ALBERT BANDURA’S THEORY OF LEARNING: BRIDGING BEHAVIORIST AND COGNITIVIST ROLE OF ONLINE STUDENT’S SELF-EFFICACY

Abstract

Bandura’s theory of learning is people learning from one another through observation, imitation, and modelling that bridge behaviorist and learning theories encircled with attention, memory, and motivation (Bandura, 1977,

1982, 1986, 1997, 2006). In contrary, Bandura presented human behavior and motivation in the individual’s self-belief  as critical elements—self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997, 2006). How does this Bandura’s theory of learning bridge behaviorist and cognitivist role of online student’s self-efficacy?  Evidence suggests that the self-efficacy beliefs provide the foundation for human motivation, well-being, and personal accomplishment (Pajares, 2016; Ryan & Deci, 2016; Schunk & DeBenedetto, 2016; Schwarzer, 2014). For an online learner, self-efficacy is termed as one of the greatest factors affecting engagement, completion, and learning (Barak,

2016; Harris & Phelan, 2016; Kauffman, 2015; Lee, 2015). Additionally, three distinct approaches in online instruction  to maintain self-efficacy of the learners; they are behaviorist, cognitivist, and social interaction. However, being asynchronous, the online learning needs attention for online instructional design to build self- efficacy. Experts agree that instructional design contributes to the self-efficacy of students (Chen et al., 2016; Kauffman, 2015; Schiefele & Schaffner, 2015). This paper explores into the online student’s self-efficacy by bridging the behaviorist and cognitivist role in the online instructional design.