioral learning theory is that learning is regarded as a process of explicit behavior change in vitro, and learning is passive, which generally does not explain whether the individual's internal psychological process changes during the learning process, but the change of individual's explicit behavior is mainly manifested in the connection between stimulus and response, which advocates that all human behaviors are determined by the environment, which is a famous extreme environmental determinism and educational omnipotence theory in history. The flag of behaviorism was set up by Watson (J.B. Watson1878-1958). In this regard, his most famous and quoted passage shows this point. He said: "Give me a dozen healthy babies without defects and raise them in the special environment I designed. I can guarantee that I can train any one of them to be any kind of expert I choose-doctor, lawyer, artist, business leader, even beggar or thief, regardless of his talents and hobbies. Below I will take behaviorism as a clue to further explore behaviorism.
Thorndike (Edward L. Thorndike1874-1949) put forward his own views on the nature, process, law and transfer of learning. The first person who studied animals built the earliest and most systematic theory in educational psychology and established the experimental method to study phenomena, and was praised as "the father of educational psychology" by later generations. However, the biggest deficiency of his theory is that he regards learning as a kind of blind behavior, and compares the learning law of animals with human learning. This is a mechanical learning view, which ignores the initiative and initiative of human learning.
In the experiment, he made a puzzle box and observed how the cat stepped into the mechanism, escaped from the puzzle box and got something. After repeated experiments, he found that the cat's initial movement into the puzzle box was chaotic, and it just touched the switch and escaped from the puzzle box. But in the subsequent repeated practice, with the increase of practice times, the chaotic movements gradually decreased, and finally he learned to open the door for dinner as soon as he entered the puzzle box. As a result, his famous trial-and-error system learning theory came into being, and its main contents are as follows:
The essence of learning is to form connections, including artificial connections and non-artificial connections, and the way to get connections is trial and error learning. Although it is obtained from animal experiments, it has certain correctness. Trial and error learning is indeed an important way for human learning, especially when people solve new problems. To some extent, the history of human civilization is a history of trial and error. Edison has a passage that is the best explanation for trial and error learning: "failure is also what I need, and it is as valuable to me as success." Only when I know all the methods I can't do well can I know what the good methods are. " Today is also the biggest difference between our education in China and the west. The west advocates students to explore boldly, but China can't wait to tell students the so-called correct answer. This is the root of children's learning problems in China. They have been used to accepting knowledge for a long time, so that they lack the ability to solve new problems. They are helpless in the face of new problems, so they can only choose to escape and rely on others to solve them, and gradually lose interest in learning. This is the case with Yanyan mentioned above, which is worth pondering.
In the process of trial and error learning, he summed up three important learning rules:
1, law of readiness: readiness mainly refers to a dynamic state, but it is a short board because it involves the preparation of knowledge structure. Whether the learner responds to a certain stimulus is closely related to whether the learner is ready, just as the cat must be hungry before the experiment.
2. Practice method: also known as the method of entering and discarding. Including the law of use and the law of abandonment: if an already formed connection is applied, the strength of the connection will be strengthened, otherwise, it will be weakened. However, he later admitted that simply repeating exercises will not unconditionally increase the connection between stimulus and response, and only when learners see satisfactory results after practice will practice be effective. Therefore, when we practice the piano, we should think more about whether it is correct or not, and we should not just concentrate on practicing hard, otherwise it will strengthen the wrong connection and affect efficiency. At the same time, teachers should not only ask students, but also guide the practice methods. As the saying goes, it is better to teach people to fish than to teach them to fish, which solves the problem mentioned above that repeated practice can not meet the requirements of teachers, but the more you practice, the worse you get.
3. Law of Effect: A certain reaction is associated with a certain stimulus because the behavior (touching the switch) can achieve a satisfactory effect (coming out of the cage). This is the basic principle of trial and error learning. Imagine, when the cat finally escaped and saw a big German shepherd, would the cat still try to escape? This is also worth pondering. If a student stutters a difficult piece of music, what he gets is a severe scolding or indifference from the teacher. It is conceivable that the enthusiasm of the students will be greatly reduced, but it also depends on personal circumstances. When commenting on students' homework, teachers must pay attention to the advantages, affirm the students' labor achievements, and then mention the shortcomings.
Thorndike's important theory about learning transfer-the homotopy theory is also worth studying. From the17th century, influenced by the formal training theory, the European education circles think that migration is infinite. However, he suggested that only when the original learning situation and the new learning situation have the same elements can the original learning be transferred to the new learning, and the number of the same elements is directly proportional to the degree of transfer. Just as learning to ride a small bike as a child is helpful for learning to ride a big bike when you grow up, it has little effect on learning to drive.
