Have you ever thought about how powerful educators are?

As per the fact that

teaching is a profession that's often underappreciated and over criticized. People
tend to forget that teachers are not just educators, but also mentors, counselors,
and role models. They play a vital role in shaping young minds, a tremendous
power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. While on the other hand, on
the part of educators, it is also important that they should also broaden their
skills and knowledge each time. Theory and practice in education is created for
getting better understanding, teaching, and learning in broader areas of interests
within the educational fields. it is sometimes without fully understanding the
theory behind it.
With greater insight into what is currently known about the processes of
learning and about individual learners, teachers are better equipped to provide
experiences and situations that are more likely to lead to effective acquisition of
knowledge, concepts and skills. One of the most important aspects of learning
theories is catching up with the swift change in technology that is transforming
the landscape of our society and how we transfer knowledge nowadays. There
are five theories that provide further insight into the ways in which learning
takes place. Which educators can make use of their planning and teaching. The
first theory is Skinner’s operant conditioning, the second theory is Ausabel’s
Subsumption Theory, the third theory is Root Vs. Meaningful theory. Moreover
the theory of systematic and programming and the last one is roger humanistic
psychology.

According to (Keller, 1991) B.F. Skinner’s pioneering work in Behaviourism

has left a lasting mark on modern society. At the center of his legacy is the
development of operant conditioning, a concept that has directly impacted the
realms of education and parenting, workplace dynamics, animal training, and
therapeutic interventions. In this exploration, we take a closer look at Skinner’s
legacy and the modern day applications of operant conditioning. Skinner
developed the concept of operant conditioning, a type of learning in which
behaviour is modified by its consequences B.F. Skinner was a psychologist who
focused primarily on behaviour, and was a leading figure in behaviourism. Prior
to WWII, in the 1930s, he would work extensively in laboratories researching
animal behaviour, running behavioural engineering experiments and creating
behavioural technologies such as the Skinner box, which would be “essential in
providing the proper conditions for the manipulation of operant behaviour”.

Operant conditioning, sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning is a

method of learning that occurs through punishments and rewards for behaviour.
Individuals associate their behaviours with consequences. Actions or behaviours
that are followed with praise or encouragement (reinforcement) tend to increase
and actions or behaviours that are met with punishment or annoyance tend to
decrease. For example, when a child finishes his/her homework within a given
time frame, and the parent praises the child for this behaviour, the child is
reinforced to repeat these behaviours. When a child misbehaves in public, the
parents refuse to get ice cream, thereby using punishment to decrease the
undesirable behaviour.

According to Ausubel, D.P. (1960) Influenced by Jean Pageant, Ausubel

believed that understanding concepts, principles, and ideas is achieved through
deductive reasoning, and he emphasized the importance of meaningful learning
over rote memorization. Ausubel’s learning theory is based on the idea that new
knowledge relies on what is already known. The construction of knowledge
begins with our observation and recognition of events and objects through
concepts we already have. We learn by constructing a network of concepts and
adding to them. Ausubel and Novak developed a useful instructional device
called the concept map to represent the relationships between ideas, images, or
words. Ausubel also stresses the importance of reception rather than discovery
learning and meaningful rather than rote learning. He declares that his theory
applies only to reception learning in school settings. He did not say, however,
that discovery learning doesn’t work, but rather that it is not as efficient.
Ausubel’s theory also focuses on meaningful learning. According to his theory,
to learn meaningfully, individuals must relate new knowledge to relevant
concepts they already know. New knowledge must interact with the learner’s
knowledge structure. Ausubel advocates the use of advanced organizers as a
mechanism to help link new learning material with existing related ideas.
Ausubel’s theory of advanced organizers falls into two categories: comparative
and expository.

As stated by Ausubel (1986) , Comparative organizers are used as reminders

to bring into working memory what may not be realized as relevant. They
activate existing schemas and both integrate and discriminate. As Ausubel
wrote, comparative organizers “integrate new ideas with basically similar
concepts in cognitive structure, as well as increase discriminability between
new and existing ideas which are essentially different but confusingly similar”
(Ausubel, 1968, p. 149). For example, you can use comparative organizers to
teach the “mammals”. To introduce the concept to your students, you could use
a comparative organizer to help your students understand what distinguishes
mammals from other types of animals.

Learning theories describe the conditions and processes through which

learning occurs, providing teachers with models to develop instruction sessions
that lead to better learning. These theories explain the processes that people
engage in as they make sense of information, and how they integrate that
information into their mental models so that it becomes new knowledge.
Learning theories also examine what motivates people to learn, and what
circumstances enable or hinder learning.

Sometimes people are skeptical of having to learn theory, believing those

theories will not be relevant in the real world, but learning theories are widely
applicable. The models and processes that they describe tend to apply across
different populations and settings, and provide us with guidelines to develop
exercises, assignments, and lesson plans that align with how our students learn
best. Learning theories can also be engaging. People who enjoy teaching often
find the theories interesting and will be excited when they start to see
connections between the theory and the learning they see happening in their
own classrooms.

