The Importance Of Behaviorism To Learning

‘behaviourism’ to learning.
Behaviourism is the study of external behaviour. It is the theory in which both human and animals’ behaviour can be explained in terms of conditioning regardless of appealing to the thoughts or feelings. Psychological disorders are well treated by altering behaviour patterns. (Huitt, 2006)
Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour brought about by experience or practice.
It is the act of obtaining new, altering and reinforcing the existing behaviours and preferences. It may consist of synthesizing different types of information. Learning creates changes in the organism and they are relatively permanent
The learning theories of behaviourism can be very useful for teaching effectively.

Which means the behaviour that can be seen from outside. The theories of positive and negative reinforcement techniques are very effective in treating some human disorders like autism, anxiet y disorders and antisocial behaviour. Teachers who reward and punish student behaviours often uses the theories of behaviourism. (Anon., n.d.) two ways in which the behaviourism has been applied in education.
The two major learning theories of behaviourism are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In operant conditioning through the effects of pleasant and unpleasant consequences to responses, voluntary behaviour is learned. Classical conditioning is the conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus is paired with and precedes the unconditioned stimulus until the conditioned stimulus alone is sufficient to elicit the response.
Reinforcement is any event or stimulus when following a response increases the chances of the response occurring again. A primary reinforcer is any reinforcer which is naturally reinforcing by meeting a basic need like hunger, thirst and or touch. Secondary reinforcer is any reinforcer

Entering the classrooms when the bell rings.
Criticisms of the behaviourism in education:
Failure to show adequate generalizability in human behavior
There are many experiments to show evidence of both Pavlovian conditioning and operant conditioning. But all of these experiments are based on animals and their behavior. There are not enough experiments done with human participants. Human behaviour is much more complex than animal behaviour. Skinner is making assumption that general laws relating to the behavior of animals can be applied to describe the complex relations in the human world. He has been using animals as substitutes for humans in the exploration of human behavior. If this assumption was not correct, then the entire foundation upon which behaviorism rests will come crashing down. We need to do more experiments with human participants to prove the validity of this theory. (Anon.,
n.d.)
Behaviour of humans and animals are very different. It is very illogical to assume that they both behave in a same way.
Behaviorism does not account for other types of