I strongly agree with you about the example that you made(the Chinese middle school), behaviorism is definitely very useful and effective when it comes to exam-oriented education. Given stimuli and the response is a quick way of rote learning, and I personally think it is effective. I believe that cognitivism is more suitable for students to have the ability to structure a system of learning in their minds so that even when they forget the response of the stimuli, they could figure it out again using the mind map in their memory.
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If we consider the scenario of a high school teacher planning a class on climate change, learning could be designed very differently by three approaches.
As a behaviorist, the teacher focuses on the stimuli and the consequences. For example, the teacher could make flashcards with one-to-one pairs of what causes climate change. The emissions from manufacturing goods cause air pollution, or the greenhouse effect cause the temperature to raise, or the lack of forests causes the lack of nature’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide. To make the students learn the knowledge, and perform better in exams(taking the exam is an example of stimuli and response), the teacher might give them previous exams and answers as practices and cues of linking the causes of climate change. I would say that behaviorism focuses on doing the correct thing using the previous templates as examples. Also, it relies on one-to-one pairs as A will always led to B, therefore, further learning and development are not provided.
Cognitivism, on the other hand, focuses more on how students learn the causes and the consequences of climate change, and how to store the knowledge. The teacher might make mind maps to make the students think and connect the cause and effects of climate change by themself. More importantly, the teacher focuses more on the students than on teaching. If the mind map doesn’t work for some students, the teacher will think of another way such as storytelling. The main idea of teaching in cognitivism is to let the student make the connection, instead of simply giving questions and answers.
Constructivists are the type of learning designers who believe that learning is best by actually doing, and linking the experience with the previous knowledge and experiences. As a teacher trying to teach climate change in high school, he/she might have a class outside of the classroom, and let the students feel and think about the cause and effects of climate change. Take them to the nearest forest, or the factories that produce emissions, and the teacher could let the students do some experiments about greenhouse gas emissions. Constructivists emphasize the ability to develop a way of studying and apply the ability in future studies.
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