According to (Popp, 1996) behavioral theorists, we can change people’s

behavior by manipulating the environment in order to encourage certain
behaviors and discourage others, a process called conditioning. Perhaps the
most famous example of conditioning is Pavlov’s dog. In his classic
experiment, Pavlov demonstrated that a dog could be conditioned to associate
the sound of a bell with food, so that eventually the dog would salivate
whenever it heard the bell, regardless of whether it received food. Watson
adapted stimulus conditioning to humans (Jensen, 2018). He gave an 11-month-
old baby a rat, and the baby seemed to enjoy playing with it. Over time, Watson
caused a loud, unpleasant sound each time he brought out the rat. Eventually,
the baby associated the rat with the noise and cried when he saw the rat.
Although Watson’s experiment is now considered ethically questionable, it did
establish that people’s behavior could be modified through control of
environmental stimuli.

During learning foreign languages, learners came across some difficulties.

One of the largest problems in learning a second language is forgetting
systematically. What is its consequence? You can get the answer while you are
reading this article. According to Bibesco (2010) Many students have poor
memory problems. They have difficulty remembering instructions, phone
numbers, dates, places or directions. They have just been given what was just
said during conversations, class lectures and discussions and what they just
read. Different scholars provided various definitions of forgetting. According to
Cubeli etymologically, the word ‘to forget’ derives from the Old English word
forgytan, which is composed by for (letting go) and gientan (to grasp) Tulving
defined forgetting as “the inability to recall something now that could be
recalled on an earlier occasion. Davis defined the strong form at forgetting as
complete loss from storage by saying that forgetting is “the theoretical
possibility that refers to a total erasure of the original memory that can not be
recalled, no matter what technique is used to aid recall. Now we live in a high -
tech century. When the computer was invented, it was created like a people’s
memory. Now the memories of every computer remember its files for only 6 or
12 months.Then it begins to forget them quietly like our memory. We also
remember only necessary recollections. During learning another language
learners have difficulties in remembering new words.

According to Maslow (1970) As the “third force” in psychology, humanism is

touted as a reaction both to the pessimistic determinism of psychoanalysis, with
its emphasis on psychological disturbance, and to the behaviorists’ view of
humans passively reacting to the environment, which has been criticized as
making people out to be personality-less robots. It does not suggest that
psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and other points of view are incorrect but argues
that these perspectives do not recognize the depth and meaning of human
experience, and fail to recognize the innate capacity for self-directed change and
transforming personal experiences. This perspective focuses on how healthy
people develop. One pioneering humanist, Abraham Maslow, studied people
who he considered to be healthy, creative, and productive, including Albert
Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and others.
Maslow (1950, 1970) found that such people share similar characteristics, such
as being open, creative, loving, spontaneous, compassionate, concerned for
others, and accepting of themselves. When you studied motivation, you learned
about one of the best-known humanistic theories, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
theory, in which Maslow proposes that human beings have certain needs in
common and that these needs must be met in a certain order. The highest need is
the need for self-actualization, which is the achievement of our fullest potential.

Being passionate about helping students learn and grow, to inspire and
support students every day is very fulfilling to an educator, education is one of
the most important tools that we have to improve in our world. Furthermore,
Understanding of learning styles is important for both teacher and student. A
student should be aware of his/her own learning style so that he/she can pick up
the right material for self-study. A teacher should also know about the learning
styles of his/her students so that each and every student learns in the class.

Generally speaking, the learning-styles can be divided into five categories:

Skinner’s operant conditioning, Ausabel’s Subsumption Theory, Root Vs.
Meaningful theory. Systematic and programming, Roger humanistic
psychology.
Skinner’s operant conditioning B. F. Skinner believed that learning involves a
shift in overt behavior. A change in human behavior occurs as the outcome of a
person's response to stimuli events that take place in the surrounding.
Skinner’s theory of Operant conditioning is widely used in teaching, for
example: instructional development and classroom management and clinical
settings. While ausubel emphasized the importance of 'advance organizers' in
instruction, which help bridge the gap between what the learner already knows
and new information. Meaningful Learning occurs when the new information is
related to prior knowledge. Therefore, this approach helps learners make little
or no effort to integrate new concepts and propositions with relevant concepts
and propositions already known, and meaningful learning where the learner
seeks to integrate new knowledge with relevant existing knowledge. Following
this is the Systematic Forgetting Theory. An important aspect of the pruning
stage of learning is that subsumptive forgetting, or pruning, is not random or
chance. However, it is systematic. Finally, The Rogers humanistic psychology
theory The aim of learning according to humanistic theory is to make people
more humane. Students are expected to be independent, brave, and not
constrained by others.

Reference:
Cabelli R. (2001) A new taxonomy of memory and forgetting. New York, p 35.

Feng Zhiwei. (1999). Applied Linguistics Overview. Guangzhou: Guangdong

Educational Press. pp.45-46.

Reid . J. (2002). Learning styles in the ESL-EFL Classroom. Beijing: Foreign

Language Teaching and Research Press. pp. 81-84.

Stern, H. H. (1983). Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. London:

Oxford University Press. pp13-14.