Download Week 1-3 - Michigan State University

CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
[Please click the hyperlinks below for detail ]
Week 3 Assignment
Index page
1. Reading 1 Skinner
2. Reading 2 Greeno
3. Reading 3 Wikipedia/Educational Psychology
4. Free reading: Staats’s Psychological Behaviorism
5. Research Development Project
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Reading 1:
Index page
Source: Why I am not a Cognitive Psychologist Skinner, BF (1977) Behaviorism, 5, 1-10
( http://skeptically.org/skinner/id9.html )
Annotations
For behaviorism, human behavior is determined by the environmental factors. Evolution
of the species is the selective result of the environment. Meanwhile, it is environment that
provides a platform for human to behave on. Environment assures that every member of
the society will be completely modulated during the period of human development. Each
member of the human society will gain all reserved behaviors in the species. Outside
world is the objective cause of human behavior rather than the interval surrogates
assumed by cognitive psychologists.
Behaviorism advocated that external contingencies determine behaviors both in animal
and human worlds. Behaviors have physical bases and functions which were found and
emphasized by behaviorism. These could be seen in Pavlov's empirical observation of
dog’s salivary responses. The physical reaction (R) can be associated with symbolic
stimulus (R); and the association can be strengthened In turn, once the S-R linkage is
built up, R as the contingency of S is said to exist independent of internal surrogate,
assumed by cognitive psychology.
Same logic can be applied into the association between mental behaviors and their
stimulations. The salivary reaction can happen in human world when one thinks about the
image or the word of "lemon".
[ My responses to what I just read: Behaviors based upon those basic reflexes are not
so complicated that they need to be explained by those "internal surrogates" proposed by
cognitive theorists; meanwhile, complicated behaviors (advanced cognitive behaviors)
are not too simple to be explained by the function of the dog's salivation. When a person
heard lemon, he/she may feel the salivation. In this case, according to cognitive
psychological, the senses associated with the concept of lemon. The concept can activate
the salivation through the basic salivation reflex and all the procedures happened in
mind. ]
Skinner's selective conditioning amazingly demonstrates how to teach a pigeon to peck
specific cards from different colored panels. He argued that it is the trainer who really can
identify the colors rather than the pigeon. And the pigeon's behavior was attributed to the
experimental/outside contingencies not the internal surrogate system. Similarly, without
lost generality, children and adults' behavioral responses can be explained as the results
of outside contingencies. Meanwhile, this logic is also suitable to explain the concept
learning and sexual identity in the human world.
[My responses to what I just read: This part demonstrates an interesting result to me. it
seems that it is the person who identifies the concept (color) and abstract it out of objects,
and train the pigeon to react to the "concept". To the pigeon, the concept is nothing but a
pecking, a behavior to get food. The first process (i.e. trainer's defining the concept )
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
needs to be referred to human's behavior which belongs to cognitive domain; and the
second (the pigeon accumulation the association ) is belonging to behaviorism domain.
Identifying the commonality of the objects is a very important psychological function
based upon which human's learning can happen. Skinner stated that no matter how
complicated contingencies are the pigeon can learn to respond to them. Nevertheless, it is
no way for behaviorists to teach a pigeon to be a trainer to teach another pigeon. When
explaining the basic (genetic-endowment) behaviors, we do have to apply Watson's rule
rather than cognitive theory. Kids' learning might follow this rule based on which pigeons
can gain the association described by Skinner. But different things happen in a kid's head
before, during and after accumulating the association. Internal surrogates are needed to
explain how people learn to respond to the external contingencies, especially those
having social and cultural meanings. For example, if the external behaviors, related to
sexual identity, have been changed, this change may be attributed to the reshaping of
internal concept of gender or the physiologically maturing of specific glands.
Unidirectionally linking the behavioral changes with contingency changes,just like
Skinner has claimed, can be arbitrary, superficial, and misleading.]
