Reflection 2: What is the difference between the Behaviorist Lesson Plan format and the Constructivist Lesson Plan format?

There are three main lesson plans: Behaviorist, Constructivist and Transpersonal. Transpersonal is a mix between both constructivist and behaviorist but mainly about the individual, using the term personal. When you split them up, a Behaviorist lesson plan is what America was founded on; it was the approach to teaching and learning. The behaviorist lesson plan was based on animals and it stated with an experiment by a Russian scientist named Parlov. Parlov would get a dog and ring a bell every time he would give it food. After doing this a few times the dog eventually started creating saliva in its mouth and getting excited whenever it would hear a bell and eventually Parlov would only ring the bell without food and the dog, in time after not receiving a reward, would stop getting excited and salivating. What this has taught us is that human beings can be conditioned or taught something and then, as humans, we would react without thinking. The way I see it is that lets say you are driving to work and you know that there is always a police officer on your way to work and you have gotten a ticket several times; you would eventually find another route and go that way without thinking. The problem with this is that Parlov and other scientists believe that our brain responds to stimulus without thinking and this is not true as we can decide weather we want to react or not. Constructivist thinking is completely different. Constructivists believe that people have their own reality and we interpret things based on our perceptions or experiences. In other words, let’s say you study hard for a test and when you get your grade back it is an A. You have now learned that in order to get a good grade you have to study. But what happens when you do study and you get a D grade or even an F? You have learned before that in order to get a good grade you need to study and you did study yet you failed the test. This now means that in future tests you have to study harder or maybe it’s the teacher that made the test more difficult. In conclusion, if you are a constructivist you need to restate what you once thought based on your new experience. Both lesson plan formats are very different but they both do have one similarity: they help students and teachers learn in different ways; that is why it is good to have a mixture of both lesson plans and even an transpersonal format of learning so you can also learn about yourself.