The classical conditional learning of Ivan petrovich Pavlov (1849- 1936) is an early representative of behaviorism and belongs to the simplest connection learning between stimulus and response. He attaches importance to the relationship between animal and human behavior and nervous system, and studies the activity of cerebral cortex through conditioned reflex. In the conditioned reflex experiment on dogs, he drew several conclusions that had great influence on later generations, but he regarded learning as a passive and mechanical behavior, which was inappropriate. The following is the author's combing of his own research results.
Unconditional stimulation (UCS): The stimulating factor that causes the reaction in the reaction action without learning. In the Pap test, the meat that causes dogs to secrete saliva is UCS.
Unconditional response (UCR): the learner's own behavior, that is, the response caused by UCS. In the Pap test, the saliva secreted by dogs caused by meat is UCR.
Conditional stimulus (CS): A stimulus that elicits a response during learning. If the dog learns to drool when he hears the bell, then the bell is CS.
Conditional response (CR): The response caused by conditioned stimulus in the learning process. In the experiment, the saliva secreted by the dog after hearing the bell is CR.
Later generations summarized his experiments into five learning rules:
1. Acquisition: The process of establishing connection between conditioned stimulus and unconditional stimulus is called the acquisition process of conditioned reflex.
2. Fade: After the conditioned reflex is formed, if it is not strengthened, it will gradually weaken or disappear.
3. Summary: In the early stage after the formation of conditioned reflex, other similar stimuli will also cause conditioned reflex. The closer the new stimulus is to the original stimulus, the more obvious the generalization phenomenon is.
4. Differentiation: reaction to differences in things. The means to achieve differentiation can be selective enhancement or degradation.
5. Secondary conditioned reflex: Take the learned conditioned reflex as unconditional reflex, and add a neutral conditioned stimulus to form a new conditioned reflex.
Although Pavlov was formed early, he had a great influence on the development of modern psychology, such as overcoming people's anxiety and fear. I will use a case to prove:
Some children will have fear (UCR) when they enter kindergarten or school for the first time. Teachers can use systematic desensitization to solve this emotional disorder, and constantly design some interesting games to make children familiar with the environment and like the new environment (us) as soon as possible, so as to eliminate anxiety and achieve the purpose of relaxation. (chromium)
Now some failed music classroom teaching can also be analyzed by classical conditioned reflex theory. For example, a strict teacher, boring staff (UCS) will cause children's disgust and fear (UCR), while music class (CS) itself will not produce strong emotions for students. However, when UCS and CS appear repeatedly in pairs, music lessons become a stimulus associated with negative reactions. This is a problem that today's music teachers must deeply understand.
In the late 1930s, Kenneth W. Spencer (1907- 1967) improved Thorndike's difficult experiment, designed "Skinner's box" to study animal learning, and put forward the learning theory under the action of operating conditions, which better explained the learning under the conditions of spontaneous behavior of organisms and avoided the learning phenomenon that was difficult to be solved by classical conditioned reflex theory. Put the explanation of principles and concepts above the action of operating conditions, so that people can control and predict behavior more effectively; Skinner's reinforcement theory is an extension of Thorndike's effect law; His emphasis on direct experience is also justified. Take ourselves for example, the school has always attached great importance to our artistic practice ability, because during the school period, we can gain direct experience that books can't learn through practice, which is conducive to our better adaptation to society after leaving campus. However, his theory also has many shortcomings. First, it emphasizes the shaping of explicit behavior, which is difficult to explain complex learning and exaggerates the role of reinforcement. Second, too much emphasis on direct learning, in fact, people's learning methods are varied, such as indirect learning proposed later. Thirdly, it overemphasizes the position of environment in learning and ignores the "internal factors" such as students' initiative and interest. For example, he can explain the phenomenon that people near Zhu Zhechi are black, but he can't explain the phenomenon that the mud is not dirty.
The main contents of the theory of operational conditioning are as follows: He believes that there are two kinds of behaviors, namely, reactive behavior and operational behavior. Pavlov studies the former, while the latter is caused by unknown stimuli, which is the behavior or reaction of the organism itself. The difference between Skinner and Thorndike is that Thorndike thinks that the result of reinforcement is to strengthen the connection between S and R, while Skinner thinks that the stimulus is unknown and has nothing to do with learning, and the connection is formed in reaction and reinforcement, while what happens in operational learning is that a reaction is strengthened. The possibility of being repeated increases.
