Test: Teaching Practices (Theories of Learning) - Software Development MCQ

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949) was a professor of American Psychology, a disciple of William James who developed a series of laws about trial and error learning. Thorndike's theories are considered as the precursors of American behaviorism that would find its maximum exponent in the figure of Skinner, father of operant conditioning.

Key Points

Thorndike has given the following laws of learning:- 

• Law of effect
• Law of readiness
• Law of multiple responses
• Law of set attitude
• Law of exercise
• Law of response

​Important Points

Nothing succeeds like success means success leads to opportunities for further and greater successes.

• Law of effect:- According to this law, the trial or steps leading to satisfaction stamps in the bond or connection. Satisfying states lead to consolidation and strengthening of the connection whereas dis-satisfaction, annoyance, or pain lead to the weakening or stamping out of the connection.​
• Law of Effect states that when a connection between stimulus and response is accompanied by satisfying state, its strength is increased. On the other hand, when a connection is accompanied by an annoying state of affairs, its strength is reduced or weakened. The saying "nothing succeeds like success" goes very well with the law. Thorndike revised this law in 1930 and according to this revision, he stated that reward strengthened the response but the punishment did not always weaken the response. Then he places more emphasis on the reward aspect than on the punishment aspect of Law of Effect.

Additional Information

Hence, we can conclude that ‘Nothing succeeds like success, this statement is based on the law of effect learning as propounded by Thorndike.

Kohlberg gave the moral development theory.  According to which he explained that the importance of moral development should not be neglected at the school level as morality is essential.

• Moral development refers to changes in moral beliefs as a person grows older and gains maturity.
• He divided the moral development of children into three stages: pre-conventional level, level of conventional morality, and post-conventional morality.

Key Points

Kohlberg's stages of moral development:

​Hence, it is clear that morality on the basis of existing social norms is during the conventional Morality.

Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy is a hierarchical organization of cognitive objectives. Bloom classifies learning objectives into three domains, cognitive, affective, and sensory domain.

1. Cognitive Domain: mental skills
2. Affective Domain: growth in feelings or emotional areas
3. Psychomotor Domain: manual or physical skills

The cognitive domain involves six categories of learning that serve in the development of intellectual skills.

Key Points

According to Bloom, learning of concepts and identifying examples reflects one’s understanding level, recalling of previously learned information reflects one’s memory level, isolating and organizing information into parts involves analyzing and generation or constructing of new ideas reflects one’s creative level, as understood from the diagram shown below:

• Juhi plants a garden after reading about how to grow plants depicts "applying" from the cognitive domain of Bloom's revised taxonomy. As after reading about the process she is executing the process. Hence it is the correct answer.

Additional Information

• Indu disagrees with her teacher's interpretation of a poem - this depicts an evaluation step.
• Mukesh identifies the assumptions of the theory of the origin of the universe -this depicts rembering.
• Jatin learns about common features of all mammals- this is remembering.

 Maslow

• Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory of motivation which states that five categories of human needs dictate an individual's behavior.
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an idea in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs is used to study how humans intrinsically partake in behavioral motivation. 
•  Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging and love", "social needs" or "esteem", and "self-actualization" to describe the pattern through which human motivations generally move.
• This means that in order for motivation to arise at the next stage, each stage must be satisfied within the individual themselves. 
• Those needs are

1. physiological needs
2. safety needs
3. love
4. belonging needs,
5. esteem needs
6. self-actualization needs.

Therefore, If a person strongly feels that he has to achieve maximum by utilizing his potentials to the maximum extent, then according to Maslow, it is Self-fulfillment needs.

Motivation:  It is the positive behavior to acquire a skill or knowledge, Motivation can be two types. Motive can be defined as the reason for which you are doing something, or the level of desire you have to do something. 

Motives can be categorized into two

1. Primary, or basic or physiological  motives
   • ​It is unlearned and common to both animals and humans. 
   • It is basic human motives like food, cloth, shelter, etc.
   • These define the biological or physical needs
2. Secondary, or learned motives
   • It can differ from animal to animal and person to person.
   • These motives can be learned day by day through practices

Social Motives: it is a secondary motive acquired by interacting with others. It may be universal (e.g., need for affiliation) or culture-specific (e.g., need for achievement). 

Educational motives: It is the positive behaviour to acquire a skill or knowledge, Motivation can be two types

• Intrinsic motivation: it comes from deep within the mind, i.e. readiness to learn, love for learning, like a subject
• Extrinsic motivation: it comes from outside influences, i.e. appreciation by the teacher, motivational speech of a topper, parents' motivation, etc.

Hence, we can conclude that achievement is not a physiological motive .

The word motivation has been originated from the Latin word "moveers" which means to move. Motivation is an internal force that accelerates a response or behavior. It is something that energizes or compels an individual to act and behave in a specified way. 

• Motivation is a general term applied to the entire class of drives, desires, needs, wishes, and similar forces. It can be considered the state of having encouragement to do something. There are two primary types of motivation namely, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.

