Although the theories of behavioral and developmental psychologists have greatly influenced educational thinking, the area of moral development has been dominated by the ideas of operant conditioning. The conventional wisdom was then that a sense of moral rights and wrongs was learned through rewards and punishments (positive reinforcement of operant conditioning). Albert Bandura, though, felt that this was too simplistic and that almost all the behavior we observe around us is learned socially by observing the behavior performed by others.
Children are aware of everything that goes on around them, including adults. They remember what they see and hear and imitate it. Their actions are influenced by everyone else present, whether they realize it or not. This process, called modeling, occurs because children observe what adults do and copy them. According to Bandura, there are four steps involved in modeling: attention (children notice adult behavior), retention (they keep it in mind), reproduction (they copy it), and motivation (adult behavior is approved by others).
