Behaviorism only studies external observable behaviors and attempts to explain how behavioral changes are affected by the environment. Behaviorism believes in the omnipotence of education and environmental determinism. It is believed that all human behaviors are formed under the influence of acquired environment. Watson, the famous advocate of behaviorism, once said this famously: Give me a dozen healthy babies and a special world in which I can cultivate them, and I can guarantee that any one will be selected at any time, regardless of his talents, talents, and abilities. Depending on his tendencies, abilities, parents' occupation and race, he can be trained to become any chosen type of character, such as a doctor, lawyer, artist, big businessman, or even a beggar or thief. From the perspective of behaviorism, the essence of behavioral change is the formation of stimulus-response connections, such as the formation of a connection between stimulus "4*6" and response "24"; events (i.e. consequences) that occur after the behavior are regarded as reinforcement, For example, when the teacher asks a student "4*6=?", the student answers 24, and the teacher says "Very good, you answered it correctly", this is reinforcement. In behaviorist learning theory, reinforcement is a very key concept. Any event that can enhance the probability of response is called a reinforcer. For behaviorists, control of reinforcement means control of behavior, and reinforcement of target behavior is the key to learning. Another famous representative of the later period of behaviorism was the American psychologist Skinner. He made it clear that the consequences of any collective's current behavior will change its future behavior. For example, when a student actively raises his hand to speak in class and is publicly praised by the teacher, he will actively raise his hand to speak more and more in the future. This principle applies not only to animal training, but also to the shaping and correction of various human behaviors, including social behaviors. Because behaviorism can solve some practical problems, it still plays an important role in behavior modification, psychotherapy, and instructional design until now.

The teaching process of behaviorist theory is: first, choose the end behavior, that is, the teaching goal, the more specific the better; second, understand the student’s starting behavior, that is, what they can do now and what they already know; third, Third, pacing is to divide knowledge into a number of small steps. The size of the steps varies according to the students' abilities; fourth, small-step tasks are presented to students, and students' responses to each small step are given feedback and reinforcement until until students reach the teaching objectives. This teaching model is called procedural teaching.

Cognitivist learning theory

Cognitive learning theory is particularly concerned with what happens inside the learner's mind during learning. They regard learning as a process in which the brain processes information, and believe that learning consists of reception, short-term storage, encoding, long-term storage and information extraction. Cognitive theorists are concerned with cognitive structures or systems of knowledge and with the processes that build and change these structures. According to the cognitivist theory, teaching is not the "transmission" of knowledge, but the active "acquisition" of students. Cognitivist theorists believe that students are active information processors - they actively make choices, pay attention and other reactions; actively organize already known information to achieve information learning; and actively seek relevant information to solve problems. Teachers should create good conditions for students to stimulate students' learning motivation and provide reasonable learning strategies to promote students' learning.