Key Points

Functions of motivation (intrinsic):

• It is the internal condition or factor of the learning. It directs behavior that leads to self-actualization in learning.
• It is the arousal of a tendency to act and produce results. It is the drive to achieve something in life that satisfies one’s needs.
• It arouses and sustains interest of learners in teaching- learning process which compels them to be active while learning a concept.
• It is a directive to a selective goal and releases the tension by satisfying the needs of the learner. It motivates individuals intrinsically to achieve goals.

Hence, securing more marks in the examination is not a function of motivation in the field of learning.

Hint

Securing more marks in the examination is a function of extrinsic motivation which refers to a behavior that is guided by earning rewards or avoiding punishment.

Moral development refers to the process through which children develop the standards of right and wrong within their society, based on social and cultural norms, and laws.

• Piaget conceptualizes moral development as a constructivist process, whereby the interplay of action and thought builds moral concepts.

Key Points

Piaget (1932) suggested two main types of moral thinking:

Heteronomous morality (5-9 yrs)

• The stage of heteronomous morality is also known as moral realism
• Morality is imposed from the outside.
• Children regard morality as obeying other people's rules and laws, which cannot be changed.
• They accept that all rules are made by some authority figure (e.g. parents, teacher, God) and that breaking the rules will lead to immediate and severe punishment.

Autonomous Morality (9-10 yrs)

Hence, from the above explanations, it can be concluded that Mukesh is in the heteronomous stage of Piaget’s stages of moral development.

Additional Information 

• Individualism, purpose, and exchange: It is the second stage of Kohlberg's theory. At this stage, the right action consists of that which instrumentally satisfies one's own needs and occasionally the needs of others.
• Social contract: It is the fifth stage of Kohlberg's theory. Behavior is driven by a balance of social order and individual rights.

Operant Conditioning: Skinner (1904-1990) is the psychologist who has done the most to develop and apply the ideas originally proposed by Thorndike. Skinner continued and expanded Thorndike’s work and is credited with developing the theory we now call Operant Conditioning. 

• Contrary to the theories of both Watson and Pavlov (S-R theorists), Skinner believed that behaviors are manipulated when they are followed by either positive or negative reinforcement based on the schedule of reinforcement and the way of shaping behavior. 
• Whenever the lever is pressed, the animal is reinforced immediately by the application of a reward such as food. By progressively reinforcing the operant that comes closest to the goal behavior, a process called shaping.
• The reinforcement schedule refers to a set of rules which is used to increase the occurrence of acceptable behavior.
• Positive reinforcement increases desired behaviors by following them with rewards. For example, if rat food is dispensed every time a rat pushes a pedal, it will repeatedly push that same pedal to get more edible treats. The action of pushing the pedal, the desired behavior, has been reinforced with food.
• Negative reinforcement increases desired behaviors by allowing subjects to escape punishment through their performance. For example, if a rat received a painful electrical jolt that would not cease unless it pressed a pedal, it would begin to press it quickly following each initial jolt to relieve its pain. The action of pushing the pedal, the desired behavior, has again been reinforced, though by a different method than before.

Hence, we can conclude that all points differentiate Skinner from other S-R theorists.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, belongs to the cognitive school of psychology, is famous for his work on child development. He strongly believed that children are little scientist and they actively construct their understanding of the world.

He made a systematic study of cognitive development in his theory that is categorised in four stages as explained below:

Hence, we conclude that Children who are in the elementary school are in Concrete Operation state of development.

Mastery learning is a term, formulated by John B.Carrol1 (1971) and Benjamin Bloom (1971). Mastery learning provides a compact and interesting way of increasing the likelihood that more students will attain a satisfactory level of performance in school subjects.

Important PointsThey transformed their views into a system with the following characteristics:
1. Mastery of any subject is defined in terms of sets of major objectives which represent the purpose of the course or unit.
2. The substance is then divided into a larger set of relatively small learning units, each one accompanied by its objectives, which are parts of the larger ones or thought essential to their mastery.
3. Learning materials are then identified and the instructional strategy selected.
4. Each unit is accompanied by brief diagnostic tests which measure the student's developing progress (the formative evaluation) and identify the particular problem each student is having.
5. The data obtained from administering the test is used to provide supplementary instruction to the students to help them overcome their problems.

Additional Information

• If information is managed in this way, Bloom believes, then time to learn can be adjusted to fit aptitude.
• Students of lesser aptitude can be given more time and more feedback while the progress of all is monitored with the assistance of tests. This model is called so because it believes in achieving mastery on a particular subject.
• Every class suffers from 'under-achievers' (performance of the students lacked from normal students), these students suffer from an inferiority complex, which affects their progress. This inferiority complex affects self-concept. These students have a low self-concept, which affects teaching.
• Ultimately it is an enormous wastage of expenditure on education.
• Thus, Bloom presented this model to achieve mastery on a particular subject to a certain limit, to every student, called it 'Mastery Learning Model', based on two assumptions.
  • Except physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped students (ninety-five percent) all students can master a certain subject, if they have given choice to learn at their speed and by proper teaching methods.
  • A subject can be mastered from 90 to 95% if proper teaching methods are adopted. 

Hence, we can conclude that the Attain mastery level by teachers is not developed by the mastery learning model by B.S Bloom. Instead, it talks about the mastery level of a subject by students.