Behavioral Learning Theory

Dr. Orey describes behaviorism as being as certain behaviors being enforced through reward and others being discouraged through punishment (Laureate, 2009). As a teacher I would like my students to be intrinsically motivated by the reward of learning rather extrinsic motivation by being given a grade or prize for completing a learning activity. I have found this challenging as many of my students tend to be concerned about their grade, but not concerned so much about learning the material. It is hard to motivate them to complete an assignment for the learning aspect without awarding points for the assignment and have it contribute directly to their grade.

Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski make the generalization that students do not always realize the importance of effort in learning and recomend teaching this to students. They suggest doing this by having students keep track of the amount of effort they put into learning activities such as taking, organizing, and using class notes, class participation, and homework assignments as well as test scores, and charting the results so that they can see how their effort corresponds with their achievment. (2007).

The strategy of teaching students the importance of effort in their learning correlates with behavioral learning because the students learn that putting effort into the assigned learning activities provides the reward of learning and doing well on the test.


Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Denver, CO: McREL.