The Technology of Teaching (Official B. F. Skinner Foundation Reprint Series / paperback edition)

This is a book that I go back and re-read from time to time. The collection of essays presented continue to be relevant to today’s issues and offer thought and guidance on how the technology of teaching can and should be used to “right the ship” of an education system gone far off course.

Skinner has written some books that are about theories and principles of behaviorism applied to social or philosophical questions. Unfortunately, these books overlooked what Skinner did best - behavioral analysis. This book sticks to that and how to apply it to education, a field where it can be very useful. I use his techniques with my students. Skinner is also very familiar with the field of Education and implicitly responds to other educational thinkers like Dewey, etc.Skinner often gets a bad rap (and is frequently confused with Pavlov whom he couldn't be more dissimilar from), but he is actually one of the more progressive educational thinkers of all time and was instrumental in raising the standard of care for intellectually disabled people and was adamant about educational reform.He opposes the use of punishment (which most other educational psychologists and philosophers still support) and is quite frank about the fact that we use the threat of force or law to keep children in school. On the other hand, Skinner is not wishy-washy about being firm in the classroom.He is practical. He comes up with procedures for keeping a classroom orderly and the kinds of drill and skill techniques that enhance learning and enhance motivation. Unlike his other books where he talks about Behaviorism, in this one, he shows how to employ these techniques in a classroom. And boy, does it ever work.A caveat - Skinner comes up with what is essentially a computer program for immediate reinforcement, which was prescient of recent developments. Personally, I've seen these programs in action - they're egregious and they don't work because they ignore the grammatical and creative portions of writing to focus on what can be tested the most easily - spelling and vocabulary vis-a-vis fill in the blank questions. They also can't measure something a human finds simple which is the crux of good writing - writing to your audience. To be honest, I'd skim those chapters, unless you want to understand why these programs are in schools.Still, this book is not to be missed by any educator capable of reading it. Skinner writes very clearly and his ideas and insight are not to be missed. It is one of the best books ever written on Pedagogy and easily the most scientific.

Teaching is a neglected skill. This book explains it all.

Great book, I think every teacher and educator should read this. It is one of Skinner's shorter books and is a delight.

A must have for teachers and trainers.

great for school

Skinner defines himself! Very good book!

Coercion

Es ist ein Buch, das von allen zitiert (aber nicht von allen gelesen) wurde und grundlegend ist für das Verständnis von Selinkers Denken und der Veränderungen, die nach seinen Ideen in unserem Bildungssystem eingeführt wurden.

This is a very good book on how to apply a behaviourist perspective to education. Skinner is a great writer, and one of the leading psychologists of the 20th century. Here he outlines the benefits of developing an operant conditioning approaching to teaching practice. His objective is to advance a form of social science technology - so that children's teaching is far more effective. This, then, serves as an applied example of Skinner's more philosophical writings - such as  About Behaviorism . Given the way that existing education fails so many, Skinner sought to present an alternative model.I find his overall analyses to be highly interesting. And as an educator, I've made use of this book. Unfortunately it's both rather short and somewhat dated. Skinner was merely introducing teaching technologies in this book, so the ideas and arguments offered are far from comprehensive. As such, I suggest complementing this publication with other works by the author, so as to gain a fuller understanding of the principles involved. Additionally, as this book was written several decades ago, it doesn't incorporate contemporary changes (e.g. the use of computers in everyday life). Nonetheless, this little known book is certainly worth a read. About Behaviorism

I bought this book as part of my own on-going self-development as a primary school teacher. I've been teaching for 4 years now and I'm interested in exploring the pedagogical frameworks which underpin what I do each day in the classroom.In my opinion, this book is a must-read for anyone in education. In teaching today we are constantly being bombarded with poor advice (e.g. let the children sit around chatting in groups), pseudo-scientific quackery (e.g. Brain Gym, learning styles, VAK etc. etc.) and hoop-jumping gimmickry (AfL). . By contrast, Skinner in the "Technology of Teaching" offers a coherent framework of pedagogy which is rigorous, systematic and efficient. Skinner is a great writer, too. He very persuasively argues both against the traditional didactic lecture-style and also against child-centred discovery-learning approach.Although his writings of teaching machines is obviously very out-of-date now, Skinner covers all the big questions in education today. There are chapters on Why Teachers Fail, Teaching Thinking, Teaching Creativity and the Motivation of the Student, which are just as relevant today as they were when Skinner penned this in the 60s.