Skinner is considered to be the father of operant conditioning and programmed instruction. Skinner studied at Harvard, and later became a professor of psychology at Harvard from 1931-1936 and 1947-1974.

In Skinner’s article The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching, Skinner described the conditions of the classroom to be adverse to learning. He argued that a single teacher can not individually and appropriately reinforce 30+ students simultaneously. In this 1954 article, he conceptualized a teaching machine for use in the classroom by individual students. (Seymour Papert too envisioned a teaching machine, The Children’s Machine).
Skinner stated: “When i am asked what I regard as my most important contribution, I always say, ‘the original experimental analysis of operant behavior and its subsequent extension to more and more complex cases”’ (Learning Theories for Teachers). He truly believed the purpose of psychology to be predicting and controlling the behaviour of individual organisms.

Skinner thought that nearly all human behavior is a product of either biological natural selection or psychological operant reinforcement. Skinner believed that there were 2 kinds of learning: operant and respondent, however he placed greater emphasis on operant which he believed was controlled by consequences. He used animals as research subjects studying the reward technique which he later applied to humans.

Publications

Behavior and Organisms (1938)

Walden Two (1961)

Technology of Teaching (1968)

Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971 - in which Skinner advocated mass conditioning as a means of social control)

Particulars of My Life (1976)

Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)