According behaviorism, “mind”, “will” and “thought” are terms treated as the synonyms
of behaviors which were the results of contingencies. Different conditions and occasions
stimulate human's "wills" and "thoughts". Those mental changes only can be tracked back
to the outside contingencies changes otherwise they can not be clearly explained. The
internal rhythm doesn't exist in a conductor's head at all. In stead, the outside and
observable body movement can be used to determine the speed.
Later, scales will be used as the contingencies to stimulate the reaction of directing and
controlling the rhythm after the body movement reduced and eventually became
unobservable. To Skinner, the development of perception of time is shaped by outside
contingencies which are available in the environment full of tools can "keep time".
Concept of "will" could be the observable results of the behaviors of a group of people
( i.e., a social class ) in stead of just one person. For example, a governing class lost their
power (S), in turn, it brought forth their losing of their "will" ( R ).
For emotion and feeling, the same explanation will be applied. One feels sad because of
the outside contingencies. Skinner left a possibility for cognitive psychologists to define a
set of internal surrogates for the feelings associated with the behaviors. But, using the
association between outside behaviors (S) to feelings ( R ) is sufficient and necessary.
Mental explanations and surrogates of feelings invented by cognitive psychologists are
redundant and plausible due to the defective introspection used to build up internal
explanation system.
Automatically generated behaviors always associated with unobservable environmental
triggers and contingencies. These behaviors happened in an occasion in which the cause
is rarely observable. It is the occasion per se covers the cause of these behaviors so as to
explain them using S-R instead of leaving them to the cognitive/internal inventions.
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Preference and making choices are not exceptional and can be interoperated as
corresponding results from outside contingencies, such as the behavioral results of
examining, scrutinizing and testing. Preference is nothing but the result of a behavior,
“leaning toward”.
Human behaviors only could be changed through the changes of social and physical
environments. Cognitive psychology leads us to a wrong way by assuming that we can
reshape the inside/ mental environment, but they are missing the real target, the outside
world, the environment we are able to and need to change along with.
As the cause of "intention", operant behavior "stretches toward" a forthcoming
consequence. So every intention is associating with a behavior. Actually, once we use a
phrase to specify an intention we can clearly see what a behaviors is. For example, a the
intention associated with a operant behavior "walking to a fountain or bending down to
the faucet" is "the intention of getting a sip of water". So the intention is of getting water
( R ), the result of the "walking to a fountain or bending down to the faucet" ( S ).
When interpreting knowing difference between reality and conscious, Skinner indirectly
rebutted cognitive psychologists by using a method of reduction to absurdity. According
to Fred Attneave, in order to claim knowing or processing the representations of the
world as a truism, one needs to be a part of the representations of the world. Nevertheless,
since all these processings or knowings happen in one's mind, which means we were not
part of the representations, but something full of representations.
So, inside
representation of the world, claimed by cognitive psychologists, is not truism at all. Thus,
according to Skinner, the so-called truism, based on which one can distinct the reality and
internal experiences, is just self-evident and plausible. For Skinner, knowing is an action,
which refers to the "bridging" sensory stimulation (S) to the response of the
"propositions" ( R ). And a proposition is nothing but a 'laundered" version of "behavior".
Further, Skinner claimed that mental representations are plausible inventions. He took the
knowledge as the modeled practical behaviors, and they are lived only the outside
material world. For example, maps are nothing but the symbolic marks ( S ) that "our
behavior ( R ) in following them and is reinforced when we arrive at our destination in
the mapped territory" (p105).
Cognitive operations such as perceptual operation are obviously behavioral. And
according to Skinner, real knowing is the result of seeing or operating. However,
cognitive psychologists always refer these to constructing an internal surrogate of
contingencies. Knowing what a book is about doesn't support that one has internally
accumulate knowledge just like cognitive psychologists assumed; but it is about
"changing one's behavior". To Skinner, knowing the content of a book is the changed
behavior pre se.
Recalling and memorizing are all behaviors regarding the behavioral operation of storing
and retrieving. Artificial intelligence (AI) has defined mind as a set of processors can
accept input and generate output information. This metaphor-liked definition has missed
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
the critical components (i.e. contingencies) that Skinner has found, which could degrade
cognitive psychologist's internal surrogates into trivial redundancies.
