Week 1, Peer-Reviewed Update #1

As we learned in the first unit, Skinner (1958) defined teaching as "the arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement under which students learn". He went on to say that students would naturally learn on their own, but that teachers implement systems that "expedite" the process. The concept of the teacher as  facilitator who creates the conditions for learning is shared with other philosophies of teaching; it is the focus on reinforcement that is behaviorist.

Although the Skinner Box (not to mention the Baby in the Box) has given the psychologist a rather sinister reputation, Skinner's ideas about education weren't cruel, and his intention was in fact to make learning less stressful, and more enjoyable and effective. The emphasis was on reinforcement, but he promoted positive reinforcement rather than punishment. The positive reinforcement would mainly take the form of personal satisfaction in getting an answer right or successfully completing a task, as he warned that "Frequent reinforcement raises another problem if it reduces the teacher’s reinforcing power. Money, food, grades, and honors must be husbanded carefully, but the automatic reinforcements of being right and moving forward are inexhaustible." (Skinner, 1968)

Behaviorist conditioning of any type works through repetition and small, incremental steps. A learning program that follows behaviorist principles should incorporate teaching small chunks of information, a lot of repetition, and immediate feedback. Foreign language teaching in the US in the mid-20th century was strongly influenced by Behaviorist principles, giving rise to such programs as the Audiolingual Method, which still impacts the way languages are taught today. (Brown, 2000). For example, in most language textbooks, grammatical structures are isolated and taught in a particular order. Although drills and repetition fell out of fashion in some circles, they continue to be widely used in others and are making a comeback with language learning apps and spaced repetition systems.

The "Teaching Machine" video is a memorable example of Skinner's ideas put into practice. This machine is striking in its similarity to popular educational apps, such as Duolingo, which I use myself. Both are built around a series of small rote tasks, such as fill-in-the-blank or translating a sentence or phrase. Both require a correct answer before you can prograss to the next task, and both rely on the satisfaction of a correct answer to keep the learner motivated. The video did not indicate how many (if any) schools actually adopted this machine into use; although he make the programming aspect sound simple, I imagine developing and inputting the tasks would have been a huge undertaking.

Although, as was said in the lecture, we may now find some of the methods and ideas of the Behaviorists dehumanizing and outdated, there's no denying the impact that they have had and continue to have on education.

Brown, H. Douglas. 2000. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, 4th Edition. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. 1968. The Technology of Teaching. New York: Meredith Corporation.

Video: B.F Skinner. Teaching machine and programmed learning. Accessed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTH3ob1IRFo#action=share