Teaching a Course on the History of Behavior Analysis

Abstract

Teaching the history of behavior analysis can be approached in many ways. One is to embed history in courses on the field’s discipline and subdisciplines (e.g., its basic and applied sciences and their conceptual foundations) and practice. Another is to teach courses on the histories of the discipline and subdisciplines and practice. Still another is to teach a stand-alone course that includes these approaches and more (e.g., their integration, relations with other sciences, the influence of U.S. history and culture). The purpose of this article is to foster teaching the stand-alone course. It has four sections. The first addresses structural considerations: course titles, catalog descriptions, curricula, certification, and accreditation. The second addresses contextual considerations: purposes of teaching history; distinctions between history and historiography; and starting points in selecting textbooks. The third addresses functional considerations: course content organized by topics and their required and recommended readings. The fourth discusses how the course might be revised by eliminating topics (e.g., the Middle Ages), expanding topics and subtopics (e.g., the behaviorisms, philosophy of science) and adding topics and subtopics (e.g., institutional history; diversity, inclusion, and equity). Given the field’s continuing development as a science, system, and practice and the rapid growth in its number and variety of its members, its history is becoming its common core—and a means of teaching it. The course elucidates the field’s integrity; incorporates the entirety of its community of students, scientists, scholars, and practitioners; and advance its coherence as a cultural practice.

Why history matters: A review of Watters's Teaching Machines, the History of Personalized Learning

“…Similarly, resources on the Skinner–Chomsky debate over language and freedom set the occasion to examine and discuss how the debate has been interpreted in different fields of psychology over time (Palmer, 2006; Virués‐Ortega, 2006). Teaching and learning the history of behavior analysis allows the field to examine its own integrity, explains why history matters, and advances the knowledge and research contributions of individuals with marginalized identities, among other functions detailed by Morris (2022).…”

Indicators of protein exchange in dogs with different types of higher nervous activity

“…In modelling the HNA, Pavlov highlighted the dynamic and largely plastic nature of brain functioning, as well as the functional nature of some long-term behavioural disorders in dogs (Derouesné, 2021). Despite the fact that in 1934, in an article in Imago, Schilder sharply criticized Pavlov's HNA theory, his teachings have been widely used both in scientific research and in cynology (Morris, 2022). A link has been established between the type of HNA, certain biochemical parameters, and drug responsiveness (Netter, 2018).…”

Giving the history of psychology away in behavior analysis.

“…Based on a symposium at the 2018 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI; E. K. Morris, 2018), the December 2022 issue of Perspectives on Behavior Science ( PoBS )—ABAI's house journal—published a special section on teaching the history of behavior analysis.…”

“…The special section of PoBS urged readers to promote the history of behavior analysis by giving it away. The exemplars were an article on teaching its history in general, accompanied by an abbreviated syllabus (E. K. Morris, 2022b), and three articles on embedding history in courses on the field's subdisciplines for its conceptual foundations (Moore, 2022), basic research (Lattal, 2022), and applied research (C.…”