Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Unpackaging the Skinner Box 875
as Kincheloe and Berry explain in Rigour and Complexity in Educational Research, a rethinking
of the methodologies for experimentation in the understanding of the psychology of behavior is in
order. A multilogical multifaceted research agenda will combat the limitations of the monological
reductionist world in which the psychology of behavior has resided. This postformal approach
will transition the research surrounding the study of the psychology of behavior from a modernist
Cartesian-Newtonian part-to-whole mentality to a postformal multilogical and methodological
approach.
B. F. Skinner was a complex person with a complex idea: the consequences of behavior
determine the probability that the behavior will occur again. This incredibly layered statement
was swept up in the swell of a moment in the history of the United States where people were
looking for “logical” and “rational” responses to their cracked rose-colored glasses. Conversely,
psychology was seeking to be viewed as a legitimate “hard” science in a world where science
equaled “objective” observable facts. Skinner’s theory grew out of and was a vanguard for this
view of science. His translation of his observations and theory to the field of education was based
upon an assumptive and uncritical view that education in the 1950s was not succeeding because it
was not stimulating, delayed the gratification for the student and it was too subjective. Opening up
the dialogue for a postformal rethinking of behaviorist theory will open the space for alternative
ways of understanding behavior.
No longer will it be a myopic socially efficient means to an end. It can be a springboard for
other ways of thinking about how the psychology of behavior informs multiple aspects of being
and how the complexity of being informs behavior. Take a moment and read Skinner’s quote at
the beginning of this piece. This quote is from a point later in his life and yet is rarely mentioned in
association with Skinnerian theories. The inherent contradictions in this quote, when compared
with his earlier works concerning behavior and consequence, are quite fascinating; and yet,
without a postformal critique that champions and welcomes a fluidity and complexity in research
and not only invites by required concurrent reflection, this quote would be reduced and relegated
to a realm of variables inconsistent with the observable truth.