The patterns of how people respond differ across the real world. Based on Skinner, it is
because "the changes in the control exerted by stimuli" not because of following diverse
inside rules. Developing the rule refers to reshaping the behaviors through contingencies.
The existence of rules are related to the experience of acquiring behavior; "Those who
have acquired behavior through exposure to contingencies describe the contingencies,
and others then circumvent exposure by behaving in the ways described"(p109). Also,
speaking a language is not of applying rules but of a behavior accumulated by the verbal
practices in the society. "What cognitive psychologists assumed fascination with an
imagined inner life has led to a neglect of the observed facts. The cognitive constructs
give physiologists a misleading account of what they will find inside" ( p111).
Skinner never believed that the inner world of mental life associated with the behavioral
analysis treated as the results of environmental triggers or the neural system. And he
never identified himself as an cognitive psychologist.
Responses beyond Skinner's paper
1. Explain Skinner's framework.
Skinner’s theory could be called Operationism, in which the animal’s random, active and
exploratory reaction and self-seeking enforcement make his theory separate from other
classic Behaviorists, such as Pavlov and Watson. More accurately, Operationism can be
explained by an association formula R-R instead of S-R. The first R represents the
random or self-generating behaviors. For example, during school days, Nanncy may cage
her lovely cat, Manly, when she goes to school. What will the cat do in the cage? He may
stretch, sleep and snore, yawn. Or probably he may reach his paw on the cage and scratch
the iron. Suddenly, he may accidentally pull the bolt and open the cage door and sneak
out and mess up Nanny’s apartment. However, for Dr. Skinner, interesting thing is not
the cat can mess around; the interesting thing is that the contingency of the caged cat
opening the cage door. The contingency, scratching on the cage, is a random behavior
and is represented by the R before the short dash in the formula. If it can be strengthened
and associated to the second behavior (the 2nd R in the fomula), pulling the bolt (or
opening the door), the learning will happen. Skinner’s R-R theory has four characteristics:
1) it indicates the interacting or reacting to the world around 2. it can be explained in
some ways as a exploring or discovering in the world 3) it is self-orientated although it
may has no clear intention beforehand. 3. it is active and positive and it has pre-learning
characteristic. Classic S-R theory treats the learning animal a machinery passively
accepting and reacting to stimuli. The auto-learning characteristics of Skinner’s R-R
theory make it possible to be applied into human world to interpret human learning.
CEP900
06F
Reading 2: Greeno
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Index page
Source: Greeno, JG, Collins, AM, & Resnick, LB (1996). Cognition and learning. In DC.
Berliner & RC Calfee (Eds.), Handbook of educational psychology (pp. 15-46).
Annotations:
What I read of this paper is a global summary of Behaviorist’s / Empiricist’s (i.e., E/E’s
below in the annotations) points of views on knowing, learning, motivation and
transferring. According to the B/E’s perspectives, all these five concepts can be referred
to two main concepts: associations and skills. For example, acquiring and accumulating
new associations and skills refers to Learning; after gradually stacking associations and
skills, one will accomplish knowing; if one can maintain a state, mentally or/and
physically, in which leaning and knowing can happen, one is equipped with the
motivation; being able to apply acquired associations and skills from one situation into a
new one corresponds to transferring.
Three main schools have been contributing to the development of B/E’s perspectives.
Those three schools all shared same logic of explaining relationships. For example,
Associationism mainly explored how phenomena associated with each other in the world
of animal and human mind. Also, Behaviorism built up the relationship between stimuli
and reactions. Connectionism applied a neural net-work represent how complicated the
connections and relationships can be.
Explaining knowing refers to what we know and how we get into knowing. Personally
experiencing an event, physically or mentally, will bring forth the knowledge (in stored
blocks/units of knowledge). Knowing you know may correspond to the framework in
Cognitive Psychological domain, known as Meta-cognation which is out the boundary
of the current topic of interest. The neural network more likely to be treated as the
cognitive explanation, since it emphasized what is happening inside the mind. Using a
formula S-O-R to illustrate what neural network is sharing with behaviorism (S-R). S
represents the input/stimuli, O the mind, and R the response/output of the S through O.
