Albert Banduras Role in Child Development

INTRODUCTION

Albert bandura (1925) has majorly contributed in fields of education and psychology. Banduras role in child development is important because it links behaviorism and cognitive psychology which should not be taken for granted

Albert banduras child development theories proposes regulatory systems to control behavior. In his research he emphasized on the roots of learning and observation in the learning process. He discovered that children and adults are adapted to a certain behavior which conform to certain models which has impact on behavioral change.

He believed observation, imitation and modeling are key components of the learning process and behavior alone cannot account for every learning. Therefore, his theory consists of

Behavioral theory ~ this implies on the behaviors that result due to some conditions that are put in place. These conditions might alter with child development either in a positive way or in a negative way

Cognitive theory ~ this theory emphasizes on psychological features such as attention and memory. this theory shows that during child development, if a child is not given attention from those who are surrounding him or her, the memory is somehow affected.

He added that social elements to the behavioral concepts such as conditioning restrictions, punishment, and observing by watching other people is a common way of acquiring new information and behaviors. For instance, when a child grows while watching other people around playing football, automatically he/she will acquire skills on how football is played and also will learn the rules that guide the game.

SOCIAL LEARNING MAIN CONCEPT (BANDURA, 1977)

OBSERVATION AS A PART OF LEARNING

Bandura in his experiment on observation showed that children can also imitate violent behaviors. However, he classified 3 types of observation modelling i.e.

Active ~ this is imitating a real person’s behavior directly

Verbal ~ involves following descriptive accounts of behavior

Symbolic~ this involves being inspired by a certain character. This might be through watching through the media.

MENTAL STATES AS THE KEY

He stated that the best learning takes place when a learner is fully motivated. Bandura implied that motivation may be intrinsic motivation i.e. motivation from inside or extrinsic motivation which is from outside.

LEARNING WON’T GUARANTEE A BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE

Some learning produces new behaviors e.g. driving a car. While other learning basis may not often produce behavioral change that can be observed. For learning to take place these Features that should be present:

Attention ~ not being engaged or distracted impaired learning

Retention ~ what is learnt should kept or stored

Reproduction ~ what is learnt should be put into practice

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