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Skinner and Programmed Learning. This presentation is designed to introduce you to some of the ideas that emerged from Skinner’s behaviouristic psychology and remain in evidence in many computer-based learning packages.

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skinner and programmed learning

Skinner and Programmed Learning


This lecture is backed up with more detailed information that has been placed at the course web-site:

skinner and programmed learning2

Skinner and Programmed Learning

This is an archive film of one of the original teaching machines, with Skinner discussing his programmes.

Click the image to start the movie running.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

The type of conditioning studied by Skinner is similar to the trial and error learning discussed by Thorndike (1898). This differs from Pavlov’s procedure in that the confined animal emits the response (presses the lever) which is, according to Skinner, under ‘voluntary’ control. Whereas classical or Pavlovian conditioning is ‘involuntary’ and the response is under the control of the autonomic system; it consists of elicited behaviour, such as salivary secretion or pupillary constriction to light.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Shaping Behaviour

Not all behaviours can be considered to be discrete units and for some behaviours the experimenter may have to wait hours, days or even weeks before they emerge. The original probability of the response in its final form is very low; in some cases it may even be zero. Fortunately, there is a procedure for producing the response more quickly, the experimenter takes control of the food magazine by disconnecting the lever from the food magazine and rewards successive approximations to the desired response.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Programmed learning is based on the SHAPING of behaviour in animals: think about how this has been applied to the human context – is it appropriate?

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

The results of Skinner’s early work were published in

his ‘Behavior of Organisms’ (1938), but his next major

work is a somewhat startling contrast, until it is realized

that Skinner’s first career was journalism. ‘Walden Two’

(1948), a novel, was written as a programme that outlined

the utopia attainable by adopting a behaviouristic,

experimental approach toward social problems. The

scientists in ‘Walden Two’ dispensed with traditional

‘trial-and-error’ freedom because there were efficient

ways of attaining desired goals, based mainly on positive

reinforcement. Cultural engineering was not a pejorative

term in this brave new society, although the book was

frequently read as a dystopia.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

‘The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching’ (1954) was first read at a conference at the University of Pittsburgh, in March, during which there was a demonstration of an experimental teaching machine. It was published later in the year in the influential ‘Harvard Educational Review.’ Skinner claimed that it was a great shock to turn from the exciting prospect of an advancing science of learning to that branch of technology which is most directly concerned with the learning process, education.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

In the first place he questioned the reinforcements used, though he did acknowledge that they had changed since the early years of the century and were not all based on major aversive methods of control, now they were based on ‘minor’ aversive events such as the teacher’s displeasure, low marks etc. He then asked how the contingencies of reinforcement were arranged, for example, when is an arithmetical operation reinforced as ‘right’? The conclusion was that many minutes and in many cases many hours or even days may intervene between a child’s response and the teacher’s reinforcement, even though it could be demonstrated that, unless explicit mediating behaviour has been set up, the lapse of only a few seconds between response and reinforcement destroys most of the effect.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

He calculated that during the first four years of education 50,000 reinforcements would be necessary to attain efficient mathematical behaviour, but that in a traditional class situation it would be possible for the teacher to provide a pupil with only a few thousand. In order to provide sufficient reinforcements the only possible conclusion was that human learning would require instrumental aid, and the simple fact was that ‘as a mere reinforcing mechanism, the teacher is out of date’ (Skinner, 1954, p.94).

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

With the introduction of instrumental aid complex patterns of behaviour could receive gradual elaboration, with the whole process of becoming competent in any field being divided into a very large number of very small steps.

