How would the learning be designed differently by a behaviorist, a cognitivist, and a constructivist? Scenario: A high school social study teacher is planning a class on climate change.

Behaviorists are passive learners, their learning depends on their behavior is conditioned by external factors, so personal factor is not that important. So as a behaviorist teacher, I would just force the students to memorize the book and give them a lot of repetition quizzes to reinforce the knowledge.

Cognitiveists focus on personal factors, situated learning is the most effective learning. To help the students assimilate the knowledge into their schemata, the teacher would design how to teach each student based on their schema because people react quite differently to the same stimulus.

Constructivists on the contrary of behaviorists think learning is an active process not just passive storage of content. They might choose a field trip because the teacher believes that situated learning is most effective. Let students react to the topic to push them into active learning because learning is a social activity.

Describe an example from your life of when you were taught using each method described in this article: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.

Behaviorism: In one of my econ classes, the instructor gives each student multiple pages of sample quiz questions to memorize, and the exam question is very similar to the sample.

Cognitivism: I get very confused in one of my geology courses, I fail to remember the disconnected knowledge. And instructor assimilated that knowledge into something I was familiar with, so I can memorize them quickly.

Constructivism: Also my geology course, the instructor pass rocks around the classroom for us to better understand different kinds of rocks.