Mike Ream

PSY 205

Dr. Mueller

http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/lessonplans/money

There are many different schools of thought when it comes to learning. Academic psychologists firmly believe that a combination of social, behavioral and cognitive approaches to learning is the preferred method of instruction. Albert Bandura, a behavioral psychologist, is considered to be the leading pioneer in the social learning theory. His social learning theory suggests that students learn from one another through the informational processing model, a combination of attention, observational learning, imitation and modeling. Similarly, Piaget believed that both teacher and peer modeling are important in the learning process. Furthermore, the learning process is only beneficial if it occurs at the correct stage of the student’s development. This lesson plan emphasizes not only the appropriate stage of development and learning but also uses the methods of scaffolding , cooperative learning and differentiated instruction as well as various components of the information processing model to produce the desired effect: learning.

Albert Bandura believes that students learn through observing teachers and others’ attitudes and behaviors. He firmly believes that through the process of observation and peer modeling, learning takes place. There are four necessary conditions or phases that must be met in order for effective observational learning to take place: attention, retention, reproduction and motivation. This lesson plan meets all four of these criteria. The attention phase means quite simply that the student must pay attention in order for learning to take place. By showing the coins to the students, the creator of the lesson plan hopes to gain the attention of his class. This phase of attention also coincides with ideas of the information processing model. Attention is the key in order to focus and disregard the other stimuli around. Second, the student must be able to retain or remember what he has paid attention to. The student stores what the model has been doing in the form of visual, mental imagery or verbal cues. The teacher of this lesson plan gives the students time to practice or rehearse the names and values of each coin thus making the retention phase a reality. Third, during the reproduction phase of observational learning, the students take what they stored during the retention phase and reproduce it with their own behavior. Asking the students to create the amount of money that the teacher has written on the board enables the student to not only practice and retain their new skill but to reproduce it as well.

The final phase in the observational learning process is the motivational phase. It is here that the students will, after paying attention to the model (teacher), practicing and reproducing; continue doing the money problems with hopes of pleasing the teacher. By having the students get up in front of the class and share their answers, it is assumed that the teacher will say “good job” or “excellent work” when they announce the correct answer. Even if the answer is not correct, a positive remark from the teacher, “Great try!” would be motivation enough for that student and others to try their best. This principle of vicarious learning through peer modeling and motivational feedback is assumed to be in the lesson plan although not explicitly mentioned.