In the learning theory of operant conditioned reflex, the reinforcement principle is the most worth learning: in conditioned reflex, any stimulus that can increase or maintain the frequency of individual operational response is called reinforcement, and the stimulus that produces reinforcement is called reinforcement R. Enhancers can be divided into primary enhancers and generalized enhancers. Primary reinforcement refers to the reinforcement that organisms have without learning, which is related to innate needs and driving forces, such as food and water. Secondary reinforcement means that if any neutral stimulus is repeatedly combined with primary reinforcement, the nature of reinforcement itself can be obtained, which can be material, but more spiritual. For example, money is not an enhancer for babies, but when children know that money can buy candy and toys, money can also affect their behavior. Therefore, teachers should be very careful when choosing reinforcements, and don't always rely on material reinforcements. Students will rely too much on reinforcements. For example, many piano teachers will reward small stickers when students finish their homework. But after a while, students are no longer interested in stickers. In fact, spiritual reinforcement can promote students' learning. A smile, a compliment and a gesture are enough to stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning.
Reinforcement can be divided into positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Here, we have to mention positive punishment and negative punishment. I am here to make a comprehensive analysis of these four concepts.
The purpose of reinforcement is to strengthen some behavior.
Positive reinforcement refers to adding a stimulus to strengthen a behavior after it appears. For example, awards are the most common examples, such as the school's annual scholarship and the evaluation of three good students.
The purpose of negative reinforcement is also to enhance some behavior, but it is to use this behavior to alleviate unpleasant stimuli after they appear. For example, a student was still watching TV before the exam and didn't review his lessons. His mother kept nagging him until he went to the study to read.
The so-called punishment is aimed at weakening certain behaviors.
Positive punishment refers to adding a stimulus to weaken a behavior after it appears. Criticism and punishment are common means in punishment. For example, what a student said in class was criticized by the teacher and was fined for copying the text.
Negative punishment, like negative reinforcement, belongs to revocation. The difference is that negative punishment can weaken the original behavior by withdrawing the stimulus that makes learners like and happy. This is actually the Pim Kirk principle. Parents will not take their children to amusement parks as long as they don't take piano lessons seriously.
In the process of strengthening, Skinner got two kinds of strengthening schemes: continuous strengthening (strengthening every correct reaction) and intermittent strengthening, in which intermittent strengthening is divided into proportional strengthening (according to the correct rate) and interval strengthening (according to the time interval). Experiments show that the ratio reinforcement in indirect reinforcement is the most effective. Correctly mastering the reinforcement scheme is also the key to the success or failure of teaching, and Yan Yan's case is the best proof. The consequences of abusing the intensive program are unimaginable, which may push students to the wall.
Finally, Skinner elaborated the formation process of his own operating conditions.
One of the most important is small step shaping, which was later used as a famous systematic desensitization method in psychotherapy. He first decomposes a complex behavioral response that needs to be learned into several relatively simple responses, first strengthens the movements that animals can easily do, and then gradually increases the difficulty of the movements and strengthens them one by one to achieve the purpose of mastering complex motor skills. This is how circus trains animals. There is a short story that can fully illustrate this truth. There is a cowherd boy eating grass. Because grazing requires crossing the river, but the river is too deep for calves to cross. Niu Wa can only cross the river with a calf in his arms. Year after year, when Niu Wa was a teenager, the cow was tall and strong, but Niu Wa still took the cow across the river. Everyone admires Niu Wa's magical power. This method is very effective for the education of mentally retarded children.
Now I will take one of my students as an example to demonstrate the theory of small step shaping. Her name is Tingting. She is six years old. She is usually quiet. She especially likes learning piano. She comes the earliest every time and doesn't want to go home after class. She wants to play for a while. According to normal children, the child who likes practicing and learning piano so much should be the best, but she is the slowest of all children. Three months later, she still doesn't know the staff. She just read the baby's name in a second and then forgot to ask. So I asked her grandmother how she learned other things. Her grandmother faltered, which may mean being very slow. I judged that she must be a mentally retarded child, so I changed my teaching strategy. I used various methods to know a note in each class (starting from the treble clef), including five-finger formula game, taking notes with crayons, finding the corresponding notes on the piano and so on. Every time I know that three sounds are a stage, I will treat them as one. Then the difficulty gradually increased and more and more notes were learned. After knowing the seven notes of the treble clef, I asked her to find the rules by herself, and she soon learned that the note babies were sitting in rows. After that, I learned bass clef. In order not to confuse her, I only teach one note in each class, but it is more difficult for her to find the notes on the keys by herself, compared with the notes in the treble clef. It sounds easy now, but it's hard to do. Teachers need great love and patience. In this process, I fully realized that it is not easy to be a good teacher. I basically have one hour for each child (normal class time is 45 minutes). But to my relief, after six months, children can fully understand the seven basic levels of treble clef. Although the bass clef is not very good, I believe that with her grandmother's active cooperation and my careful training, she will learn it well!
