An insight to Behaviorism:

There are various theories discussed and formed to understand the development of humans. One of the dominant theories among these theories is Behaviorism. From the work of a psychologist named John B. Watson, in around 1870s, the behaviorism was originated (Coon, 2005). He was impressed by the work of Ivan Pavlov and was influenced by him. Before his experiments and notion came into existence, psychologists were concerned with the development of mind and mental processes. However, he opposed to this view and strongly believed that psychology should not be concerned with how mind and mental processes work, instead psychology should be concerned with behavior.  He believed that we need something stable, something that can be measured to understand the human development (Cohen, 2009). That prospect that could be measured according to him was the behavior of human. Thereby this notion of human development was formed. The main argument of behaviorists is that behavior should be studied because it could be dealt directly. It is something we could see and measure. However, mind and mental processes in the psychology should be ignored since it could not be dealt directly. It is something which could result in inconsistency (Henton & Iversen, 2011). Behaviorism emphasized the importance of psychologists studying only the observable behavior. One of the proponents of this theory was B.F.Skinner, whose experiment was named as Operant Conditioning. He believed that behavior can be conditioned. His experiment on Operant Conditioning will be further discussed by giving a brief to his experiment and his principles, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Furthermore, the relationship between different developmental stages and learning through Operant Conditioning would be discussed and also how to apply this to the classroom will be examined.