Social Learning Theory

THE INVENTION OF CHILDHOOD - BBC Radio4 (Michael Morpurgo) Dec 2006

Episode 1: from the 11th to the early 16th century Michael Morpurgo draws together the stories of medieval British childhood, exploring how the arrival of Christianity and the Norman Conquest, the Black Death and the introduction of printing affected children from the 11th to the early 16th centuries. Read by Timothy West, Sara Kestelman, Anna Maxwell Martin and Adam Godley.

Episode 2: 16th and 17th centuries In the second compilation drawn from his major series on the history of British childhood, Michael Morpurgo looks at how children fared in the wake of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. What impact did it have on a child's self-esteem to grow up believing that he was " a wicked man , as he that is ignorant and not exercised in godliness"? Michael Morpurgo finds out about the growing educational opportunities for boys and the diminishing chances for girls in the seventeenth century, and about the impact of the Poor Law on the most disadvantaged children of all.

Episode 3: The 18th century Pulling together the stories of childhood in the eighteenth century, Michael Morpurgo tells of the first Foundling Hospital, the impact of two great parenting gurus - John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, - and their battle over the nature and purpose of childhood, and he looks into the growth of a phenomenon which was entirely new to eighteenth century parents but all too familiar to those in the twentieth first century - pester power.

Episode 4: the 19th Century Moving into the nineteenth century, Michael Morpurgo recalls the profound impact of the new Public Schools on children from better off backgrounds, while other children worked in mills, down mines or up chimneys, and the least well-off were living on the streets. All this before the introduction of compulsory schooling in 1870.

Episode 5: Into the 20th century As his story of British childhood moves into the first half of the twentieth century, Michael Morpurgo explores the impact of the Empire on children - the ones in Britain, the ones sent away to start new lives in Canada and Australia, and the ones who came from elsewhere to settle here and make new lives for themselves and their families. Michael also traces the surprising story of how three dreadful wars ultimately benefited British children, leading to the establishment of our Welfare State.

Episode 6: Up to date Bringing his long story up to the present with the last compilation of Radio Four's major series The Invention of Childhood, Michael Morpurgo traces how the immense economic and cultural changes of the last fifty years have affected the lives of British children. Do such changes herald the imminent disappearance of childhood, or will it go on reinventing itself indefinitely?

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY: BANDURA

Summary: Bandura’s Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.
Originator: Albert Bandura
Key Terms: Modeling, reciprocal determinism
Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
People learn through observing others’ behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those behaviors. “Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” (Bandura). Social learning theory explains human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental influences.
Necessary conditions for effective modeling:

1. Attention — various factors increase or decrease the amount of attention paid. Includes distinctiveness, affective valence, prevalence, complexity, functional value. One’s characteristics (e.g. sensory capacities, arousal level, perceptual set, past reinforcement) affect attention.
2. Retention — remembering what you paid attention to. Includes symbolic coding, mental images, cognitive organization, symbolic rehearsal, motor rehearsal
3. Reproduction — reproducing the image. Including physical capabilities, and self-observation of reproduction.
4. Motivation — having a good reason to imitate. Includes motives such as past (i.e. traditional behaviorism), promised (imagined incentives) and vicarious (seeing and recalling the reinforced model)

Bandura believed in “reciprocal determinism”, that is, the world and a person’s behavior cause each other, while behaviorism essentially states that one’s environment causes one’s behavior, Bandura, who was studying adolescent aggression, found this too simplistic, and so in addition he suggested that behavior causes environment as well. Later, Bandura soon considered personality as an interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and one’s psychological processes (one’s ability to entertain images in minds and language).
Social learning theory has sometimes been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation. The theory is related to Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory and Lave’s Situated Learning, which also emphasize the importance of social learning.
For more information, see:

• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.
• Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press.
• Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of Behavior Modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
• Bandura, A. & Walters, R. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Black Boys in School (pt.1)

MERLIN Role models of African-Caribbean ethnicity

Getting the clearer part of things now.......

It's my second blog being created because its all a learning curve and as the going gets tough, the tough gets going!!!!!!

one day at a time!!!!

have been trying to update my comments but still have not got it, managed only one on Ihar's blog....thats a start!