Behavioral Approach
Learning from the behavioral approach is defined as a change in behavior brought on by experience. Contributions to education from the behavioral approach include learning objectives and mastery learning. Learning objectives have instructional objectives which state a clear and unambiguous description of the teacher's educational intentions for students. Mastery learning is based on the assumption that, given enough time and the proper instruction, most students can master any learning objective. The teacher breaks down material into smaller units of study. With each unit, the student is responsible for mastering learning objectives.
Cognitive Approach
With the cognitive approach, students actively choose, practice, pay attention, ignore, reflect, and make decisions as they pursue their goals. Contributions to education from the cognitive approach include supplying guidance on underlining and highlighting, taking notes ,and mnemonics. When underling and highlighting, the best method is to apply these to only one sentence per paragraph in order to improve learning. Taking notes focuses attention and helps encode information, thus increasing the chances that it will get into long-term memory. Mnemonics is a systematic procedure for improving memory by using mental memory aids. An example of this would be to form phrases or sentences using the first letters of each word on a list that needs to be remembered.
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