This Friday SLO Talk examines how behaviorism provides a clear, evidence-based framework for instruction and assessment built on one central idea: learning is observable behavior. If students haven’t learned, the educator hasn’t yet found the right way to teach. This philosophy shifts accountability from students to teachers, viewing instructors as detectives who design environments where success is inevitable.

The discussion centers on explicit and systematic instruction—the “I Do, We Do, You Do” model—where skills are modeled, practiced with feedback, and mastered through independent performance. When paired with a clear scope and sequence, this approach ensures that prerequisite skills are established before introducing more complex tasks, minimizing student frustration and maximizing success.

Participants also explore data-driven assessment methods like Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) and Precision Teaching, which track performance frequently and objectively. These approaches focus on what students can do, not what they say they understand. Accuracy and speed together define fluency—the strongest indicator that a skill will endure and transfer beyond the classroom.

The episode revisits Project Follow Through, the largest educational experiment ever conducted, which found that Direct Instruction—a model grounded in behaviorism—produced the highest achievement across academic and affective outcomes. Despite its success, this model was often dismissed for being too structured, revealing how educational culture sometimes resists accountability to measurable results.

Listeners will learn how the principles of applied behavior analysis can enhance today’s classrooms by defining learning objectives in observable terms, using continuous assessment to guide instruction, and replacing judgment with data-informed action. Rather than labeling students as unmotivated or unprepared, the behaviorist framework asks what can be changed in teaching conditions to produce learning.

Featuring Dr. Nancy Marchand-Martella, Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA-D) and national leader in instructional design, the session highlights practical strategies for improving instruction through precise measurement and feedback. Her experience—spanning more than 190 publications and four decades of research—shows how effective teaching is not about intuition, but about design, monitoring, and systematic improvement.

This conversation reframes instruction as a scientific endeavor:

• Accountability: Learning outcomes reflect instructional quality.
• Design: Skills develop through a structured, cumulative sequence.
• Measurement: Data, not opinion, drives decision-making.
• Fluency: Mastery means accurate and efficient performance.