Social learning theory

The social learning theory proposed by Albert Bandura 1977 has become perhaps the most influential theory of learning and development. While rooted in many of the basic concepts of traditional learning theory, Bandura believed that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning. He was proposed that observational learning can occur in relation to three models

1. Modeling Learning:
Modeling learning occurs by means of the media, including movies, television, Internet, literature, and radio. This type of modeling involves a real or fictional character demonstrating the behavior. The following steps are involved in the observational learning and modeling process:
• Attention:
In order to learn, you need to be paying attention. Anything that detracts your attention is going to have a negative effect on observational learning. If the model interesting or there is a novel aspect to the situation, you are far more likely to dedicate your full attention to learning.
• Retention:
The ability to store information is also an important part of the learning process. Retention can be affected by a number of factors, but the ability to pull up information later and act on it is vital to observational learning.
• Reproduction:
– in reproducing a behavior, an individual must organize his or her responses in accordance with the model behavior. This ability can improve with practice
•. Motivation – there must be an incentive or motivation driving the individual’s reproduction of the behavior. Even if all of the above factors are present, the person will not engage in the behavior without motivation.

2. Vicarious Learning:
Vicarious Learning is the second model of social or observational learning. Vicarious Learning is learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behavior observed in others. It involves the process of learning to copy or model the action of another through observing another doing i.e., students watching another student at the front of the class interacting with the teacher.
According to Craig, et al. 2006, Vicarious Learning refer to learning of behavior form watching videos of that behavior, it is used here to refer to a instructional method that occurs when learners see and hear a learning situation for which they are not the addressees and do not interact with the observed learner nor the observed learner's instruction.

3. Self Regulation:
In social learning theory human behavior is extensively motivated and regulated by the ongoing exercise of self influence. The major self regulative mechanism operates through three principle subs functions. These include self monitoring of one’s behavior, its determinants, and its effects; judgment of one’s behavior in relation to personal standards and environmental circumstances; and affective self reaction. Self regulation also encompasses the self efficacy mechanism, which plays a central role in the exercise of personal agency by its strong impact on thought, affect, motivation and action. The self regulation systems is involved in moral conduct although compared to the achievement domain, in the moral domain the evaluative standards are more stable, the judgmental factors more varied in complex and affective