R. Douglas Greer | Mini Moments With Big Thinkers

R. Douglas Greer is Professor of Psychology and Education in the program in Special Education in TC's Department of Health and Behavior Studies, He is creator of the Comprehensive Application of Behavior Analysis to Schooling (CABAS), a method he has adapted from the ideas of his mentor B.F. Skinner and used in schools he has founded in the United States and Europe to help children with autism and other developmental disorders. The guiding precept of CABAS, which has helped hundreds of children speak their first words and has also shown promise with mainstream students, is that human beings learn to do things (or not do them) in response to “reinforcers”—food, encouragement and other stimuli. In works such as Designing Teaching Strategies: An Applied Behavior Analysis Systems Approach (Elsevier, 2002),Greer has argued that when teaching is treated as an art, "good teaching is an accident,” while "when teaching is treated as a science, good teaching can be replicated across many professionals in a reliable fashion.” 

To learn more about Doug Greer, read:

• Include Me In (TC Today magazine)
• Unselfish Behaviorism (TC Today magazine)
• Motivation Scientists (TC Annual Report)
• Strategic Science, With a Passion (TC Annual Report)
• Writing the Book on Language (www.tc.edu)
• The Unorthodox Behaviorist (TC Today magazine)

Premiered on 12/1/2013