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Did Skinner Miss the Point about Teaching?
Abstract
The Darwinian metaphor, to which Skinner was an early contributor, has been a commonplace
for several years. Operant learning is seen as an interplay between response emission
(variation) and reinforcement (selection). In applying his ideas to teaching, Skinner
emphasized selection almost exclusively. But the real puzzle posed by non-rote learning,
in both animals and humans, is not selection but the sources of variation that cause
an action or an idea to appear for the first time. It is in this sense that Skinner’s
whole discussion of teaching may have missed the point.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5119Collections
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John E. R. Staddon
James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience
Until my retirement in 2007, my laboratory did experimental research on learning and
adaptive behavior, mostly with animals: pigeons, rats, fish, parakeets. We were particularly
interested in timing and memory, feeding regulation, habituation and the ways in which
pigeons and rats adapt to reward schedules. The aim is to arrive at simple models
for learning that can help to identify the underlying neural mechanisms. I continue
to do theoretical and historical work on the power law in
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