Education and behavioural environment

Abstract

This study will lead to the acquaintance with various concepts on education starting from the behaviourist approach; the issue of change can be analysed especially in the light of relationship between subject and environment, as well as the influences determined in such interaction. An essential role is played in this context also by the concept of apprehension, which constitutes
the process by which an activity is created and modified through reacting to an encountered situation. In the transposition of the behavioural model into the formative context, education becomes the conditioning of individual behaviours, that is to say manipulation. The education is therefore not intended as a complex system of cognitive, affective and social events influencing each other, but as a series of mental and emotional factors that are subject to modifications. The change of subject takes place therefore through structuring of the educational environment. The individual is not a simple passive receiver of environmental stimuli, but he elaborates them starting from his mental cognition. It is in this sense that adult education is conceived as an education of mind, as an activation of processes to which the subject can respond in order to change what constitutes his image of the world. Change is understood as a representative transformation occurring first on a cognitive level, which is then able to influence also the emotional and affective field.