Social Cognitive Theory

Triadic Reciprocal Causation

Learned capabilities are the product of interactions among an individual's personal characteristics, behaviors, and social environment.

Tri = 3 elements (personal characteristics, behavioral patterns, social environment)

Reciprocal = the elements influence one another

Causation = produces learning

Self-Regulation

The way by which individuals change their behaviors in order to achieve a desires goal in response to multiple forces without being prompted to do so.

Self-Regulated Learning

The conscious and purposeful use of one's cognitive skills, feelings, and actions to maximize the learning of knowledge and skills for a given task and set of conditions.

Self-Efficacy

The degree to which people believe they are capable or prepared to handle particular tasks.

Learning Strategy

A general plan that a learner formulates for achieving a somewhat distant academic goal.

Learning Tactics: Specific techniques that a learner engages in to accomplish an immediate learning objective.

Memory Directed Tactics

Rehearsal: Rehearsing a small set of items for several repetitions

Mnemonic Device: tactic that helps a learner organize information to enhance retrieval

Rhyme

Acronym

Acrostic

Loci Method

Keyword Method

Comprehension Directed Tactics

Concept Mapping

A technique that helps students identify, visually organize, and represent the relationships among a set of ideas.

Self-Questioning

A technique that uses comprehension aiding questions as well as recall questions to help students restate information. This process produces better recall and comprehension of material.

Observational Learning

Modeling: The part of the triadic model of social cognitive theory that describes the role of observing and imitating the behavior of models in learning new capabilities

Vicarious Reinforcement

The strengthening of a particular behavior in an observer who anticipates receiving a reward for the behavior because someone else has been rewarded.

What is the Social Cognitive Theory?

Social Cognitive theory focuses on the importance of learning through observation. We learn through social experiences in our environment. Through observation of others actions and behaviors we are able to gain new knowledge and learn to imitate those behaviors.

Vygotsky's Theory of Cooperative Dialogue

Sarah is given her first jigsaw. She examines the pieces and begins to attempt to solve the puzzle, however, she is unsuccessful. Seeing her frustration, her father sits with her and describes and demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the corner/edge pieces and provides a couple of pieces for Sarah to put together herself and offers encouragement when she does so.

As Sarah becomes more independent, her father allows her to work independently. This social interaction between Sarah and her father, a skillful adult, promotes Sarah's cognitive development. Evidently, he works with her in her zone of proximal development, providing scaffolding as needed.

Observational Learning

Learners pick up the major features of a skill or strategy, as well as performance standards, motivational beliefs, and values, by watching and listening as a model exhibits and explains the reasons for the behavior.

Founding Fathers

Albert Bandura

Modeling Behavior

"Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action" (Bandura).

Necessary Conditions for Effective Modeling
Attention — various factors increase or decrease the amount of attention paid. Includes distinctiveness, affective valence, prevalence, complexity, functional value. One’s characteristics (e.g. sensory capacities, arousal level, perceptual set, past reinforcement) affect attention.

Retention — remembering what you paid attention to. Includes symbolic coding, mental images, cognitive organization, symbolic rehearsal, motor rehearsal.

Reproduction — reproducing the image. Including physical capabilities, and self-observation of reproduction.

Motivation — having a good reason to imitate. Includes motives such as past (i.e. traditional behaviorism), promised (imagined incentives) and vicarious (seeing and recalling the reinforced model).

Reciprocal Determinism

Reciprocal determinism is described as, the world and a person’s behavior cause each other, while behaviorism essentially states that one’s environment causes one’s behavior. Bandura, who was studying adolescent aggression, found this too simplistic, and suggested that behavior causes environment as well. Later on, Bandura considered personality as an interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and one’s psychological processes

Social Learning Theory

People learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling. The theory has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.

Lev Vygotsky

Social Influences On Cognitive Development

Crucial learning often occurs through interaction with others, especially a skillful adult.

Cooperative Dialogue: Adults and peers model behaviors and sometimes provide verbal instructions for the child to internalize.

The child attempts to understand and internalize the information provided by the skillful adult, the uses it as a guide to regulate their performance.

Zone of Proximal Development

The area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should be given, thus allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own, developing higher mental functions.

Scaffolding

The use various instructional aids or scaffold can help students acquire knowledge and self-regulatory skills.

Alexander, P. A., Schallert, D. L., & Hare, V. C. (1991). Coming to terms: How researchers in learning and literacy talk about knowledge. Review of Educational Research, 61, 315-343.

McLeod, S. A. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

Petersen, S., & Liu, M. (2002/2003). The transfer of problem-solving skills from a problem-based learning environment: The effect of modeling an expert's cognitive processes. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 35(2), 303-320.

Schaffer, R. (1996). Social development. Oxford: Blackwell.

