A story of an 8 year old girl named Fairouz has gone viral on Facebook. Fairouz used to have difficulties improving her handwriting. One teacher, Mrs. Etiimaad, noticed that Fairouz love drawing. As a teacher, she was able to spot the talent, and started to convince Fairouz to write in her sketch book as if she is drawing. Fairouz started to feel better towards writing, which she hated at first, she has later been able to improve her hand writing. The teacher, Mrs. Etiimaad, was praised nationwide due to her caring attitude, and her effectiveness as a teacher.

This video has been created by the SEL Blog team to demonstrated the story in a visual format

From social and learning point of view, a number of learning theories have been demonstrated in this story as follows:

The key theory is Behaviorism where by a learner is essentially passive, responding to environmental stimuli. The learner starts off as a clean slate and behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. Both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability that the antecedent behavior will happen again. In contrast, punishment (both positive and negative) decreases the likelihood that the antecedent behavior will happen again. Positive indicates the application of a stimulus; Negative indicates the withholding of a stimulus. Learning is therefore defined as a change in behavior in the learner. Lots of (early) behaviorist work was done with animals (e.g. Pavlov’s dogs) and generalized to humans.

The second theory is Humanism, Humanism, a paradigm that emerged in the 1960s, focuses on the human freedom, dignity, and potential. A central assumption of humanism, according to Huitt (2001), is that people act with intentionality and values. This is in contrast to the behaviorist notion of operant conditioning (which argues that all behavior is the result of the application of consequences) and the cognitive psychologist belief that the discovering knowledge or constructing meaning is central to learning. Humanists also believe that it is necessary to study the person as a whole, especially as an individual grows and develops over the lifespan. It follows that the study of the self, motivation, and goals are areas of particular interest.
Read more about learning theories .