Neural network is about of telling what has happened in mind after a stimulus was
accepted and before the response will be generated. The net work is constructed by the
inter-connected knots/nods, each of which can be treat as a small processor storing the
associations and skills accumulated before. After the stimulus was input, each knot will
be processing the information and result a solution in the form of either “excitation” or
“inhibition”. Each knot is performance a vote based on whether the information is
familiar or not, “YES” (excitation) or “NO” (inhibition). Corresponding response will be
generated if the majority wins. For example, if a teacher asks a student whether s/he
knows what neural network means? The sound of “neural network” will be the input, and
then the student will process in the mind. Some of the knots will decode the input based
on sound or meaning, or process it based on subject matter knowledge of biology or
computer science. Finally, the state of excitation or inhibition will be resulted base on
whether the stored association and skill match the input characteristic. And all these
processings are parallel, which is faster and more efficient than serial processing. If s/he
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
has not learned what neural network is, the knots in the mind will be (almost) all
inhibitions, then the response will be “No, I don’t know what neural network is”. For me
since I have learned it so most of the knots in my mind will be excited and my response
can be a nodding to tell my teacher my knowing of it.
This sample basically describes how the neural network functions. But the real case is not
so simple as the what was illustrated. Neural network is complicated with multilevel netstructure associated with functions of multi-directional exchanges of information between
knots and levels. Meanwhile, it will involve several mechanisms such as feedback.
According to my understanding, a neural network could be expanded by adding another
parallel distribution of knots/nodes and/or growing new associations between the
knots/nodes.
However, according to the authors, this expanding doesn’t functions in the way I just
described. The neural network was assumed be fixed and without any possibility to
expand during the leaning process. I found that I could barely agree with the authors on
the issue. With more associations and skills having been stored, the neural network it per
se should be able to grow or expand until it reaches the limit. A possible explanation for
the neural network having a fix structure just like the authors described and maintaining
its efficiency is that the nodes can process information faster and faster. For example, the
nodes can be more and more easily to be excited/inhibited so as to facilitate the neural
network to respond to the situli in the whole.
Regarding educational application of the B/E’s perspectives, well designed procedural
learning was illustrated how R/E framework merged and influenced individual instruction
and personal learning. In the animal learning, the instructional conditioning pictured how
the animal was gradually lured to the learning object and initiated the primary response to
targeted leaning goal of interest. The difficulty lies in the use of this technique in human
learning such as the classroom is that human learners’ motivation and attention are not so
easily to maintain. Thus, quiet often the expected associations and skill will not be set up
successfully.
Notice that the motivation may be stabilized by using a few corns or rice during the
period of the pigeon’s learning of pecking a specific shape of cards. If teachers use
materials to strengthening human learners’ interests and stabilizing their motivation to
focusing on learning, the cost will be hard to assess. Fortunately, verbal reinforcement is
filling in the need and can take effect on the learning procedure with respect of maintain
motivation.
My responsea to this article.
1. It would better for the audiences if the authors can put more citations on the on
some the issue related to philosophy and educational practice. For example, on
page 17, a term of “behavioral objectives” was used to introduce a major
influence of stimulus-response theory in curricula and assessment. However, no
further information for me to refer to when I am willing to know more about it.
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
2. Based on Stimulus-Response learning theory, procedure learning once was
developed using instant feedback (as reinforcements ) for learners to build up the
association between the test items ( representing the learning contents) to the
answers (retrieved from the accumulated knowledge).
3. Thondike’s work could be counted in the cognitive learning domain.
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Reading3: Wikipedia
Qiu Wang
Index page
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_psychology
Annotations
Both talented and disable learners full into the educational psychologists' research
domain that how school as an organization can affect human learning. Based in the
departments in the research oriented universities, educational psychologists have
accumulated rich knowledge, expertise and disciplines through 6 main fields of research
such as classroom management, special education, organizational learning, curriculum
development, instructional design and educational technology.
