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

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

Skinner’s critique of traditional teaching

Skinner was of the opinion that traditional teaching was excessively based on punishment ; in operative terms, he stated that the behaviour of students in the classroom was controlled mainly by aversive stimuli. This meant that the children learned to act in such a way as to avoid bad grades, criticism from adults, or mockery from their peers.

However, research by Skinner and his followers clearly showed that reinforcement is more effective than punishment in learning new behaviours . In this sense, he not only identified an excessive use of punishment but also a low frequency of reinforcement; he attributed this fact to the excessive number of students per teacher.

Furthermore, according to this author, on the rare occasions when students were given reinforcements this tended to happen with a long time delay with respect to the execution of the relevant responses. Another of the basic principles of operant conditioning is that reinforcement is most effective when it appears immediately after the behavior.

The last of the key shortcomings of traditional teaching pointed out by Skinner 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 that are increasingly closer to the objective are reinforced.

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 branched programming), as well as by its four basic principles.

1. Establishing clear objectives

Unlike many of the prevailing educational methods of the time, Skinner’s programmed teaching gave great importance to setting 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 according to different aspects, mainly the difficulty.

2. Division of educational content

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

3. Increasing learning difficulty

Another central aspect of Skinnerian programmed teaching is that the learning material is presented gradually according to the relative difficulty of each of the segments. Given that we place ourselves in the context of the operating paradigm, we can speak specifically of the shaping 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 of traditional teaching, which do not promote student motivation at all.

Skinnerian teaching machines

Skinner called the teaching machine he designed “GLIDER” . It was a mechanical device that allowed an automatic control of the learning process, since it was strictly planned following a linear progression. In this way, he developed programs for teaching spelling, mathematics and other academic subjects.

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

Individually, students read a short segment of material (a frame or table). They then have to answer a question; the answer is in the form of a missing word, which consists of filling in a blank. The teaching machine immediately informs the student whether he or she has failed or succeeded , which is a reinforcement.

When the student responds correctly to the assessment exercise of a particular content, it moves to the next framework and possibly receives other reinforcement. If he fails, he can review the learning material again until he gets it right and continues with the training program.