Archive | Education

Freud, Jung, and Adler were the chief exponents of psychoanalytic theories of motivation. Freud originally conceived of sex as a primary driving force in behaviour. He called this psychic energy the libido, later he spoke of the life instinct and the death instinct.

In modem educational psychology every possible effort is made to base the education of the child on its motivations modern education aims at the excitation of one or the other motivation in a child in order to make any and every kind of education natural and normal.

These motivations are nothing but bodily or physical needs, like hunger, thirst, sex, etc. Certain motivations are caused by physical activities such as respiration, throbbing of the heart, digestion, circulation of blood and working of the glands etc.

There are factors that facilitate learning; for example, readiness, motivation, mental set mental health and teacher’s personality.

To make learning very effective it is not only necessary to utilize the factors and techniques that facilitate learning, the teacher are to create certain conditions in the class-room that may improve learning.

I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936), an eminent Russian physiologist and a noble prize winner for his work on physiology of digestion, while experimenting on the gastric secretion in dogs observed that any stimulus frequently associated with the presentation of food aroused salivation.

Learning depends upon maturation. If the individual is matured to learn a particular activity, he will learn effectively. If the individual is no mature, learning will not be effective.

One of the most accredited among all the current theories on the law of learning is the one presented by Thorndike, in America. Talking of its importance Tolman says, “The psychology of animal learning, not to mention that of child learning has been and still is primarily a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with Thorndike […]

This law implies that when an individual is confronted with a new situation he responds in a variety of ways before arriving at correct response.

The meaning of the law of effect is the effect of learning in answer to question as the success or failure of learning has very significant bearing on the law now under study Success brings with it satisfaction and along with it a strengthening of the relation of the facts.

It is the most important factor in all learning. Motivate the child.

Thorndike studies the character of Trial and Error learning in a number of experiments on cats. A favorite device was his puzzle box used years ago by him for his studies of animal learning.

We find that children learn much by mere imitation. They observe doing various things.

1. There is some sort of a motive that arouses or sustains the activity. This motive may appear in the form of need, a problem or a goal. Essentially the equilibrium of the organism is disturbed and this impels the organism to react to the situation in an effort that comes to terms with it.

Operant conditioning theory has been developed by American psychologist B.F. Skinner. The basis of operant conditioning is Reinforcement. The term ‘operant’ emphasizes the fact that behaviour operates upon the environment to generate its own consequences.” Operant behaviour is external.

For conditioning the stimulus must have the capacity to produce the response. In Pavlov’s experiment, the dog was hungry. Therefore it associated the bell with the food, not food with the bell. Thus, the motive has an influence on the learning of conditioned response.