Social Learning Theory Bandura Social Learning Theory. (2016, September 14). Retrieved March 21, 2017, from https://www.learning-theories.com/social-learning-theory-bandura.html

What is Interactive Modeling? (2017). Retrieved March 19, 2017, from https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/what-is-interactive-modeling/

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Scaffolding Tips for Teachers: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber

The Importance of Feedback: http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/Ideas/iot407.htm

Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-providing-students-meaningful-feedback-marianne-stenger

Applying Social Cognitive Theory in the Classroom

Include the development of self-regulated learning skills in your objectives and lesson plans. Students should not be given responsibility for their learning without adequate preparation.

Establish the foundation for self-regulated learning in kindergarten and primary grades. Becoming a proficient self-regulated learner requires systematic instruction and experience spread over many years. Teachers whose classrooms were rated as high SRL classrooms emphasized student choice of activities and supported meeting academic challenges (scaffolding).

Emphasize how important self-regulating skills are to learning and when they should be used. When teaching planning skills, point out that students who are good planners know the conditions under which they learn best and choose or arrange environments that eliminate or decrease distractions. To raise students' awareness of the value of a good learning environment, you can have them keep a log of how much time they spend studying in various places and at various times, what internal and external distractions they experience and how they deal with those distractions.

Model self-regulating skills, including the standards you use to evaluate your performance and reinforce yourself. You can enhance the learning of SRL skills by having students observe and imitate what you and other skilled learners do. When you demonstrate a skill or process, you should first explain what you are going to do, then take time to describe why you are going to do it, and how you will evaluate the quality of your performance.

Teach students how to use both memory-directed and comprehension directed tactics. Teach students how to use various forms of rehearsal and mnemonic devices. Maintenance rehearsal is a useful tactic for keeping a relatively small amount of information active in short-term memory. It is also one of a few tactics young children can learn to use. Remind young students that rehearsal is something that learners consciously decide to do when they want to remember things, and remind students to rehearse no more than seven items (or chunks) at a time.

Teach students how to formulate comprehension questions. Self questioning could be an effective comprehension tactic, if students are trained to write good comprehension questions and given opportunities to practice the technique.

Interactive Modeling

A teacher models positive behaviors, engages students in active learning, and immediately assesses their understanding.

Providing Feedback

A teacher provides student with feedback, or information with which a learner can confirm, add to, overwrite, tune, or restructure information in memory, whether that information is domain knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, beliefs
about self and tasks, or cognitive tactics and strategies.

Scaffolding

A teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully.

Reciprocal Teaching

Teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher's role in the process is reduced over time.

Support for Triadic Reciprocal Causation: Self efficacy, epistemological beliefs, and self-regulation processes are positively related to achievement.

Lodewyk, 2007; Lodewyk & Winne, 2005; Schommer-Aikins, Duell, & Hutter, 2005; Swakabder & Taube, 2007; Trautwein & Ludtke, 2007; Usher & Pajares, 2008

Support for Peer Modeling: Middle school students who watched their peers solve math problems achieved higher on a math exam with similar problems and had higher ratings of self efficacy than did students who watched adults model math problems.

Schunk & Hanson, 1985; Schunk, Hanson, & Cox, 1897

Support for Strategy Teaching: Lower grade students who were taught self-regulating writing strategies and observed classmates implement the strategies write better essays than students who received traditional writing instruction.

Glaser & Brunstein, 2007; K.R. Harris, Graham, & Manson, 2006; Graham & Perin, 2007

Support for Reciprocal Teaching: Students taught a multicomponent strategy (summarize, question, clarify, predict) scored higher on reading comprehension exams than students given standard reading instruction.

Alfassi, 1998; C.J. Carter, 1997; Kim, Baylor, & PALS Group, 2006; Rosenshine & Meister, 1994

Support of Computer-Based Modeling: Watching a computer based model produces better learning and transfer of problem solving skills, as well as increases engagement and motivation.

Liu & Petersen, 2002

Using Technology to Promote Self Regulated Learning

Computer based programs that include models can improve student's problem solving skills. Students that are provided with video segments of an expert modeling a skill or an activity are able to succeed in repeating the same task. Research has shown that watching a computer based model, even an animated one, produces better learning and transfer of problem solving skills than watching no model.

Programs such as Exploring
the Nardoo (Hedberg, 1997), Decision Point
(Brush & Saye, 2000), and Rescuing Rocky
(Barab, Hay & Duffy, 2000) make use of the
capabilities of technology to promote a variety
of activities typical of student-centered learning,
such as experimentation, research, design, and
solution development.

student-centered activities such as computer programs,
are likely to support intrinsically
motivated behavior on the part of students. As
evidence of this, teachers reported that during
Alien Rescue, students stayed engaged
throughout the three-week program and were
rarely off task, and behavior
problems decreased. Several teachers
also noted that students who are typically unmotivated
during science were more motivated
than usual.