Stimulus-Cognitive Perspective

In the teaching profession as an Integrated Science teacher, for the past six years, I must agree that students do learn differently. As teachers we must cater to their various learning styles or we will be faced with students who gets bored or those who stare at us in bewilderment and confusion over not being able to understand the lesson. If we consider this very important fact that not all our students are the same, then when planning and preparing as good teachers we will include strategies and activities which will keep their minds occupied, focused and busy. There are several perspectives which have been proposed in educational psychology. This essay will look mainly at the Behavioral and Cognitive perspectives and the role that …show more content…
The type of environment created in the classroom influences the behavior of students. People become conditioned, or molded, to respond in certain ways based on responses and this is in regards to feedback, praise and rewards. Students tend to perform better if they receive praise upon the completion of an assignment or participate more freely in class if their input towards class discussion is encouraged. Receiving praise for work well done or improved also encourages a student to want to do better in class. Behaviorist also focus on observable events rather than events that occur inside a person’s head, such as thoughts, feelings and beliefs. It is focused on the stimuli and responses to those stimuli. For example, you will find a classroom being very disruptive if a teacher continuously allows student to behave in any manner that they wish to in a classroom. Most times this is observed during the first week of classes when students are testing to see which teachers are strict or the ones that they can get away with stuff. They may want to carry on loud conversations in the classroom but as a teacher setting the standard in the way class discussion should be conducted, by conditioning them to raise their hands to be acknowledged and getting a turn to speak will allow for a more manageable …show more content…
In Science, even though we don’t have a lab at Delille Academy, we conduct experiments when possible. Students for example, are asked to identify a possible hypothesis for a Ventilation experiment as to the types of circulation which can occur if certain types of homes are built and after constructing models of these and we discuss ways how they could be ventilated. It is amazing the thoughts and ideas the students of improving ventilation in homes. In Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural development theory, he focuses on the importance which the culture affecting and shaping cognitive development. He states that cognitive development varies across cultures. From my experience in the classroom, I must say that from observation Asian students do appear much more knowledgeable and have an easier time grasping mathematical concepts. This probably has to do with the fact that they are constantly handling monies in family