On a broader scientific background, educational psychology has been nourished by the
different perspectives such as the social, moral and cognitive development of human.
This perspective describes the social, moral and cognitive development of learners across
their whole span of lives. The main concern is how learners grow up from innocent
infants to moral citizens. Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget have characterized human
cognitive and moral developments into several critical periods. During human
development, educational interference can be systematically applied into these periods so
as to facilitate the individual’s cognitive and moral maturity.
Learners, as the targeted study population, are constituted by individuals who are
different from each other, psychologically and physically. Consideration of individual
difference in ability, cognitive and emotional reaction style, attitude, belief and
motivation deepen our understanding on the learners. Meanwhile, individual difference
research has been flourish the psychometrics exploration in intelligence, ability,
personality and helped to developed corresponding instruments in those psychological
constructs.
Well prepared by the knowledge from the research of human development and individual
difference, educational psychologists have been concentrating, specially, on how students
acquire knowledge and skills during their schooling years. The fundamental assumptions
basically describe two specific domains of research on students' knowing and transferring
[Greeno, Collins, & Resnick,1996]. Four perspectives, Operationism (Behaviorism),
Cognitionism, Social Cognitionism, and Contructionism have influenced the research of
learning and cognition in schooling system.
Since students have been treated as individual learners with autonomy, maintaining a
state in which learning can happen become a critical research field in educational
psychology. The internal ‘state’, that activates, guides and sustains behavior, is called
motivation. Motivation theory corresponds to attribution theory. As a framework
attribution theory refers to how people explain their own and other's behaviors, such as
finding the causes of academic success or failure.
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied into the research of educational
psychology. Materials, information and data are collected by using survey and
observation or from pervious studies and empirical design. Theoretical framework and
mathematical models will be used to analyze, summarize and synthesize the findings
based upon previously collected materials and data. Through the logical comparisons and
inference, new findings will be adapted to fill the gaps between theorems and practices
left and unsolved by the previous studies. Psychometrics approaches have empowered
validity of educational measurement and improved the accuracy of performance
assessment through statistical models such as reliability analysis, IRT (item response
theory) and factor analysis. Multiplinary research methods have be developed by
borrowing the perspectives from other fields such as psycholinguistics, anthropology,
sociology and used upon the educational phenomena for quantitative analysis by
psychologists.
Theoretical frameworks, psychological instruments and statistical models have not only
facilitated educational psychological research but also help scholars to apply the findings
into practice through instructional design with the assistance of information technology.
The missions of educational psychologists include conducting scientific research,
implementing effective evaluation and applying the findings into practice. Educational
psychologists have helped educators, parents, students and policy makers understand how
learning happens and what can improve the effect of learning on individual development
and social improvement. Pedagogical methods currently applied in the classroom in the
U.S. K-12 system especially reflect how educational psychological research and findings
have taken the affect on learning and teaching in practice.
As a branch subject of psychology science, educational psychology has a long history. It
has been accumulating the knowledge based upon philosophical analysis. under the effort
of philosophers, anthropologist, educationist, educational psychology has grow up into
one of the most flourishing branch and most active research field. Every year, thousands
of research reports are published in educational and psychological journals. Professional
development in educational psychology will be one of the fastest up growing occupation
through the next 8 to 10 years. Recently, with high proportion of female educational
psychologists' participation, the structure of research forth in the U.S. and Canada has
been changed. For example, according to this article, female researchers have dominated
seventy percent of the chief editor positions in educational psychology journals.
CEP900
06F
Reading 4: Free reading
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Index page
Source: Staats,A.W. (1999). Uniting psychology requires new infrastructure, theory,
method, and a researchagenda. Review of General Psychology, 3, 3–13. 1
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/galanter/PreAssignment/Staats_1999-10014-001.pdf
Annotations
Staats, a pioneer and the most active advocator for the movement of unifying psychology
in the U.S., never stopped trying to combine behaviorism with other psychological
frameworks. He started practicing psychological behaviorism when he was a graduate
student at UCLA in 1950’s. After conducting several researches, he gradually noticed
that the then school of behaviorism had been separated into exclusive branches with
competitive perspectives, which resulted several inconveniences for the academic world.