The maintenance of the behaviour in strength at each stage could be accomplished by applying the techniques of scheduling which had been developed in the studies of other animals, but more probably would be most effectively arranged through the design of the material to be learned.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

By making each successive step as small as possible, the frequency of reinforcement can be raised to a maximum, while the aversive consequences of being wrong are reduced to a minimum. (Skinner, 1954, p.94)

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Skinner demonstrated two prototype machines at Pittsburgh. The first taught arithmetic, with the material to be learned appearing in a square window. Missing numbers were made to appear by moving sliders with numbers printed on. When the problem was completed the child turned a knob on the front of the machine. The machine ‘senses the composed answer, and if it is correct, the knob turns freely and a new frame of material moves into place.’ It would not turn if the answer was incorrect and the child could then re-set the sliders until a correct answer was obtained. Errors were recorded automatically. The second machine was similar, but with more sliders and was designed to teach both arithmetic and spelling.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Skinner foresaw objections to the use of such devices in the classroom, including the challenge that children were being treated as mere animals and that an essentially human intellectual achievement was being analysed in unduly mechanistic terms. He countered this by suggesting that the behaviours elicited by the instrumental aids were the ‘very behaviours which are taken to be the evidences of such mental states or processes’ and that the ‘behaviour in terms of which human thinking must eventually be defined is worth treating in its own right as a substantial goal of education’ (1954, p.96).

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

With regard to possible costs, he argued that a country which annually produces millions of fridges, automatic dishwashers and washing machines can certainly afford the equipment necessary to promote high standards of education.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Echoing Thorndike he stated that the teacher has a more important function than to say ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and that ‘it is beneath the dignity of any intelligent person’ to mark a set of papers in arithmetic. The more important work, the teacher’s relations with her pupils, cannot be duplicated by a machine, and instrumental help would improve these relations by freeing the teacher.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

He concluded:

There is a simple job to be done. The task can be stated in concrete terms. The necessary techniques are known. Nothing stands in the way but cultural inertia. But what is more characteristic of the modern temper than an unwillingness to accept the traditional as inevitable? We are on the threshold of an exciting and revolutionary period, in which the scientific study of man will be put to work in man’s best interests. Education must play its part. (Skinner, 1954, p.97.)

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

With the new technology, which was to apply the newly emerging science of learning to the age-old art of teaching, we can see how Skinner drew parallels between his work with animals and the action of an ideal teaching environment. As with the animals in the Skinner box the human learner must make a response which is observable and can be described in operational terms.

The learner’s behaviour is shaped by the programme, which consists of discriminated stimuli (programme frames), with the correct responses being immediately reinforced (knowledge of results), on a continuous schedule. Incorrect responses are extinguished, because they receive no reinforcement.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Within a few years there was such interest in programmed learning that Schramm (1964) in his review of the research concluded that ‘no method of instruction has ever come into use surrounded by so much research activity.’

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

Skinner compared the machine to a private tutor because there is constant interchange between programme and student, unlike lectures and textbooks. The programme ‘insists’ that a given point be thoroughly understood and presents just sufficient material for which the student is ready, thus ensuring that the student comes up with the correct answer, which receives positive reinforcement and holds the student’s interest, according to Skinner.

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Skinner and Programmed Learning

It was eventually realized that the essential feature of the new method of teaching was the ‘programme’ rather than the machine and this led to the development of the programmed linear text in which ‘frames’ were printed on one side of the page and answers on the reverse, a form used in Holland and Skinner’s influential text ‘The Analysis of Behavior: a program for self-instruction’ (1961).


Central to programmed learning is the specification of objectives. This film clip (taken from a film about programmed learning produced by the UK Armed Forces) demonstrates some of the basic ideas about objectives:

programmed learning and objectives

Programmed Learning and Objectives

Have a go at turning this into an acceptable set of objectives (bring your solution to the next meeting):

To be able to type a letter

(think about what the learner has to do, what standards are to be applied, and under what conditions the task is accomplished)


Testing is an important aspect of programmed learning. This clip introduces the idea of criterion referenced tests.


This clip illustrates how the performance of a programme is checked. It is an important part of programme development and is applied in a similar manner to computer-based learning programmes.


Programmed learning could be applied to many different media, and this clip illustrates some common ways of presenting a programme. The teaching machines have largely been replaced by multi-media computers, but the principles behind the programmes may not have changed!!


A fuller description of Skinner’s work, and the results of many research studies into the effectiveness of Programmed Learning is given in the following text from the web-site:

Download Handout: Programmed Learning