By: Sarah Landsiedel ED-530 – Utilizing Technologies to Improve Learning Dr. Richard Clark

Burrhus Frederic Skinner, aka as B.F. Skinner, was born on March 20, 1094 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a strong and intelligent housewife. Skinner enjoyed the outdoors and building things. As a child, Skinner endured a family tragedy, his younger brother died at the age of 16 from a cerebral aneurysm.

B.F. received his BA in English from Hamilton College in upstate New York. He was a member of the school paper and wrote articles about the school and faculty. After he received his BA, he enrolled in Harvard University. He received his Masters in psychology in 1930 and his doctorate in 1931, and remained at Harvard until 1936 to complete some research.

After leaving Harvard, he moved to Minneapolis to teach at the University of Minnesota. While at the University of Minnesota, he married Yvonne Blue. Together they had two daughters His youngest daughter, became famous because she was first to sleep in Skinner’s invention of the air crib. The air crib was a combination of crib and playpen with glass sides and air conditioning. It looked similar to a baby aquarium.

In 1945, he was the chairman of the psychology department at Indiana University. In 1948, he was invited to come to back to Harvard where he remained until the rend of his life. He was very actively involved and wrote several books and did a great deal of research. He was known as one of the best psychology writers, for his book: Walden II. Skinner passed away in 1990 after a battle with leukemia and he was the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud.

Skinner’s entire belief system is based on operant conditioning. He believes that the organism is bouncing around in the world, doing what it does. During the operating the organism encounters a special kind of stimulus, known as a reinforcer. The reinforcer has the opportunity to increase the behavior that is occurring. The behavior is always followed by a consequence.

Skinner’s theory is based upon the idea that learning a function is based on an overt behavior. Changes in the behavior can result in an individual’s response to an event. After the response is given, it produces a consequence. Skinner developed several schedules of reinforcement that were used in his theories.

Reinforcement is the key to this theory. A reinforcer is anything that strengthens a desired behavior. Reinforcement can be both positive and negative. Positive reinforcement is a verbal praise, a good grade or satisfaction. Negative reinforcement strengths a behavior because a negative condition is stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behavior.

Skinner influenced education as well as psychology. He was quoted as saying "Teachers must learn how to teach... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching." Skinner asserted that positive reinforcement is more effective at changing and establishing behavior than punishment. Skinner also suggests that the main thing people learn from being punished is how to avoid punishment.