Precision Teaching is a behavior measurement system that emphasizes the development of behavioral repertoires and utilizes Standard Celeration Charts as its primary tool. This system has been applied across various areas, including mainstream and special education, and has successfully improved academic, motor, communication, and other skills.…

Evidence-based programs and interventions targeting special education programs fall within a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) which consists of increased instructional time, interventions, and improved educational outcomes for students in general and special education. The NASP Position Statement, "Appropriate Behavioral, Social, and…

Teacher educators are expected to provide preservice special education teachers with extensive knowledge about a variety of topics as well as allowing candidates a chance to engage in higher-level thinking about content. Today, some teacher educators are thinking "outside the box" when it comes to instructional delivery by moving beyond…

The ability to read greatly influences students' academic careers and their entire lives. Furthermore, those who have successfully progressed through the continuum of reading behaviors will potentially experience fewer problems when they must read to learn than students who have not mastered basic reading skills. However, students with special…

As one might expect from the founder of Precision Teaching, Ogden Lindsley was precise in creating the summaries of his presentations. Ogden took the opportunity to share his latest thinking on a topic in his presentations. However, because the presentation summaries have not been published, many people have missed the advantage of this knowledge.…

Precision teaching emerged from O.R. Lindsley's pristine application of Skinner's natural science of behavior, with a focus on response rate measurement and free operant procedures. When applied with human learners in instructional settings, these first principles led to a series of developments framed in this paper as four kinds of ceilings that…

With the increase of students with autism in public schools, alternative schools, and in-home programming, attention to effective learning procedures has increased. A general model based on precision teaching for practicing behavior to fluency is presented as a guide for teachers and parents. This model applies to a wide variety of skills and can…

Two previous articles in this journal advocate the greater use of a behaviourist methodology called "Precision Teaching" (PT). From a position located within virtue ethics, this article argues that the technical feat of raising narrowly defined performance in mathematics and other subjects is not sufficient justification for the…

Since the early work of Anne Desjardin (1980) and others, Precision Teachers have developed Big 6+6 skills in their students' repertoires when needed. In this article, the authors present the Standard Celeration Chart (SCC) which documents how they analyzed the Big 6+6 skill of "squeeze" in terms of arranging sequences of instruction. The SCC…

Story telling is a very important skill for children to have. The ability to recall information as well as to infer, embellish, and make up stories is critical to living as a successful social member of society. The Chart presented in this article demonstrates the progress one child with autism made in telling both fiction and nonfiction stories.

Teaching children to identify emotions is a common practice within the field of autism intervention. However, skills that are not often taught include identification of emotions within a situational context, and identification and discrimination of environmental events that occasion the emotions (with corresponding explanations). This article…

Combining Pavlov's (1960/1927) use of frequency as a standard unit in the measurement of scientific phenomena and Skinner's (1938) use of frequency, free operant behavior, and the cumulative recorder with his knowledge of engineering and interest in navigation, Lindsley brought to psychology and education the most powerful and scientific use of…

This historical account is told as a narrative from the authors' perspectives of Project Giant Step, which might be one of the most successful teaching-of-reading projects in history. There are a few purposes in telling this story. First, it is in times of chaos that real innovation can be made. It is then that people take chances and it is not…

The article describes two ways that universities are involved in precision teaching: (1) the use of precision teaching to teach precision teaching to students of special education and (2) faculty work with public school personnel to help teachers maintain charting skills by meeting monthly to discuss issues and procedures. (Author/CL)

Compared the effects of fluency training, a component of precision teaching, versus training to accuracy on the acquisition and retention of a composite skill. Results show that for skilled adult learners, fluency training can aid the acquisition and retention for both the component and composite skills. (Contains 52 references.) (Author/LRW)