The cognitive approach replaced the behavioral approach.

Hi Maria,

When I was teaching at Mid Michigan Community College, it was my responsibility to select textbooks for my department. At the time, every textbook had in the preface a statement disclosing that the text was a behavioral approach to the subject. There wasn't a choice.

I was then expected to spend a summer writing behavioral objectives. I told the Dean that I would not do that. It went so far that the legislators in Lansing passed a law requiring all teachers in Michigan to write behavioral objects. If they did not, state financial support would be cut.

I knew then there was something fundamentally wrong with Behaviorism. I just did not speak well enough to make the case against it.

I learned last week that behavioral approach has been replaced by the cognitive approach. The behavioral approach is dead. Yippee …

Behaviorism’s fundamental flaw is that it is based on the premise that thinking cannot be seen or measured, thus it is not important. It is only behavior that can be seen and measured that was thought at the time to be important. That proved to be the undoing of the behavioral approach.

Stephen