Teaching theories and educational practice

Learning Theories

Theories of Learning

A Comparison of Skinner's and Vygotsky's theories of learning

While both B.F. Skinner and L. Vygotsky proposed remarkably coherent theories of how students and teachers should approach the pedagogical process, both theorists viewed learning from profoundly different ways, one from a primarily structured and individualist approach, the other from a more social and holistic point-of-view. Skinner's primary focus was upon the teacher's ability to directly instill certain behaviors within the student, through the use of environmental shaping and operant conditioning. Skinner thought this ensured the student could mimic the learned behaviors once the initial influences of the 'shaping' were withdrawn. In contrast, Vygotsky placed the role of the learner in a larger social context, one that existed beyond the relationship enjoyed by the teacher and student. The major theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework was that a learner's social interactions with his or her peers as well as with his or her teacher could play a fundamental role in the learning process.

The basic concept of Skinner's theory of behaviorism revolved around the process of operant conditioning. Unlike classical conditioning, operant conditioning allows the subject or learner to make the first move. For example, an animal may be placed in a cage and may take a very long time to figure out that pressing a lever will produce food, but when the animal does, the operant conditioner will reward the animals. In operant conditioning, to reinforce desirable behaviors, successive approximations of the behavior are rewarded until the animal learns the association between the lever and the food reward. But Vygotsky believed that the child's learning and development had its origins first and foremost on the social level, and only later, on the individual level. He believed that even logical memory as well as the formation of concepts originated in forming relationships between individuals, including peers as well as between the teacher and the student.

The nature of human learning for Skinner was based on a schema of rewards. For example, to teach a student via shaping, the learner may be rewarded for simply making a motion towards the desired behavior. The student is gradually brought into the desirable behavior though an external and sequential succession of steps. The learner, through positive reinforcement and shaping, mastered each step in sequence. Vygotsky's theory held the potential for cognitive development dependant upon a zone of proximal development, or ZPD. The ZPD was a level of development attained when children engage in social behavior in a more holistic and discursive fashion than suggested by the nature of learning envisioned in Skinner. Full development in the zone of proximal development depended upon full, constant social interaction with peers and adults, and no one could enter this zone alone. Scaffolding rather than shaping is key -- the scaffolding process means providing non-intrusive intervention and teaching by an adult but also just a fellow who has already mastered that particular function in his or her own learning.