Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 1 | 2009 | Number 2 | On-line ISSN: 2151-4704
ABAI Education Board
By Charles Merbitz
The mission of the Education Board is to develop, improve, and disseminate best practices in the recruitment, training, and professional development of behavior analysis.
This year was again a very busy one for the Education Board and its subsidiary committees. The major challenge has been to keep up with the massive changes in the landscape of applied behavior analysis (ABA) that has been engendered by recognition of parents of children with severe disabilities (primarily autism) that ABA technologies can help their children. Funding to pay for this help is a problem nationally, and consumer advocates are working diligently with education departments, states, insurance companies, and others to find the resources to support treatment as well as to identify competent providers. This recognition of ABA effectiveness has fueled a labor-market demand for persons trained to deliver ABA services, and in turn some academic institutions have instituted new training programs. However, the health of the field and continued progress in the applied areas also requires ongoing basic science training and research. This is true even though the positive outcomes of basic science efforts may not be as visible to the public as the more immediate outcomes of ABA applications with people with disabilities and behavioral issues. The immediate needs of consumers for ABA services have resulted in some states passing and others proposing legislation to license behavior analysts. That thrust makes it imperative for ABAI to ensure that our standards for accrediting academic programs are set at the optimum levels for the protection of the public and the long-term health of the field. One good position would be for academic programs accredited by ABAI to be recognized by states as the training sites for competent, licensed providers. Of course, these efforts are complicated to some extent due to the continued development of the relationships between ABAI and BACB.
The Education Board is pleased to report that the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education now recognizes ABA as a distinct type of academic program with its own numeric Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) code. Formerly, ABA was included in social psychology or "psychology, other." The impact of the new CIP code (42.2814) for ABA is that educational labor statistics researchers can search to see how many ABA professionals are in training and compare that number to the needs projected by advocacy groups and by Congress. CIP data are the primary data sources used to evaluate the need for additional federal support to train more ABA professionals to meet national labor-force needs. Please note that CIP data rely upon the reports of universities, so the Education Board requests that all academics notify their Office of Institutional Research or local on campus equivalent to correctly categorize ABA training efforts.
Summary of Activities, 2009
Most of the Education Board activity for 2009 has involved follow-up on the new draft accreditation standards that were developed by representatives of the ABAI Science, Practice, Membership, and Education Boards (Michael J. Dougher, Linda J. Parrott Hayes, Philip N. Hineline, Chuck Merbitz, Jay Moore, Maria Malott, and Edward K. Morris). It should be noted that Maria Malott played a strong leadership role in the development and refinement of this draft. Going forward, it is anticipated that substantial efforts in this arena will continue. A meeting was held in Phoenix during the annual convention to continue this effort.
The Board also has made progress on several other proposals that were forwarded last year from the Accreditation Committee:
- National Accreditation will be pursued by a separate task force under Libby Street. Maria Malott will also work to support this effort.
- Training for Site Visitors is needed to conform to national standards.
- A task force to review currently accredited programs and assess the extent to which they meet the new draft standards has been formed.
- Michael Cameron has agreed to lead a group to begin the process of developing undergraduate accreditation standards.
Accreditation Committee
The Accreditation Committee, chaired by Pat Ghezzi, is actively recruiting new members and three have been proposed to Council. In addition, one program report has been forwarded to Council for approval.
An issue also arose from the field: the Web site of a professional in Europe claimed that an instructional program was recognized by ABAI. Guidance has been requested for dealing with that issue.
Student Subcommittees
Student subcommittee members continue to report poor cooperation by educators in the goal of updating the Syllabi Bank and the Graduate Training Directory. Additional student subcommittee members will be recruited to reform the student efforts for 2010. Another set of requests for updated syllabi will be sent out before the ABAI convention in San Antonio. The ABAI Student Member Retention, Employment Placement, Internship Site Identification, and the Student Vita/Job Placement Services projects remain as secondary goals.
Suggested Student Subcommittee Goals for 2009-2010:
Continue syllabi collection efforts. As the graduate training directory (GTD) is updated, recruitment efforts should pursue recruitment from all universities and faculty listed in the GTD. Also, a category should be added to reflect syllabi submitted from distance learning programs.
Track and increase number of student vita in ABAI’s Job Placement Services. Previously, a mass e-mail was sent to all student members, which was followed by an increase in student postings. For 2009–2010, a goal will be to replicate this intervention, first by initiating a monthly count of student postings, and second by issuing another e-mail appeal.
Update Graduate Training Directory (Graduate Training Directory Subcommittee). A continuation goal from 2008 is to have the GTD Sub-Committee of the Education Board prompt programs to update their profiles on the GTD with an annual deadline of October 1, so that prospective students can be informed about graduate programs before application deadlines in December and January. Once work on the priority goals is well underway, we will resume sending questionnaires to student members of ABAI, as well as professors, asking about their experiences with the GTD and their recommendations for improvement. We will identify graduate programs that are eligible for the GTD and recruit them to participate.