Saturday, September 5, 2009

Behaviorist and Constructionist lesson plans


Lesson plans are a set of instructions that a teacher develops to help keep a standard procedure of how a lesson is going to be taught. There are different kinds of lesson plans and some teachers chose the best one for any given situation. For the past hundred years psychological studies on behavior have led to different conclusions on what type of behavior theory applies to what type of people.


The behaviorist lesson plan focuses on the behaviorism studies in psychology. This lesson plan is based on the theory that students will learn by repetition and association. A sample behaviorist lesson plan will look like a specific set of instructions and procedure. Every detail is entailed in the paper thereby making it possible for any teacher to pick up and teach the lesson effectively. This type of lesson plan can be used to standardize lessons among classrooms. There is always a clear objective that must be achieved and the behaviorist lesson plans details how to achieve it.


Another lesson plan based on psychological studies is the constructivist plan. Based on constructivism, a student constructs his/her own lessons based on experiences interactions. Constructivist lesson plans might not contain specific instructions on how to teach the lesson, but they will have a set of instructions on how to have students working together and sharing experiences. Unlike the behaviorist plan, the constructionist plan will have the students think more than work. It will have students express what they are learning with other classmates and what they think about what has been taught. These two lesson plans differ in many ways but they have the same goal of achieving new knowledge, weather it be interpersonal knowledge or memorization.


The behaviorist lesson plan is an ideal plan for lessons that require a certain point to be learned. Unlike the constructivist plan which I believe would not be as effective during certain classes like math or history. For discovering new ideas and learn interpersonally about an emotional subject, the constructionist is a good idea. However, I believe that the behaviorist lesson plan will continue to be the standard used for many years to come.

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