Introduction to Teaching the History of Behavior Analysis: Past, Purpose, and Prologue
Use the exemplars in this special section to slip behavior-analysis history into any class without extra prep time.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Morris (2022) opens a special journal section. The goal is to plug a gap: most ABA students never learn where their science came from.
The paper gives a quick tour of why history matters and then points you to ready-made teaching materials inside the same issue.
What they found
The author found no magic bullet. Instead he found a stack of exemplar lessons you can drop straight into any course.
Each exemplar shows how to weave founders, key studies, and turning points into regular content instead of a side lecture.
How this fits with other research
Miltenberger (2018) said good training needs both teaching and mentoring. Morris adds the missing history piece to that recipe.
Evanko et al. (2025) give a concrete ethics tool for grad classes. Morris does the same for history—both hand you plug-and-play resources.
Dougan (1992) urged us to sell our science to outsiders. Morris answers by giving market-ready lessons that make students better ambassadors.
Why it matters
Students who know their history stick with the field longer and explain it better to parents and teachers. Next time you teach a concepts course, swap one review session for a Morris exemplar. You get a 50-minute lesson, slides, and discussion prompts—no prep needed.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This article introduces a special section of Perspectives on Behavior Science on teaching the history of behavior analysis. Although behavior is distinctive, behavior analysis is diverse, and the history of behavior analysis is deep, teaching the field’s history often is not. The special section offers means for remedying this. The introduction has three sections. First, it relates the genesis of the special section: the 2018 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International and, before that, the 2015 meeting of Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Second, it addresses the purposes—reasons and rationales—for teaching history, especially the history of behavior analysis. And third, it offers a prologue for teaching the field’s history based on a review of what is taught or not in recent textbooks and handbooks on the field’s basic and applied research and their conceptual foundations. In its conclusion, the article previews the section’s other articles: (1) three exemplars on how history can be embedded in courses on the field’s foregoing three subdisciplines; (2) an exemplar of teaching history in a stand-alone course on the field’s history overall; (3) a discussion that addresses how to improve instruction in these courses through narrative methods; and (4) a conclusion about the present and future of teaching the field’s history (e.g., giving the history of behavior analysis away).
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2022 · doi:10.1007/s40614-022-00356-9