Learning behaviour consists of two words, which are learning and behaviour. They come together to form an entirely new meaning, giving some sort of connections with academic or education performances. For example, if a person sleeps early, his learning behaviour would be good as he will have a better concentration to focus on the lessons the next day. Or if a person skipped her breakfast for the entire day, the impact on the learning behaviours might be so bad to the point that the person is not able to participate at all when the classes are going on. The reasons provided were basically trying to reflect on the importance of sleep in daily lives as well as the intake of breakfast and also indicated the effects of such factors on the learning behaviours.
Despite the reasonings, it was still difficult to understand the clear relationship between the performances and learning behaviour. What exactly is learning behaviour? Many definitions did flood the net, each giving their own understandings on the term based on the studies they carried. Learning, seems to be a rather simple word to understand. However, when it comes to the definition, many researchers either could not come up with a solid definition or provided a plain, simplified one due to its abstract concept (Houwer, Holmes & Moors 2013 p.631).
Learning is not just learning like what the word says, but carries a deeper meaning that researchers are having a hard time figuring the perfect definition. Due to the varieties in jobs as well as education, learning has gone far beyond to be able described from a same point of view. The absence of mutual opinions or thoughts in different aspects of fields has prohibited an overview of learning from being generated, which causes the frequent changing of its definition (Qvortrup et al. 2016 p.8).
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Many researchers have been trying to connect the theoretical concepts of teaching and learning due to the evolving of education throughout the years. However, Qvortrup et al. (2016) stated that the connections are not as clear as they seemed to be because the trials which formed the association between the concepts of teaching and learning were only based on selected areas (p.9). This clearly shows that despite there is relationship between teaching and learning from a certain point of view, it might not be the same for other people with different opinions.
According to Rossum and Hamer (2010), they had doubled confirmed in their study that learning is associated with five different conceptions which are ‘learning as the increase of knowledge, learning as memorising, learning as the acquisition of facts, procedures, learning as the abstraction of meaning, and learning as an interactive process aimed at understanding the reality’ (p.2). Learning has different conceptions due to the different types of meanings the term is trying to convey. Before somebody masters up a skill, learning is the very first step. This is because only through learning, one will acquire the knowledge and after that, polishing is what it takes.
Another researcher, Magdalena (2015) claimed that learning is a repetitive action which consists of four levels which are concrete, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and as well as experimental active (p.1669). Behaviourism became a branch of study in the field of psychology due to difference in opinions occurred when psychology is said to be only for internal mental processes and not external (Heimlich & Ardoin 2008 p.216). Ever since then, many studies had been carried out to conduct research on the behaviours of humans. So, what is behaviour? According to Lazzeri (2014), the term ‘behaviour’ consists of at least four different meanings which are the ‘occurrence of an organism’s response, behaviour as a pattern, groups’ behaviours and behaviour as any change or movement of an object’ (p.67-69).
Just like learning, behaviourism has a very wide aspect because it contains many branches like radical behaviourism and methodological behaviourism. Behaviour is something that is available or to be more exact, should be in all types of living organisms (Uher 2016 p.8). Good or bad, it may be disrupted by many other factors like peers or social media influences. However, the seed of behaviourism is planted in living organisms from the very early stage of life. Eldhose (2014) added that behaviour is a reaction that results in the production of a response, both mentally as well as physically (p.4).
In general, the most common definition used for defining behaviourism is related to our bodies’ stimulus and response (Heimlich & Ardoin 2008 p.216). For example, how would a person react when he is exposed to the possibilities of being in danger, or how would a person respond when he receives a hug from a total stranger? Of course, when coming up with a suitable definition for ‘behaviour’, there were some problems faced by the researchers. In the study done by Lazzeri (2014), it is stated that Marken (1982) failed to provide a good one because in his definition, involuntary or automatized actions were not included and also the misleading relationships between behaviours and results (p.76).
Bergner (2011) too did not manage to fulfil the requirements as the researcher’s definition only included humans and was not able to relate to the other organisms (Lazzeri 2014 p.77). Because of its wide concept as well as the abstract meaning, to come up with a perfect definition of behaviourism is not an easy matter. Learning behaviour is often associated with academic achievement in students regardless of the level of education. Saxena(2002) stated that learning behaviour is actually a form of behaviour where the students’ minds are able to balance at a psychological point, that they are able to perform the learning activities at a high level, such as soft skills and also academic skills (Mary & Jebaseelan 2014 p.57). Many researchers claimed that behaviour affects the learning patterns of a person.
Even though learning behaviour do affect the academic performance in students, there are many factors that could bring the same influence. Based on the research carried out by Mary and Jebaseelan (2014), they concluded that learning behaviour is not the only factor which contributes to the academic achievement (p.58). This is because in her study, the results obtained to test the significance relationship between learning positive and education achievement is only a low positive.
Different types of learning behaviours are brought out each time a different activity is carried out. For example, while participating in class lessons, or online assignments. Learning behaviour has a very wide concept to be explained straight away. In a systematic review carried out by Powell and Tod (2004), they engaged the term ‘learning behaviour’ with a few other parameters such as participations, communications, and self-esteem, to analyse the deconstruction of the meanings, concluding that learning behaviour is frequently related to school contexts where there involves multiple of variables such as individual, curricular activities and social (p.6).
