Activity 7.3: Responding to Bandura (2011)

          Bandura's article, "But What About That Gigantic Elephant in the Room?" talks about misconceptions that people have about his social cognitive theory of human behavior, which says that learning happens through observing models.  But are modeling and observation conducive to learning?  Bandura says yes, and goes through the misconceptions people have about his theory and debunks them.  One of the misconceptions Bandura talks about is that modeling only produces mimicry.  However, as Bandura says, "Modeling involves abstracting the information conveyed by specific exemplars about the structure and the underlying principles governing the behavior rather than simply mimicking the specific exemplars" (Bandura, 2011, p. 2).  This reminds me of our classroom discussion at the beginning on observation as reinforcement.  Bandura is saying that one does not simply mimic a behavior just to do so, that instead modeling in order to learn new things.  Bandura also talks about modeling as promoting innovativeness, which reminded me about something that I experienced as a child.  In the second grade, we were directed to draw a big star on our paper.  I did not know the secret to drawing the perfect star (i.e., drawing the lines and then erasing the middle) and was just drawing the outline- badly.  I was directed by my teacher to do a better one, and one of my peers showed me how by modeling the way to do it.  Not only did I learn how to draw a star, but I also practiced doing it frequently and eventually developed a better way for myself to quickly draw stars.