Reflections on Teaching by Joe Layng matters because it changes what a BCBA notices when decisions have to hold up in language assessment, teaching sessions, caregiver coaching, and natural communication routines. In Reflections on Teaching by Joe Layng, for this course, the practical stakes show up in clearer case conceptualization, better instructional targets, and stronger generalization, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Skinner Foundation
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Join Free →In his book Reflections on Behavioralism and Society, Skinner listed three criteria which he suggested are required for an optimal student experience. "1. The student moves at his own pace. ...The principle of individual pacing is as applicable to graduate instruction as to teaching in the first grade. 2. The student should not merely 'soak up information'; he should respond, and his responses should be immediately evaluated so that successful responses will be reinforced. 3. The student should move through the material in such a way that what he has just learned helps him to take the next step. Signs of increasing power are important reinforcers. Reinforcement will be maximized if he masters each stage before moving on. All of these were evident in early applications of what is called programed instruction." Unfortunately, it is rare today to find these three fundamental principles applied in education at any level. What happened to derail the early promise of programed instruction? While it is often assumed that differences with behaviorist philosophy is to blame, I will make the case that wasn't the reason, just the rationale. The real reason programed instruction, and other such efforts demonstrating the three features, were not more widely adopted had simply to do with the amount of work involved to develop effective programs, and the time and effort to implement classroom procedures based upon Skinner's principles. This is true, even within the context of the field of behavior analysis where little is known about the advances in instructional design that have occurred over the last 50 years. This, however, may be changing things to advances in artificial intelligence, particularly the large language models, or LLM's. The work needed to develop programs is drastically being reduced with the aid of AI. This talk will describe some of those, and show how what used to take hours to produce, can be done in a matter of minutes. Given the increasingly powerful tools available, Skinner's vision of educational change yet be possible.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | General |
| COA | 1 | — |
T V Joe Layng is a Fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis International and was the 2020 recipient of the APA: Division 25 Fred S. Keller Behavioral Education Award. Joe has over 50 years of experience in the experimental and applied analysis of behavior with a particular focus on the design of teaching/learning environments. He earned a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences (biopsychology) at the University of Chicago. At Chicago, working with pigeons, he investigated animal models of psychopathology, specifically the recurrence of pathological patterns (head-banging) as a function of normal behavioral processes. Joe also has extensive clinical behavior analysis experience with a focus on ambulatory schizophrenia, especially the systemic as well as topical treatment of delusional speech and hallucinatory behavior.I n 1984 he founded Enabling Technologies, a software firm which was one of the first to use gamification to teach business software, as well as an array of business products and advanced 3D modeling software. In the 1990s, Joe was Director of Academic Support and then Dean at Malcolm X College in Chicago where he founded the award winning Personalized Curriculum Institute. In 1999, he co-founded Headsprout where Joe led the scientific team that developed the technology that formed the basis of the company’s patented Early Reading and Reading Comprehension online reading programs, for which he was the chief architect. Joe has spent the last several years mentoring students, and interested investigators and practitioners in nonlinear contingency analysis. He has published over 60 articles or chapters, a range of software applications, a self-instruction book on Signal Detection Theory for behavior analysts and recently coauthored the book Nonlinear Contingency Analysis: Going Beyond Cognition and Behavior in Clinical Practice.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
256 research articles with practitioner takeaways
153 research articles with practitioner takeaways
95 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.