Skinner and education: A behavioural analysis of teaching/ learning process

Abstract

Despite basically uninformed generalizations that consider Skinner as a rat and dove psychologist, his greatest concern was always the human being, as his bibliographical production from the end of the 1940s testifies. Of this production a great deal is dedicated to the study, research and application in the area of teaching and education.

In the present article some of his contributions to the aforementioned field are analyzed, such as those of the identification of some of the problems which cause education to fail, the concept of teaching itself inside is behavioural theoretical system, as well as the characteristics of its instructional- technological model.

Finally a critical evaluation is carried out of Skinner's contribution to the domain of the Teaching/Learning process, concluding with the proposal of some of the possible ways out of the limitations of the Skinnerian paradigma of conditioning.