Perspectives

Sarah

EDU 313N wk 2

November 18, 2012

Have you ever sat down and thought of how you learn or what perspective your teachers took when they taught you? Did they use behaviorist or humanistic type teaching? To completely understand this we need to look at what exactly those mean. To make a short definition of it, the humanistic approach is believing that if you feel good about yourself then you will be able to learn, that the drive comes from inside you. If you were taught by behaviorism it is more of a belief that if you give a child good consequences they will want to do good. I am going to talk about the benefits of teaching using behaviorism.

There were many contributors who played a role in behaviorism. Socrates started it, followed by Seneca, Montaigne, Erasmus, and Rosseau. The term humanism has been used for many things, it has been diversely used and therefore is a confusion between several related uses of the term. We are looking at it in the classroom. Behaviorism is believed to allow children to be able to believe in themselves and therefore they will have the drive and desire to reach out and do their best. The downfall with this belief is that in the classroom the focus is on how the child views himself or herself and not as much thought about what they are learning is achieved. This can be a downfall because both perspectives need to be looked at. Educators however can use this to their advantage because most children are quite conscious of what others believe of them because of how they look and they should not have to worry about that, they should just worry about what they are studying. This belief allows them to believe in themselves and feel good about themselves and therefore it is believed that they will learn just because they believe they can. “The child is able to showcase his creativity in this type of open classroom, which increases self-esteem and a willingness to learn” says Bill Huitt.

“Kids health reports that...