What is Behaviourism and How Can it be Utilized in Schools

Behaviourism is a theory expounded by the psychologist B F Skinner, who argued that cause and effect is what controls behaviour, not the mind or reasoning. The keyword to Behaviourism is “conditioning” or “training.” The story about Pavlov’s dogs illustrates this idea.

All about Pavlov’s Dogs

The physiologist Pavlov noticed that his dogs salivated at feeding time at the smell of food. He decided to explore this reaction and accompanied feeding time with the ringing of a bell. This he did over a long period, which is what conditioning requires. One day, he rang the bell but did not bring food. The dogs continued to salivate. Through this, Pavlov learned that the dogs had made a mental association between the sound of the bell and the experience of food. The dogs had “learned” a response through conditioning to a particular stimulus, in this case, the bell.

Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning

There are two sides to the Behaviourist approach:

• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning

Classical conditioning is simply about conditioning through a neutral stimulus. Nothing else is involved. An example of this is the sound of the bell in schools that encourages the automatic response of children to go to class.

Operant conditioning means reinforcing a particular behaviour through punishment or reward. An example of this is to give someone a treat if he behaves or to berate bad behaviour.

In both Operant and Classical conditioning, Behaviourism is all about behaviour only, and not about the cognitive thought processes of the higher brain.