Social Learning Theory - A. Bandura Research Paper

Social Learning Theory - A. Bandura - Research Paper Example There involves a wide rage of technical aspects that need to be focused and incorporated to achieve the very educational goals of the overall education system. According to Bandura, school must do more than just imparting knowledge in the same old traditional ways, which according to him do not have a thorough influence over the long-term learning of the students. Let the paper first analyze the key points that the Social Learning theory (Ormrod, 2007) revolves around and subsequently, will move towards specific aspects of educational systems that one should incorporate, in order to achieve the highest rate of development in the light of this theory. Social Learning Theory (Ormrod, 2007) primarily advocates the idea that the learning capability of people is because of their observations. When people observe some one practicing something and achieving any kind of results, they like imitating the person’s behavior after a sequence of cognitive processes. This means that imitatin g makes people learn and thus observation is the key element. Moreover, since behaviorist theory and other learning theories like cognitive learning theory also emphasize upon people’s learning due to their abilities of memorizing and retention; social learning theory can play a vital role as a bridge between these theories since this element is mutually found in the mentioned three theories. In addition, the factor of motivation has to be present to make the individual move forward in adopting a behavior and evolving his personality (Learning-Theories, 2008). Furthermore, there are three significant variables, Bandura has put his theory upon and integrated them with proper reasoning. As discussed earlier, firstly behavior is the key element of learning (Ormrod, 2007). The second most important feature is personal variable. The preferences of an individual play a significant part in making them distinguish between what they want to learn and what they should and what they do not want to learn and they should not. Every individual has their own area of interest with a set boundary of ethical values and mores. Imitation and observations are greatly influenced by the values that the individuals hold previously. Third important variable is the environmental events that take place. This incorporates the answers to questions like what kind of an event is taking place, how frequently and how much the recipient is involved. Thus, according to Bandura, all these factors have a collective effect over the personality development of the individuals (Frick, 1991). Educators play a significant role in making the students realize that all of them can learn anything at any point in time and in any stage of their lives. Since, every individual possesses different qualities and even each one of them has their particular bent of mind to learn according to their own capacities, the focus should be on the factor of motivation. Thus, educators should primarily try to bring a bout the motivation factor in their students at first because if motivation were not present, individual learning process would hinder a lot (Books, 2010). Secondly, educators must try knowing about the specific learning trends of every student. This connotes that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and some learn through simulations and not by any other means. Once, the educators have a grip on these aspects, they can move on while focusing over