Albert Bandura

Modified: 2025-03-12 8:27 PM CDST

Albert Bandura pioneered new and broad methods to study learning and much more. His approach to observational learning was groundbreaking and led to a wide variety of new research in many areas beyond learning and learning theory.

Albert Bandura

Biography

• Born in Alberta, Canada (1925)
• Degrees:
  • BA, MA University of British Columbia
  • PhD University of Iowa
• Career
  • Wichita Guidance Center
  • Stanford University
    • Obituary
• Influenced by:
  • Kenneth Spence
  • Dollard and Miller
• Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (2003). Albert Bandura: The scholar and his contributions to educational psychology. In B. J. Zimmerman & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Educational psychology: A century of contributions (pp. 431–457). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

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  Abstract

  This chapter reviews Albert Bandura's life and contributions to educational psychology.
• Bandura's early work involved a study of social and familial determinants of aggression.
• He developed theories of social modeling and studied the role of this modeling in children's cognitive and linguistic development.
• He then turned his attention to children's language development through abstract modeling.
• He also studied self-regulation processes and self-efficacy, culminating in the book "Social Learning Theory." Bandura's contributions to human development and education include an expansion of these ideas: understanding children's social development, understanding children's cognitive development, understanding observational learning, understanding self-regulation, and understanding self-efficacy beliefs.
• The broad scope of Bandura's theory stems from his diverse scientific interests and his theory's ready applicability.
• Social modeling, self-enabling beliefs, and self-regulation are pervasive across contexts and domains of human functioning.
• Bandura's professional associations include a stint as president of the American Psychological Association and the Western Psychological Association, as well as honorary president of the Canadian Psychological Association. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Contributions

• Bandura extended behavioral theory by emphasizing the role of imitation and modelling in learning.
• Modeling is a complex consisting of: attention, retention, motor skills, and motivation.
• Models can be live, symbolic, and verbal.
• Reinforcement, both direct and vicarious played a major role in whether modelled behaviors were performed those viewing them.
• Bandura concentrated on the modelling of aggressive behaviors because of the obvious external validity of interventions in that area. Also, aggressive behaviors are seen in all cultures.
• Bandura's early research with the 'Bobo' doll and modelling opened up a new area of research into the effects of aggressive models. Late in his career, Bandura worked on self-efficacy.
• In terms of developmental theorizing, Bandura was opposed to Piagetian models of development, believing that modelling and the environment play a far greater role in learning than internal variables.

  Comments

  In many ways, Bandura represents the apex of behavioral theorizing. He extended the simpler models of Skinner and others to imitation learning. Compared to other developmental theorists (Piaget, Kohlberg, Rousseau), Bandura emphasized the role of the environment and attempted to provide a model for analyzing the environment's effects.

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