correct structures through mechanical exercises (drills). Within this context,
behaviourists consider errors made by students as an indication of imperfect learning.
Moreover, as errors themselves can become the stimulus for the establishment of
incorrect habits, care should be taken so that they are avoided or, in the case they
actually occur, they are corrected immediately.
Behaviourism has greatly influenced education for many years either
explicitly or implicitly. As Pollard (1997: 119) stresses, ‘…it provided the
foundations of work on a ‘science of teaching’ based on whole class, didactic
approaches through which knowledge and skills were to be taught’. The model
assigns very specific roles to all factors involved in the learning process, i.e. the
teacher, the teaching material and the learner. Thus the teacher is considered as a
person whose role is to transmit the knowledge she holds to the empty heads of
learners through repetition, praise and punishment. As O’ Brien (2000b, Unit 1: 5)
stresses, the theory is still implicitly present when rewards and praise, either symbolic
or real are an important part of a teacher’s or a school’s practice. As far as the
textbook is concerned, its role is to support and facilitate the transmission model by
providing students with what is considered as the absolute knowledge in a particular
subject. Within this context, the textbook is usually the one and only available to
students, and centrally imposed. Finally, the model assigns a rather limited role to the
learner who is considered a mere receiver of the transmitted knowledge, always
willing and ready to absorb whatever is presented to them.
However convenient and simple the behaviourist model appeared to be, it
failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of the way knowledge is acquired.
According to Pollard (1997: 119), with its insistence on mechanical repetition
behaviourism placed the learner in a rather passive role ‘leaving the selection, pacing
and evaluation of learning activity to the teacher’. There were a number of reasons
which led behaviourism to decline as a learning theory. As Hilgard (1964) stresses,
the inadequacy of the behaviourist model became evident after a number of
experimentation carried out by a number of American psychologists which led them
to the conclusion that external reinforcement was not a necessary condition for
learning to take place, and to the suggestion that there should be some factors intrinsic
to the learner which should be investigated. It was a claim which had also been
expressed most severely by Chomsky some years earlier (for a discussion of
Chomsky’s theory see 1.2.2.1.below). Such a reaction against the behaviourist model
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