How Big Albert Teach Me To Learn

Albert Bandura integrates behaviorism and cognition in the learning process arguing that not all behaviors are the products of reinforcement or punishment. He contends that the individual, behavior, and environment are continuously influencing each other resulting to what we call reciprocal causation. He suggests that the individual can influence the behavior of other people and vice versa. He also proposes that behavior can be strengthened, modified and extinguished by the interplay of the environment with the individual’s thoughts, beliefs and feelings, in the same way that the individual’s cognitive processes can also influence the way he or she acts in a given situation.



The social cognitive theory of learning of Albert Bandura can be best exemplified in advertising, films, and online media. This is because some individuals imitate what they have observed from their favorite actors and superheroes. My son is no exception. When he was only four years old, he used to play Super Mario in his Nintendo. He was so fascinated with this fictitious character that he asked my wife to buy him Mario’s customs, cap and some plastic carpentry tools. After the video game, he used to play carpentry with his cousin.



Observational learning or modeling is in the center of Bandura’s social learning theory. He suggests that individual tends to copy the behavior of another person who shares the same belief, motivation and goals of the observer. He further asserts that the individual is more likely to imitate the other person’s way if the observer sees that the behavior of the one being observed is rewarded. I am guilty of this view. It was not at all envy when I decided to work overseas when I found out that my “kababata” was earning much when he decided to work abroad.

 

Another application of Bandura’s learning theory is in language formation and understanding. I remembered asking my son when he was still one and half year old to mimic the sound of the animals in our barangay. In one occasion, I asked him to identify the animals that I was sounding. In another, he was sounding the animal that I was telling him to mimic.



Images from

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/MarioSMBW.png (Super Mario)

http://www.careers.govt.nz/fileadmin/image/rte/model-bandura.png (A. Bandura's Theory)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljPhX6g7soEbaJi6XZitGRKVmhZ3a5muc26Uye7vtSTKV-oJjz3oklsnkLYreYQ3Knkk9B-vDwNUO7sT1onal6g9x7XSLeFPClyl5_h0eYNh1Sjvsvt4N2KR9rn0Q7G-WdXKYNi3MyK0/s1600/104_0931-001.JPG (Animal sounds)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBuNR4NJOY_mtnqFNIr1G8YEcSxZxq-b1b-Iee1rgVIayEkwHQDVHHbFsLny3a7zHINGMUnl8pPdPvbZMiZ5JoGcpB6O_hpdq918vADj0dr_hZU2liOJZz_wTm_hp6NqWbSqgJkOR4xIk/s320/ofw-juan.jpg (OFW)

Am I Plagiarizing?

After reading all the article about plagiarism on the website of Harvard University, my mind became in limbo. My mind just got stuck and wondered if  I were guilty of plagiarism for all those years.

(Image from https://www.paperrater.com/page/plagiarism-detection)

I became to realize that all those words and ideas that I wrote and expressed might not be my own. All the thoughts, reflections, insights and realizations might belong to someone else. Worst, my knowledge that I acquired could be taken away by those who put them on my mind!

And this thought came to my mine - if plagiarism if copying verbatim someone else ideas or a portion of it in writing without citing the author or source, what do you call it when you express them verbally? If such is also illegal, do we have to cite the author or the source whenever we speak? If such is the case, all what we say will be full of citations.

Can we say that what we learn is our own? If not, how and when we know that all these ideas are common knowledge that need not be cited? If a mother advised his  son to do something nice and the son obliged, should the mother cite where she got that idea? If the son said that to his future son, should he cite his mother or the source of his mother where the original idea came from?

If we copied an idea or expression from an author who copied it also from an author who copied it from the original author, shall we cited the author whom we copied the idea or the original author whom we never read his original writing?

Since new ideas are rare, we are bound to be guilty of plagiarism. What we write and say might be someone's else idea? What if you write aimlessly without referring to any form of media (like what I am doing right now), am i plagiarizing if those ideas were already written by somebody else?

What and how we know that an idea is common knowledge or not? Who decides that an idea or expression is an original one and must be cited? Is there a maximum period that a work, idea or belief be considered of public domain and should not be cited?

Well, those are some thoughts that I need to address before writing. By the way, what I 'm writing  right now might  belong to somebody else.  Oh, am i plagiarizing?