The first approach to learning is the behavioral approach. For the behaviorist, behavior is everything that we do that can be directly observed: a child creating a poster, a teacher smiling at a child, one student picking on another student, and so on (Santrock 238). The behavioral approach emphasizes on experiences, especially reinforcement and punishment, as determinants of learning and behavior. Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to connect or associate stimuli (Santrock 240). Generalization in classical conditioning is the tendency of a new stimulus similar to the original stimulus to produce a similar response (notes). For example, a child is taught to raise his hand in the first grade to speak out loud in class, so when that child gets to second grade he will know

me. Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which the consequences of behavior produce changes in the probability that a behavior will occur; punishment is a consequence that decreases the probability that a behavior will occur. In positive reinforcement, a behavior increases because it is followed by a rewarding stimulus, on the other hand, in negative reinforcement; a behavior increases because the response removes an aversive stimulus.

In vignette #3, Mohammed had the 7th grade partner up with the 6th graders who are doing the same project they had to do the previous year. His plan was to get the 6th graders to observe the 7th graders to give them a better idea of what they are suppose to do. This is a perfect example of observational leaning because the 6th graders would be imitating or modeling the 7th graders. In the same vignette a student named Shelley has a problem with anxiety because of previous bad experiences with a certain teacher and Mohammed has worked with her the past year to make her more confident. He tried to help her develop a plan and to try and keep her on task. This is an example of his trying to teach her self-regulatory learning because he is trying to make her aware of her emotional makeup and teach her strategies for managing their emotions. Also, he periodically monitored her progress towards her goal (Santrock 265).

getting into memory. Then there is automaticity, which is the ability to process information with little or no effort. Next is transfer, which occurs when the child applies previous experiences and knowledge to learning or problem solving in a new situation (notes). Types of transfer include near and far and low-road and high-road. Near transfer occurs when situations are similar, and far occurs when situations are very different. Low-road transfer occurs when previous learning automatically transfers to another situation. High-road transfer is conscious and effortful (Santrock 312). Last there is metacognition, which means, "knowing about knowing". One of the central ideas of the information processing approach is memory, which is the retention of information over time. Memory has different time frames that includes sensory, short-term, and ling-term. Sensory memory holds the information for only an instant. Short-term memory can hold information for up to 30 seconds, and long-term memory holds enormous amounts of information for a long period of time in a relatively permanent fashion (Santrock 280). The other central idea to memory is thinking. Thinking involves manipulating and transforming information in memory, which is often done to form concepts, reason, think critically, and solve problems (Santrock 291). There are two forms of reasoning, which are inductive and deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is reasoning from specific to general, while deductive reasoning is reasoning from general to specific.

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