Precision teaching

Precision teaching is a teaching method developed by American psychologist Ogden Lindsley in the 1960s. This method stemmed from the educational theories of B. F. Skinner and others, mainly the theory of operant conditioning, and was designed primarily for use by special education teachers and their students. The basic idea of precision teaching is that the frequency of responses that a student provides are a better indicator of educational or behavioral progress than the percentage of correct responses on a traditional test or the amount of time a student dedicates to a particular task.

Precision teachers often try to teach behaviors that are easily seen and recorded, such as physical movements. Teachers may count how many times students perform these behaviors in a particular teaching session, or students may count their own behaviors. The tallied number of behaviors are then plotted on a Standard Celeration Chart that shows whether the behavior in question is increasing or decreasing in frequency. Precision teaching studies may be used both to teach children and to evaluate educators’ decisions and techniques.

Brief History

Precision teaching developed from the work and writings of Ogden Lindsley, mainly in the 1960s. Lindsley was an American psychologist who studied under theorist B. F. Skinner in the 1950s. Lindsley was greatly inspired by Skinner’s work, primarily the latter’s discoveries in the field of operant conditioning. This is a type of learning process in which lessons are taught and behaviors are changed, through the application of reinforcements or punishments. In operant learning environments, students may learn by voluntarily choosing between stimuli, with one stimulus usually yielding a positive result and the other a negative result.

Lindsley focused on the subtype of the field known as free operant conditioning, which revolves around the belief that students should have significant freedom in choosing their own pace of learning and should not be rushed or restricted by their teachers or materials. Lindsley’s research began by applying new types of teaching methods in mental health facilities to children and adults with psychotic disorders. His experimental classes involved a higher frequency of responses from students, which Lindsley believed were far better indicators of educational development than traditional methods, such as simply noting the percentage of correct answers that a student provides or the time a student spent on a task.

Motivated by promising early results, Lindsley shifted away from his training in psychology and medicine and became an educational theorist and reformer. In the mid-1960s, he began training special education teachers to use operant conditioning in their classrooms. In one of his studies at this time, he found significant success employing operant methods in a Montessori classroom for students with special needs. Lindsley reported that the results of his techniques were remarkably more successful than the traditional means of special education that the school would normally have used.

Overview

Precision teaching, as introduced by Lindsley, did not attempt to establish certain lessons to teach students or even methods of teaching. Rather, it was a method by which educational techniques and classes could be evaluated for effectiveness. Lindsley described precision teaching as a way for educators to make informed decisions about their teaching strategies based on the ongoing recording of student performance frequencies, using tools that he called “Standard Celeration Charts.”

Lindsley created the Standard Celeration Chart out of necessity when he was training teachers. At first, the teachers in training had to find their own way to describe the effects and effectiveness of their classroom decisions, a cumbersome and time-consuming process. Lindsley devised a relatively simple chart showing this information that was easy to assess. The chart is basic, using X and Y axes with number values. Users record the frequency of a given behavior on the Y axis, and the session (usually the day of a session or semester) on the X axis. These charts could be used to map the frequency of single or multiple behaviors. Plotting how often a behavior occurred for each day of the session would result in a clear demonstration of the effectiveness of a lesson. Teachers could fill out these charts for their own records or studies. Alternately, students could fill out their own charts, so they could monitor their own progress toward their educational or behavioral goals.

A key to precision teaching is to focus on student behaviors that can be directly observed. Teachers using this system should seek to avoid abstract learning goals. Rather, they should seek ways to turn their learning tasks into clear demonstrations that they can easily see and document. Some theorists have suggested that the best way to do this is to focus on tasks involving body movement because they can be easily seen and noted. For instance, if students are asked to put on their shoes, the instructor can quickly assess which students have been successful at that task.

However, some teachers have experienced difficulties with this type of task and recording. For example, tasks involving mental activities such as concentrating or reading cannot easily be judged using a quick visual inspection. In addition, the behavior expectations should usually be described positively, meaning that the student should adopt a behavior rather than not adopt a behavior or do nothing. For example, many users would avoid trying to evaluate a student based on a criterion such as “not yelling” or “not using foul language.”

An important part of precision teaching is frequency, defined in this context as how many responses a student provides per minute during the learning time. Supporters of precision teaching believe that the frequency of student responses provides a much better indicator of educational success than “percent correct,” or student performance on tests. Many teachers have found that precision teaching techniques have created greater fluency among students, meaning that students learn behaviors that they can use both often and correctly. They also find that these newly learned behaviors last longer, are less likely to be lost through time or distraction, and are more likely to become part of the student’s regular functioning rather than classroom actions.

Bibliography

Johnson, Kent, and Elizabeth M. Street. Response to Intervention and Precision Teaching. The Guilford Press, 2013.

Kubina, Richard. Reflections on Precision Teaching. Greatness Achieved, 2020.

Moran, Daniel J. and Richard W. Malott. Evidence-Based Educational Methods. Elsevier Academic Press, 2004.

Polson, David. “Ogden Lindsley and Precision Teaching.” Psychology Learning Resources, Athabasca University, 2022, psych.athabascau.ca/open/lindsley/index.php. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

Polson, David. “Precision Teaching: Concept Definition and Guiding Principles.” Psychology Learning Resources, Athabasca University, 2022, psych.athabascau.ca/open/lindsley/concept.php. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

“Precision Teaching in ABA Therapy: Explained.” Elemy, 31 Dec. 2020, www.elemy.com/studio/aba-terms/precision-teaching/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.

Vargas, Julie S. Behavior Analysis for Effective Teaching, Second Ed. Routledge, 2013.

Vostanis, Athanasios et al. “Protocol: Evaluating the Application and Effectiveness of Precision Teaching: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Campbell systematic Reviews vol. 19, 19 Mar. 2023, doi:10.1002/cl2.1317. Accessed 7 Feb. 2025.