I remember hearing Og Lindsley recommend that the most important request one could learn to make was to ask the advocate of a treatment, practice, therapy, or intervention to show us the data. Without clear, objective, compelling data about how those who receive a therapy fare, we shouldn’t be adopting a therapy. To be sure, teachers and others are faced with great pressure to improve learner’s outcomes every day. But, that shouldn’t be a reason to use sham methods.
I find myself falling back on Lindsley’s advice frequently in considering topics in learning disabilities. Sadly, there are many faulty recommendations about how to treat LD. I’ll comment on some of these in the next few weeks.
For now and for those who are interested, there are some good sources. In a new book edited by John Jacobson, Richard Foxx, and James Mulick, Controversial Therapies For Developmental Disabilities: Fads, Fashion, and Science in Professional Practice, an impressive array of authors contribute chapters about the mistaken methods that have been advocated in special education and related areas. The book’s a bit pricy ($125 list), but the ideas are very valuable.
More on Og Lindsley
Upon reflection, I realized that I’d mentioned Og Lindsley [in a missing post] but not given enough infomation about him to permit interested readers to learn more. I’m correcting that in this post.
Lindsley was a student of B. F. Skinner, from whom he probably learned about the importance of frequency of responding as an index of behavior. Based on his work at Harvard with individuals who had schizophrenia, he began discussing what he called “behavior therapy.” After working at Harvard on diverse other projects (including the Experiential Typewriter!), Lindsley moved into education. As a professor at Kansas University, he advocated systematic recording of learners’ behavior and plotting of the data on “standard celeration charts” (see more at Standard Celeration Society) and other practices that came to be known as “Precision Teaching.”
One of my favorite quotes from Lindsley is this:
Although he referred to students with mental retardation, I think it applies quite well to LD. I have sometimes used this statement as a stimulus for essay questions in my classes on LD. We need to devise prosthetic environments–teaching places–that will reduce the disabling experiences that students have.
Henry Pennypacker wrote a nice remembrance of Lindsley for the Cambridge Center; it includes a letter that Lindsley sent late in his life. There is a good biography on the Australian PT site. Also, K. Lake provided a brief biography of Lindsley and a module about PT for a class on learning.