Research

What we study

Precision teaching is our starting point. This page explains what it is, shows its family of charts, describes two of its most important discoveries, fluency and agility, and sets out what we are working towards.

01The system

Precision teaching, in plain English

Precision teaching is not a teaching method. It is a way of measuring learning and deciding what to do next, and it works alongside any curriculum or teaching approach. It shapes how we think about teaching, and its charts give precise, frequent feedback on each learner’s progress. Together, these make teaching more precise. Ogden Lindsley founded it in 1965, and teachers developed it in their classrooms. It has five steps. Select each one to see how it works.

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Each step adds a steeper celeration line, from ×2 to ×32, drawn at the angles used on the Standard Celeration Chart.
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Sources: Lindsley (1990, 1991); Calkin (2005); Evans, Bulla and Kieta (2021); Vostanis (2027).

02The charts

Explore the family of Standard Celeration Charts

The Standard Celeration Chart comes as a family of four: daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. Think of them as four lenses on the same data. Open the interactive charts to try them on one learner’s timings.

03Fluency and agility

Two discoveries: fluency and agility

Fluency and agility are two of precision teaching’s most important discoveries. Select each one to see what it means and how it looks on the chart. There is more detail on each if you want it.

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On the chart

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A short way to remember the difference: fluency is to frequency as agility is to celeration (Meyer et al., 2021).

More on fluency

How we check for true mastery

Fluent skills are expected to bring certain by-products with them. These still need more research. We use them as practical tests of true mastery: we do not call a skill mastered because the learner reached a target number. We check what they can do with it, and that makes our work more rigorous. Select a dot to see each check.

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How we usually check it

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This is how we usually run these checks. It is not the only way. The literature groups these by-products under different acronyms, such as REAPS, RESA, RESAA and MESAA, and teams differ in which ones they test and how. Fabrizio and Moors (2003), for example, pause practice for a month to test retention.

Sources: Binder (1996); Johnson and Layng (1996); Fabrizio and Moors (2003); Leow-Dyke, Jones, Rossi and Vostanis (2026); Vostanis, Payne, Cox and Bradshaw (2026); Vostanis (2027).

More on agility

Learning to learn faster

Fluency is about one skill. Agility is about what happens across skills. A learner shows agility when each new, related skill is learned more quickly than the one before. In short, they are learning how to learn.

Fluency shows in how many correct responses a learner gives per minute. Agility shows in the celeration, the slope of the learning picture, which is why it takes a Standard Celeration Chart to see it. Here a learner practises three times tables, one after another. Select a sign of agility to see it on the chart.

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Part of a daily chart: six weeks, two for each times table. Dots are correct answers per minute. Example data, not from a real learner. The celerations and first-day counts follow the example in Vostanis (2027); the daily dots were generated to fit them.

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What the chart shows

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A learner may show one of these signs or both, and there are other ways to measure agility (Meyer et al., 2021). Agility is not the same as application. Application means using a skill inside a more complex one. Agility means learning the next, similar skill faster. Agility has been studied far less than fluency, and how to bring it about reliably is one of the questions we are working on.

Sources: Meyer, Newsome, Fuller, Newsome and Ghezzi (2021); Vostanis (2027). “Celerating celerations” is Lindsley’s (2000) phrase and “climbing bottoms” is Neely’s (2003).

04Our aims

What we are working towards

  1. Strengthen precision teaching

    Test and refine the parts that make the system work: pinpointing, Standard Celeration Charting and decisions based on the data.

  2. Understand fluency and agility

    Study how skills become fluent, how fluent skills support more complex ones, and how learners come to learn faster. Along the way, we aim to discover more principles of performance and learning.

  3. Take precision teaching to new places

    Precision teaching has mostly been used with academic skills. We think it can do much more, so we test it in new areas, including non-academic skills, staff training and settings beyond education.

  4. Strengthen evidence-based practice

    Precision teaching is our main focus, but not our only one. We also study other evidence-based approaches to teaching and support, and how precise measurement can help them work better.

  5. Make research accessible

    Publish openly and share findings in plain English, so that the people who can use them do not need to read a journal first.

References

14 sources cited on this site · select to show or hide
  • Binder, C. (1996). Behavioral fluency: Evolution of a new paradigm. The Behavior Analyst, 19, 163–197. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03393163
  • Calkin, A. B. (2005). Precision teaching: The standard celeration charts. The Behavior Analyst Today, 6, 207–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0100073
  • Evans, A. L., Bulla, A. J., & Kieta, A. R. (2021). The precision teaching system: A synthesized definition, concept analysis, and process. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 14, 559–576. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-020-00502-2
  • Fabrizio, M. A., & Moors, A. L. (2003). Evaluating mastery: Measuring instructional outcomes for children with autism. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 4, 23–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/15021149.2003.11434213
  • Johnson, K. R., & Layng, T. V. J. (1996). On terms and procedures: Fluency. The Behavior Analyst, 19, 281–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03393170
  • Leow-Dyke, N., Jones, R., Rossi, M., & Vostanis, A. (2026). Teaching mathematics to autistic students in special education by integrating learn units within precision teaching. Behavioral Interventions, 41, Article e70118. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.70118
  • Lindsley, O. R. (1990). Precision teaching: By teachers for children. Teaching Exceptional Children, 22(3), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/004005999002200302
  • Lindsley, O. R. (1991). Precision teaching’s unique legacy from B. F. Skinner. Journal of Behavioral Education, 1(2), 253–266.
  • Lindsley, O. R. (2000). Celeration and agility for the 2000’s. Journal of Precision Teaching and Celeration, 17, 107–111.
  • Meyer, S., Newsome, D., Fuller, T., Newsome, K., & Ghezzi, P. M. (2021). Agility: What it is, how to measure it, and how to use it. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 14, 598–607. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-020-00465-4
  • Neely, M. D. (2003). Climbing bottoms show AAG. Journal of Precision Teaching and Celeration, 19, 37–38.
  • Vostanis, A. (2027). Precision teaching. In D. Reitman & B. Marx (Eds.), Encyclopedia of psychotherapy (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 217–239). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-443-29009-1.00013-5
  • Vostanis, A., Payne, O. D., Cox, A., & Bradshaw, J. (2026). Precision teaching to develop key word sign skills in practitioners in intellectual disability services: A proof-of-concept study. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 39, Article e70188. https://doi.org/10.1111/jar.70188
  • White, O. R. (1986). Precision teaching—Precision learning. Exceptional Children, 52(6), 522–534.