behaviorism, cognitivism or sociocultural approach?

Behaviorism

I feel that this theory is the most relevant to Singapore's education (and law) system. Rewards and punishment has always been (at least for the 15 yrs of education I've been through), the main means of encouraging people to do/ not do something. In education, since primary school, this system has existed, from little things like giving you a star sticker on your spelling book if you have scored well , and having to be punished (teacher uses a ruler to hit our palms) if you have not done well in the spelling test. As I stepped into secondary school, this rewards and punishment system is even more obvious. However, this rewards and punishment system is different from primary school, such that being more intelligent ( being in the A classes) , your reward will not be material reward, but more of psychological ,such that they will be be seen by the rest of the school as the best and feeling high and above all (even the teachers will be nicer to you), while the less intelligent people ( the last class), will be looked down by the rest of the school and even teachers will dislike and have prejudice against you( such that if any mischief happens in the school, all fingers will be pointed at you---which relates to the aspect of behaviorism where people are basically selfish).
Just as mentioned in the readings, 'It's just the adaptation of organisms to an environment or the lack of adaptation leave them to die off when they are not fit to survive....in the end you look as everybody is perfectly adapted, when in fact, that was just a product of long periods of time in this natural selection system". However, in Singapore's situation, I don't feel that those who can't adapt are left to "die off", but rather that they are given less emphasis and importance.
I feel that in a capitalist society, this theory is definitely useful and relevant, as it is important to differentiate between the elites and the non-elites, so that the society ( economy, culture, national security) can progress.

Cognitivism

According to this theory, learning cannot be forced and the learner is the active one. I feel that this can be linked to the behaviorism theory, even though we can punish people that can't adapt to the environment ( eg. not scoring above the 50marks in exams), we cannot force them to learn just by punishing them. Instead, they must be motivated, as mentioned in cognitivism theory. reward and punishment may work on some people as motivation, but not all people will be motivated by it. As both behaviorsm and cognitivism sees the individual as unit of analysis, whether this 2 theories will work are very much depended on the individuals.

Sociocultural Approach

In this theory, the unit of analysis is the whole system of people and objects and organisation. This I feel would be one of the more useful ways to motivate people to learn. People are social creatures, and we may be unconscious about it, but our actions and way of thinking are largely influenced by the people around us. For example, in the context of school, various factors affect the how motivated we are to learn, such as the class we are in ( A class usually more motivated by the K class?), the classmates ( if the people around you are highly motivated to study, the more likely you will be too), and sometimes even the school that you are in ( eg. SAP school vs. a neighbourhood school). Hence as mentioned in the readings, learning is not only an individual thing, but more of a system level thing and sometimes, the system level affects learning much more than we think.

Before

I decided to write this first post before i attend week 2's e learning lecture. Purpose: To give my reflection and what I think about e learning before i get to learn more about it from the future lectures. Then at the end of the semester, maybe to compare if what i initial thought about elearning has changed throughout this semester.

So.... before I've been to the 1st lecture of elearning, I thought of it as a very narrow term, and that it was solely learning via the Internet, which means from online databases ( like nuslib, wikipedia, or any other search engines). I didn't think that learning from cd-roms and softwares would be included in definition of e-learning.
Nowadays, e-learning is a norm even in primary schools. If cd-roms are considered as e-learning, then I've been going through e-learning almost all my life as I recall learning math and english from cd-roms back in my primary school days.

After going for the 1st lecture, I realised how wide a variety of elements is included in the term e-learning, which makes it complicated and difficult to define.

Lecture 2's tmr, so i shall see what more about facts of e-learning there is to come...