Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura, the developer of the social cognitive theory ,was born in Canada in 1925 on the 4^th of December. He was educated at a small elementary school. Later on upon completion of his high school, he pursued his desire to understand human nature and received his bachelor’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of British Colombia.

This achievement was immediately followed by a Ph. D in 1952 from the University of Iowa. It was at this point that he was influenced by the behaviourist tradition and learning theory. Other advocates of social learning theory are Walter Mischel and Julian Rotter. However, the two focused more on personality.

Albert Bandura’ Social Learning Theory

The social learning theory is an approach advanced in child development whose major argument is that children develop through learning from other people around them. It is stated that the social learning theory emphasises the role of observation and imitation of role models. The proponents of the theory view social development as a continuous learning process as opposed to learning in stages.

The theory evolved from behaviourism but now it includes many ideas of cognitive theories as a result, it is now called social cognitive learning theory. As advanced by Weiten (2004) Bandura believed that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning hence he added a social element arguing that people could learn new behaviour and new information by observing others.