Behavioral Theory and Nursing Education

Running head: FACILITATION AND EDUCATIONAL SKILLS
Facilitation and Educational Skills
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FACILITATION AND EDUCATIONAL SKILLS
Learning can be established as a permanent change in the mental or emotional
functioning, processing and emotional functioning and the behavior as a outcome of
experiences. This can be said is a dynamic process where the individuals acquire new
thoughts, attitudes, actions and feelings. The purpose of this essay is to portray the challenges
that can be faced while teaching or learning in a clinical environment. In this essay
behaviorist theory is chosen as a learning theory and it has been discussed how well this
theory can facilitate learning procedure and can promote a positive workplace culture.
Behaviorist learning theory focuses primarily on what can be directly observed and
the behaviorists see learning as a product of stimulus conditions(s) and the responses(r)
which can be at times termed as SR model. This learning process following this theory can
become very easy for the learners. Behaviorists does not care about what is going inside the
mind of the learners, rather, they focus on the responses of them and they try to manipulate
the environment to bring in the desired change (Riekert, Ockene and Pbert 2013). Recently,
in education and clinical psychology behaviorist theories are being widely used. To modify
the attitudes and responses of the individuals behaviorists alter the stimulus conditions
present in the environment, or in some cases, they try to change the situation after getting the
responses from the individuals. As an example gathered from a healthcare research, it can be
said that certain respondent conditioning concepts can be useful in healthcare environment.
Stimulus generalization can be said is the tendency of primary learning experiences which are
to be applied to some other same type of stimuli. For an example, it can be said that, while
listening to friends describing a hospital experience it becomes apparent that it would either
positive or negatively affect a patient’s evaluation of their own hospital stays or their feelings
about getting hospitalized again in coming days (LoBiondo-Wood et al. 2013). With
experience people learn to differentiate and identify ways to amend their behaviors in the
clinical environment. The key is to observe carefully the responses of the individuals to some

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FACILITATION AND EDUCATIONAL SKILLS
specified stimuli and then decide to apply the best possible reinforcement procedure to
change a behavior. There can be two methods to change the behaviors of the individuals and
those are applying either positive or negative reinforcement after getting the responses. It can
be said that, giving positive reinforcement would hugely enhance the chances of that person
to repeat the behavior in a similar condition. On the other hand, by giving negative
reinforcements after the response from the individuals, it can involve the removal of some
indecent stimulus through either escaping or by avoiding conditioning. In escape
conditioning, when an unpleasant stimulus is implied the individual responses in a way that
brings in uncomfortable stimulus by either escape conditioning or avoidance conditioning
(LoBiondo-Wood et al. 2013).
In escape conditioning, by the time an unpleasant stimulus is applied the concerned
person gives response in such a way that results in ceasing of that unpleasant stimulation. For
an example, it can be said that, when a member of a healthcare team gets chastised by
someone in front of the whole group for getting late and missing the important meeting, he or
she says something funny and the head of the team gets distracted and laughs out, and in this
case, that funny humorous words made it easy for him or her to escape the situation (Riekert,
Ockene and Pbert 2013).
In case of avoidance conditioning, in most cases, the unpleasant stimulus gets
anticipated before being applied (Iwasiw and Goldenberg 2014). This avoid conditioning is
being used to explain some individual’s tendency to become not well as an excuse of not
doing something. In this case, for an example, it can be said, that, a child who does not like a
particular teacher in school may project that he is not well, so that he does not have to attend
school (Iwasiw and Goldenberg 2014). If he is excused once, then the child would often show
this kind of behavior just to avoid unpleasant situations in school. Thus, it can be said that