Social Cognitive Theory
Description
From the Wikipedia [1]:
"Social Cognitive Theory, utilized in Psychology, Education, and Communications, posits that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences.
Social cognitive theory is a learning theory based on the ideas that people learn by watching what others do and that human thought processes are central to understanding personality. In the book "Educational Psychology: Developing Learners" (2003) author Jeanne Ellis Ormrod lists the main principles of social cognitive theory:
* People learn by observing others. * Learning is an internal process that may or may not change behavior. * People behave in certain ways to reach goals. * Behavior is self-directed (as opposed to the behaviorist thought that behavior is determined by environment.) * Reinforcement and punishment have unpredictable and indirect effects on both behavior and learning.
Social Cognitive Theory stemmed out of work in the area of social learning theory proposed by N.E. Miller and J. Dollard in 1941. Their proposition posits that if humans were motivated to learn a particular behavior that particular behavior would be learned through clear observations. By imitating these observed actions the individual observer would solidify that learned action and would be rewarded with positive reinforcement (Miller & Dollard, 1941). The proposition of social learning was expanded upon and theorized by Albert Bandura from 1962 to the present.
The theorists most commonly associated with social cognitive theory are Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cognitive_theory)
More Information
- See Connectivism