User:Isabelle.Rose13/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Social learning theory

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because my research question for the Wikipedia assignment will be "How does social learning theory explain gender role development in adolescence?" I felt this article gave a nice introductory summary of what social learning theory is and its history. It also briefly goes into how social learning theory can be applied to difference areas of psychology, including its part in developmental psychology.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Everything in the article was relevant to social learning theory. Nothing stood out to me as distracting or out of place. However, it did feel a little blunt and to the point. I felt more detail could be added to some sections. The information is mostly up to date, other than when it discussed the history of social learning theory. I would like to see more recent examples/studies, as only a few are discussed in this brief overview of social learning theory. The article definitely has a neutral tone, purely stating facts, history, and evidence. There are some spots in the article where I noticed missing citations, however, all the ones I noticed already had the [citation needed] listed next to them. The sources used for this article are working and reliable. The author uses research directly from the primary sources of Albert Bandura, B.F. Skinner, and Noam Chomsky as well as reliable sources like Berkeley and SAGE Publishing.

The article is in the scope of WikiProject Psychology and WikiProject Education. It is rated as Start-Class in quality, meaning it is at a good start, but still needs some fixing and editing. It is also rated as Mid-Importance on the quality scale. After reading the talk page, I realized some things I may not have if I hadn't looked into the talk section. Most of the comments about the article were regarding that it was messy in form. Some said that more information should be added to the beginning about social learning itself rather than just blatant definitions. Some comments disliked the way social learning theory in the article was used to explain criminology and that it was misleading in some areas. I believe the article is a good starting point to find really great sources and fast information, however, it could be more detailed in some areas. It is a little quick and to the point in certain areas.