Programmed Teaching according to B. F. skinner

In 1954, Burrhus Frederick Skinner, the famous behaviorist who developed the paradigm of operant conditioning, he began to design a "teaching machine" that could promote learning more effectively than traditional educational methods, which the author considered ineffective and strongly criticized success.

Thus Skinner created a programmed teaching method based on operant conditioning. that would have a great impact in the educational context of the second half of the 20th century. In this article we will explain what exactly Skinnerian programmed teaching consisted of.

• Related article: "B's theory. F. Skinner and behaviorism"

Skinner's critiques of traditional teaching

Skinner was of the opinion that traditional teaching relied heavily on punishment; In operant terms, he affirmed that the behavior of the students in the classroom was controlled mainly by aversive stimuli. This means that children learned to act in ways that avoided bad grades, criticism from adults, or teasing from peers.

However, the investigations of Skinner and his followers clearly demonstrated that

reinforcement is more effective than punishment for learning new behaviors. In this sense, he not only identified an excessive use of punishment but also a low frequency of reinforcements; he attributed this fact to the excessive number of students per teacher.

Furthermore, according to this author, on the rare occasions when reinforcers were administered to the students this used to happen with a long time lag with respect to the execution of the answers relevant. Another of the basic principles of operant conditioning is that reinforcement is most effective when it occurs immediately after the behavior.

The last of the key flaws in traditional teaching that Skinner pointed out was the absence of systematization in educational programs. The father of operant conditioning believed that teaching should be based on the method of successive approximations, by which responses closer to the objective are reinforced.

• Related article: "Radical Behaviorism: Theoretical Principles and Applications"

Principles of Programmed Teaching

Skinner's method is probably the most famous in the field of programmed teaching; however, it is not the only one that exists.

It is characterized by its linearity, since it follows a fixed sequence of contents. (which differentiates it from Crowder's branching programming), as well as its four basic principles.

1. Setting clear goals

Unlike many of the educational methods prevalent at the time, programmed teaching of Skinner attached great importance to establishing the objectives of the educational program to be designed. In this way it was possible to optimize the tasks and the presentation of the contents based on different aspects, mainly the difficulty.

2. Division of educational content

In Skinner's method, successive divisions of the educational material are made: first the programs are separated into modules, and these into tables or frames with specific content. As we will see in the next section, teaching was carried out through a linear succession of texts (or other types of materials) and evaluation exercises.

3. Increasing learning difficulty

Another of the central aspects of Skinnerian programmed teaching is that the learning material is presented gradually depending on the relative difficulty of each of the segments. Given that we situate ourselves in the context of the operating paradigm, we can speak specifically of the modeling or method of successive approximations.

4. Active participation of students

The fourth basic principle of Skinner's educational model is the importance given to the active participation of students in their own instructional process. This clashes head-on with the receptive and rote learning techniques typical of traditional teaching, which do not promote student motivation at all.

Skinnerian teaching machines

Skinner named the teaching machine he designed "GLIDER.". It was a mechanical device that allowed automatic control of the learning process, since it was strictly planned following a linear progression. Thus he developed programs for teaching spelling, mathematics, and other academic subjects.

Teaching using these machines consisted of a reinforcement program typical of behavioral guidance. We say that it had a linear character because texts and exercises were presented following a sequence fixed, determined primarily by the difficulty of the segments of material students were required to learn.

Individually, students read a short segment of material (a frame or chart). Next they have to answer a question; the answer is in absent word format, which consists of filling in a blank space. The teaching machine immediately informs the student if it has failed or succeeded., which is reinforcement.

When the student responds correctly to the evaluation exercise of a specific content, he goes to the next frame and possibly receives another type of reinforcement. If you fail, you can revisit the learning material until you get it right and continue with the training program.