Bandura, Albert

Albert Bandura (1925– ), a pioneering theorist of social cognitive therapeutic interventions leading to development of personal agency, is cited widely by counselors and psychotherapists. His social learning theory, later known as social cognitive theory, evolved from an initial interest in social models’ impact on children’s aggression, to modeled interventions for phobias, to enhancing patients’ self-efficacy beliefs and use of self-regulatory processes.

Bandura was born on December 4, 1925, in a rural hamlet in northern Alberta, Canada. He was the only son in a family of six children of Ukrainian and Polish heritage. His early educational experiences were conducted in an eight-room school with only two high school teachers and few instructional resources. This often led to a reversal of teacher and student roles, and Bandura ...