Social Cognitivism Case Study

Ms. Yamashita demonstrates vicarious reinforcement as she encourages Robin to continue creating concept maps and asks for permission to share her fabulous idea with the whole class so that they can benefit from her learning practices as well. Robin was learning a form of vicarious punishment from Mr. Kessinger. This form of punishment was already occurring as he would engage in bursts of anger with other students for their lack of preparation.

Mr. Kessinger was not considering reciprocal causation. He seems to lack the understanding that he plays a direct role in Robins environment. His incongruent behavior (anger) led to Robin obtaining false attributions relating to her own learning. Her self-efficacy has been squelched because her outcome expectancy was inconsistent with the real outcome, and her experience in his class is carrying over into other environments.

In creating concept maps, Robin is engaging in a process of self-instruction. She has created a way to remind herself of the connections that are occurring in her history class. This helps her identify cause and effect relationships between events. The more she is able to identify connections the more likely she will be in retaining information.

Robin has obviously been trying to raise her level of self-efficacy by creating an learning pattern that works for her. She believes that if she can grasp the connections between the information that she will be more likely to retain it. This is the purpose of concept maps in helping students find an alternative way to conceptualize information. Self-efficacy practices build positive outcome expectancies. When Robin was demoralized by her teacher for her learning strategy her outcome expectation was significantly altered. This can be seen as she fears being caught with her concept map in her next class. Her behavior in the next class suggests that she was a participant in enactive learning, which is interesting considering that she was trying to avoid such an experience by being prepared because she had already experienced vicarious learning from her peers in that class.