Dr. John Eshleman has dedicated his life to making our science successful for all. Standing in Ogden Lindsley's wish for the use of plain English in Precision Teaching, he has the ability to express complex scientific phenomena in understandable language.

John joins us in this episode to discuss a variety of topics from the richness of SAFMEDS to his explanation of Ogden's “Common Language for Analyzing Behavior”. He shares his views on how our rich underpinnings have been watered down in a rush to train behavior technicians in order to make the demands for frontline staff for the autism field. He also questions the reason behind the initiative to limit the BACB certifications to North America.

HIGHLIGHTS

04:41 Who were John's early influences that led him to pursue a career in Psychology and Precision Teaching?

13:42 John on his career after graduate school, including his projects with Aubrey Daniels & Associates

23:34 On the benefits of using manual flashcards 

26:18 What were some of the applications that John has used SAFMEDS for?

31:18 John describes Steve Graf's dissertation topic on word responses

41:01 On the use of plain English in Precision Teaching

58:06 On the current state of ABA

1:17:07 On the current state and future hope for Precision Teaching

1:29:18 Helpful resources for students pursuing Precision Teaching and charting

RESOURCES

Learn more about the Standard Celeration Society on their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/celeration.org/  

Learn more about the Standard Celeration Society on their website: https://celeration.org/ 

Check out Carl Binder’s The Fluency Channel on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/189260084444139/ 

Visit the Fluency Project's website: https://fluency.org/ 

Check out Richard McManus’ Fluency Factory videos on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/richardinhingham/playlists 

Learn more about Steve Graf on this website: https://www.stevegraf.org/ 

Read the book, Precision Teaching--A Practical Science of Education by Norris G. Haring (Author), Margaret (Peggy) S. White (Author), Malcolm D. Neely (Author): https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Teaching-Practical-Sciene-Education/dp/1597380342 

Get a copy of the book, Handbook of the Standard Celeration Chart from the Cambridge Center Website: https://behavior.org/product/handbook-of-the-standard-celeration-chart-deluxe-edition-color-2/

Join our The ABA and PT Podcast Facebook Group to get access to the following resources:

Facebook group link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/397478901376425 

QUOTES

30:09 John: "Here's one of the things about instructional design— that's part of my philosophy at least— is that why make personal learning on something if they already know it? I'm always an advocate of 'if somebody knows something, can they test it out?' That way they don't have to waste their time or your time going through a learning program about something they already know."

45:48 John: "Lindsley's whole idea with COLAB was to use as much plain English as possible, presented accelerating consequence. There's nothing technical about that, right? It's presented, it's not taken away. It's accelerated, not decelerated because you have presented decelerating consequence too, as opposed to a punisher."

52:04 John: "Precision Teaching itself, as a term, is a euphemism. Euphemism is a better-sounding word that has less baggage or less controversy."

1:13:58 John: "To the extent that Precision Teaching can maintain some independence, it always was somewhat independent of ABA because they both come from different lineages and they only partially overlap. Precision Teaching is about a lot of positive things. I mean, we're teaching. So we call our client 'learners'."

1:19:09 John: "As long as we respect what the background is of Precision Teaching, what its main purpose was, using the actual chart and not being dogmatic about any of this. Being willing to graph things other ways too— that's the least dogmatic it can be."