Major advocators in the school of Behaviorism were experts in the field of animal
psychology in stead of in the domain of study on human behaviors. For example,
Skinner's conditioning reinforcement framework still fell into the domain of
psychological analysis on animal behavior, most of which and the later expansion were
only suitable for strengthening human motor reactions. Skinner with other Behaviorists
failed to further expand their principles into diverse research domains of human
behaviors.
Since 1950's, Staats had intented to unify the behavior analysis with traditional
psychological exploratory analyses. A so called "heavyweight" principle was used to
reshape the traditional behaviorism and promote it into a new level. The basic logic was
to weight the traditional behaviorism principles developed in empirical studies on
animals by using the concerns of applying them in human world. The first and most
important step was to add human characteristics such as language an emotion in to the
traditional behavioral and empirical analyses. Using the revised method to analyze human
behaviors allowed him to publish his book, Complex Human Behavior in 1963. His new
method was then named as psychological behaviorism, which was not dogmatically
advocated due to its systematic synthesis of many other psychological perspectives and
principles. Since being introduced into psychology academy, it had been broadly used in
such fields of behavior analysis, behavior modification and behavior therapy, behavior
assessment and the cognitive-behavioral analysis.
In 1975, the second version of his theory, deepen and expanded, was available to the
audience in a book, Social Behaviorism. The details on why and how it had be developed
with the clarified psychological missions. This book pictured the psychological world as
a hierarchical structure. Studies at each level could bi-directionally contribute principles
and concepts to another above and below.
Back in the 1970's psychologists only focus on fields in which their own specialty could
be applied. Although psychological behaviorism applied multiple psychology principles
This article was derived from the scholar.google.com searching by using “ psychological construct and
Behaviorism”. And can be obtained through the following hyperlink.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/galanter/PreAssignment/Staats_1999-10014-001.pdf
1
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
and tried to build arches between different fields, it was still treated as behaviorism. Due
to the narrow vies of psychologists upon their peers’ frameworks, the unified theory (i.e.,
psychological behaviorism ) was not accepted broadly and could not take effect on
psychological academy as what Staats had expected it would do. Staats further
introspected and found out that there was no such a base in science that his bridge theory
could be built upon for developing supportive organizations or resources that might help
others understand his theory per se. This way, his theory even could not accept the
evaluations from the scientific community, no one studied, challenged, tested, or
expanded it.
Staats’s psychological behaviorism did not scrutinize human behaviors through only one
lens but a set of lenses, each of which represents a specific psychological perspective.
Through multiple lenses, the commonality could be obtained and it would be more likely
to accomplish "a consensual, parsimonious, more understandable, and heuristic body of
unified knowledge that could then be used and developed widely in psychology" (p6).
According to Staats, then psychology filled with redundancies such as concepts,
principles, frameworks and instruments, which was barely seen in real science such as
physics and chemistry. The cause of this situation in psychology could be attributed to its
disunified modes. However, it had not gone through what other real science subjects had
metamorphosed across the disunity-unity dimension. For example, physics, like other
science subjects, stumbled in a pre-science period and was full of contradictions,
redundancies and idolism. After passing that period, the only homogeneous scientific
findings had been deposited. Psychology needs to this metamorphosis in the short future.
Science per se had equipped with an infrastructure and allowed it to depurate its pseudo
elements inside. Lacking of this infrastructure makes psychology impotent to avoid the
redundancies. "Because we have no infrastructure for unification, psychology's
knowledge is a bubble growing more diverse and incomprehensible daily".
Even, in 1980's his work was still rejected and labeled as behaviorism after he had
another relevant publication, Psychology's Crisis of Disunity: Philosophy and Method for
a Unified Science (Staats, 1983). He foresaw the serious problem in psychology and
devoted to a promotion of the movement of united psychology by organizing APA
symposia through a society of a few psychologists sharing same mission.
