Building Fluent Performance: Measuring Response Rate and Multiplying Response Opportunities (Report‪)‬

Other articles in this special issue describe state-of-the-art measurement and instructional methodologies that use the tools of precision teaching and specific strategies that have evolved in its application with particular learner populations. The present author has participated in this work from the early 1970's and can cite examples of successful instruction using these methods with learners that span the range from students suffering from severe developmental disabilities in now-defunct institutions to 21st century corporate training with senior sales executives and customer service personnel. Rather than focusing on one or more populations, or on the specific instructional strategies associated with them, the purpose of this article is two-fold: 1) to describe a framework originally articulated in the 1970's for the evolution of precision teaching and "fluency-based instruction" (Binder, 1978, 1993) that provides a larger context for understanding other contributions in this field, and 2) to illustrate the elements of that framework with examples of measurement and instructional strategies from a range of different populations. Particularly at this time, when many of our colleagues in behavior analysis have not made contact with the work that led to precision teaching, or with early publications that emerged from that work, it seems worthwhile to establish a broader understanding of what precision teaching and its derivatives have brought to our field, and why.