After that, the theory of regression, generalization and differentiation is basically the same as Pavlov's, so I won't go into details here. The behaviorism developed to Skinner is relatively perfect, but behaviorism only explains explicit behavior and rarely involves internal changes in the learning process. The disadvantages of better explaining simple behavior without involving complex behavior have not been solved. Bandura and tolman questioned behaviorism, and their views were between behaviorism and cognitivism.
Bandura (A. Bandura 1925-? ) put forward his own social cognitive learning theory on the disadvantages of behaviorism. In his observation and study, he paid attention to the influence of social factors, absorbed the research results of cognitive psychology school, organically combined reinforcement theory with information processing theory, and changed the ideological tendency of behaviorism that emphasized stimulation over central process. It changed behaviorism, and directly extended the conclusions drawn from animals to people's wrong tendencies. Observational learning mode, classical conditioned reflex and operational conditioned reflex are called the three tools of explanatory learning. It fully emphasizes the importance of observation and learning, and the role of teachers and parents as role models. Parents are the first kind of people that children come into contact with after birth, and their importance is self-evident. The second is teachers, who impart knowledge and teach students survival skills. Being a teacher is a very important quality of teachers. However, there are still many shortcomings. First, children's own cognitive structure is always ignored, and the importance of development variables is underestimated. Second, the role model in the laboratory contains obedience and pressure, which affects the credibility of the experiment and makes the role model effect higher than real life. Third, overemphasize indirect learning and underestimate the importance of direct learning. The following is the author's summary of Bandura's social learning theory:
Bandura advocates the orientation theory of behavior, individual and environment.
These three factors influence each other, so he points out that learning comes from observation and imitation. Therefore, he believes that observation learning does not necessarily have explicit behavioral responses. By observing other people's demonstration behavior, we can learn this behavior and avoid unnecessary mistakes, such as learning swimming and driving skills. This is very suitable for those of us who study art. China's art study has always been word of mouth, with no distractions, and Taskmaster is stylized. For example, Peking Opera, which was formed during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, has not lost its essence so far, but western art is very different, from baroque to classical to romantic to national music to impressionism to post-modern music. What a change! At the same time, observation learning does not necessarily rely on direct experience to strengthen, nor is it a mechanical response, but a subjective response with a subjective color.
Based on the above theory, he put forward the theory of self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy refers to the ability of individuals to judge, believe or master and feel whether they can complete an activity at a certain level. That is, the individual's sense of competence and his feelings of self-confidence, self-esteem and self-love when facing a certain task activity. Self-efficacy can also be called self-efficacy, self-belief and self-efficacy expectation.
Bandura pointed out: "Performance expectation not only affects the choice of activities and occasions, but also affects the degree of effort. Perceived efficacy expectation is the main determinant of what activities people choose, how much effort they make and how long they support their efforts when they are under pressure. " Bandura has done a lot of research on the formation conditions of self-efficacy and its influence on behavior, pointing out that the formation of self-efficacy is mainly influenced by five factors, including the success or failure experience of behavior; Alternative experience; Emotional arousal and situational conditions. As long as music teachers can understand this truth, they can fully mobilize students' enthusiasm, tap their potential and create a good learning atmosphere.
By Bandura, behaviorism has developed into a transitional period to cognitivism. Educational psychologists are not satisfied with the study of explicit learning, but turn to internal learning, and cognitivism and humanism have emerged one after another, gradually perfecting the theory of human learning.
Although behaviorism is the earliest school of learning theory, some learning problems have been well solved, including the above-mentioned cases, which can basically be solved from the perspective of behaviorism (such as strengthening procedures, etc. I believe it will be helpful to your future teaching. But after all, man is a complex biological individual, and everyone has his own characteristics besides sociality. The author believes that no school can completely summarize human learning, and all have their own limitations, but what is certain is that as long as we correctly judge the types of students' problems, teach students in accordance with their aptitude, and organically combine behaviorism, cognition and humanism, we can achieve unexpected results. This is also an urgent problem and development direction in educational psychology.
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