From the later 1980's and the later 1990's, a few summary unified theories such as
Newell's framework (1990) and Anderson (1996) had been seen in psychological
academy. In 1998, a pioneer sociologist E. O. Wilson published a book Concilience: The
Unity of Knowledge, which was in chorus with Staats , suggested that there existed a
overlapped domain of knowledge sharing parts from "biology, psychology, the social
science, and the humanities" (p9).
However, Wilson's unified theory was completely different from Staats's that bridged
behaviorism and psychology. In 1996, Staats published another book, Behavior and
CEP900
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Personality: Psychological Behaviorism, claiming the position of psychological
behaviorism.
The [psychological behaviorism] position is that all of the marvelous[ly] skilled
behavior[al]... cognitive and psychological characteristics . . . come about through
learning. None of them develops as a function of biological . . . brain . . . development.
Rather . .. experience results in learning recorded via the formation of neural networks.
The brain's changes reflect the child's learning, not the reverse. (Staats, 1996, p. 165)
Staats suggest that the core journals of APA should add unifying psychology as a "new
mission" into their publishing goals to improve to "produce more coherent, parsimonious,
compact, interrelated knowledge in psychology"(p12).
Information beyond this article
APA established the Arthur W. Staats Lecture in 1997. Since then (except for 1999)
every year one psychologist was invited to give a lecture during the APA annual meeting.
" The individual selected to deliver the address is one whose work has held great
significance for many fields of psychology, or has the potential to be extrapolated to have
unifying power within the discipline of psychology as a whole".
(http://www.apa.org/apf/staats.html) Once being invited psychologists included the
psychology professor at University of Pennsylvania Dr. Matin E. P. Seligman (2000) and
the psychology professor at Yale University Dr. Robert J. Sternberg (2003).
His recent work can be found as following.
"A psychyological behaviorism theory of personality: A framework for the 21st century"
(In Mellon & Lerner, Comprehensive Handbook of Psychology,vol. 5: Personality and
Social Psychology, Wiley, 2003. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~staats/ ).
My response to this article:
I was disappointed when I finish reading this paper at the first thought. It barely related
to Behaviorism per se although the author is a racial behaviorist then and now. Later after
I finished all required reading and revising my annotations on them, I suddenly notice
that Staats was right. Look at how Skinner used S-R to describe and interpret human’s
learning. It was rough and raw, but the logic was shallow. It could have been deepened
and expanded instead of being abandoned. Although cognitive psychology have
contributed significantly to the academic communities, but it has been criticized because
of its labeling things to omit the core tasks and bringing redundancies into psychology
just like Staats point out.
CEP900
RDP
06F
Week 3 Assignment
Qiu Wang
Index page
Measuring teachers’ subject matter knowledge and its effect on student science
achievement
Issue: Teacher qualification, in someway, influences the quality of teaching practice in
science education. In a few decades, in trying to understand the way how teacher
qualification works, researchers have conducted hundreds of studies, which covered
almost all critical aspects in science teaching process, such as professional curriculum
and assessment , teaching accessories, teacher and student psychological caricaturists,
and teacher training (Henry, 1960; Yager, 1982; Shamos,1995; Reiss, 2001). However,
the results are very inconsistent and confusing.
These studies varied from one another in many aspects.
1. Participants and sample size are different.
Half of the studies focused on high school students and their teachers, but others on the
counterparts in elementary school. Most sample sizes ranged from 20 to 60. Bush (1986)
studied 111 participants, but Osborn’s study only included 9.
2. Various subjects were studied.
Five out of 11 studies concentrated on specific science subjects, such as, biology and
physics, six on student general science performance.
3. Different outcomes and measures were employed.
Half of the studies used student science raw score as the outcome. More than 15 scales
were used to measure student science performance in 11 studies. Rothman (1969)
employed more than 3 scales to measure student different aspects (Knowledge and
Application) of science performance.
The inconsistency of the results and variation among these studies not only reflect the
confusing situation in the field of science education but also lead to further confusion
over the relationship between student science achievement and the teacher qualification
in the filed of science in level of K-12. Thus, administrators, educators and policy makers
can not either know how strong the relationship between teacher qualification and student
performance is, or draw any useful implications form these studies.