The first learning theory that our class discussed about was the Behaviorist learning theory. For a behaviorist, what's important are the senses, feeling and environment. Also, it was mentioned under this that learning occurs when there is conditioning and conditioning comes with reinforcement. In the behaviorist approach, there is the presence of a stimulus, which must be present in the environment. The stimulus must be very engaging in that the medium must be pleasing to the eye of the students. It was stressed in class that the children must not be overwhelmed with stimulation because too much stimulation is already considered as a distraction. An application of this is the facilitating of games for motivation and praises as rewards.
For the behaviorist, as the class went on, children learn best through stimulation and reinforcement. It had always been confusing to me if there is really a negative reinforcement or none at all. In my Reading and Language class, it was discussed that there are two types of reinforcements, one negative, two positive. Well, the part of reinforcement being positive is already clear to me, but it has bothered me that there is some kind of reinforcement that is outwardly negative. My professor then, Ma'am Rom, said that when the teacher removes a task which is considered as hard and painstaking by the students, then that teacher is applying a negative reinforcement to the students. That way, the students do away with something they don't like to do. A perfect example is a postponed exam or a less in the requirements that is needed to be submitted. My professor said that it somehow make the students feel that the burden has been removed and so it paves the way for them to make time for something else to do which is not necessarily an academic work as well.
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