Engelmann, Siegfried

The ultimate expression of applying behavioral principles is instruction, particularly instruction of students who have learning challenges and are often therefore hard to teach and motivate. Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann has an unparalleled record in this arena. The instructional programs authored by Engelmann have been used with more than 10 million children since the late 1960s. Engelmann's programs have been used in both regular education and special education classes. The majority of regular education use has been in high-poverty schools. The programs have been used to serve special education children with many kinds of disability, including children with Down syndrome, hearing loss, behavior problems, and mental retardation. When properly implemented, Engelmann's instructional techniques have produced astonishing performance gains.

Engelmann was raised in Chicago. In 1955, he graduated with class honors in philosophy from the University of Illinois. After graduating, he spent time in a variety of activities, from working in exploratory oil fields to freelance writing. The event that would lead him to his ultimate calling in education occurred in the early 1960s, when he was marketing director for an advertising agency and began exploring the psychological literature on how children learn. Engelmann was surprised at the dearth of information on a variety of learning issues; for example, how much exposure is required for a young child to learn a motto or an advertising theme, and what effects reinforcing presentations would have on learning rates. To find the answers, Engelmann began working with preschoolers, including his own children, first on topics that were closely related to advertising, then on academic content.

Engelmann observed that the clarity of his presentations was directly related to the performance of the children. The first principle he derived was that if the teaching presentation is not perfectly clear and [Page 1291]consistent, with only one possible interpretation, the instruction is likely to fail. Children do not learn if teacher communications are not clear. More important, children will learn a misinterpretation or misrule that is consistent (albeit incorrect) with the information that is presented by the teacher. Engelmann carefully chronicled how he presented tasks and how the children performed, noting when they had difficulties and what specific incorrect responses they made. He revised strategies in response to the children's performance. One outcome of this work was a book for parents, Give Your Child a Superior Mind, published in 1966, translated into 12 languages, and achieving sales of over half a million copies.

In 1964, Engelmann made a film showing his twin 4-year-old boys doing complex math problems usually taught and learned in middle school. Hoping to become a professional researcher, he showed the film to James Galligar and Carl Bereiter at the University of Illinois Institute for Research on Exceptional Children. Bereiter had a grant to “accelerate the intellectual development of young children.” Engelmann became his research associate, and within 3 months, they opened a program for “culturally disadvantaged” preschoolers. At the time, plans for Head Start called for modeling it after the traditional nursery school. Bereiter and Engelmann believed that this model would be disastrous and that the field needed a demonstration of the extent to which disadvantaged preschool children could be changed by a program that taught academic skills intensively. If these children were accelerated beyond the performance of their middle class age mates, they would have a much better chance of success in school. Thus, Engelmann's second principle was put forth: If a program teaches more per minute and per day, it will ultimately accelerate the performance of children and “make them smarter.”

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