Newsletter
Volume 30 | 2007 | Number 2
ABA España
By Javier Virués-Ortega
ABA Spain: Driven to Grow
During the last year our association has continued to work on our main goals: teaching excellence, dissemination within Spain, and international networking. Among the accomplishments of this year we may mention the award of the 2006 SABA grant for international development. Our project is aimed at implementing a BACB accredited program in Spain. In addition, we recently obtained course sequence approval for the coursework of our program from the Behavior Analysis Certification Board and we are currently exploring pathways to make the program and the accreditation more widely known in Spain. Last July in Milano, we were part of the discussion panel on accreditation and licensing in Europe chaired by Dr. Jerry Shook. We very much agreed that there should be a single international accreditation system but there is still a lot of work to be done to make it useful for professionals and clients in countries where behavior analysis is still a small field.
Professional opportunities for behavior analysts are still small within the country. There are very few centres where behavior analytic services are provided. Of interest, most of these institutions have learned about ABA Spain during the last year and have had their members affiliated. This has been the case for the autism research group managed by Dr. Luis A. Perez (University of Oviedo) and the Centro Almudaris (Córdoba) managed by Dr. Jose J. Carnerero both devoted to applied behavior analysis of children with developmental disabilities. We aim to gather as many behavior analysts as possible within our association so we will soon represent the true picture of behavior analysis in Spain.
Figure 1: Dr. Richard W. Malott with students.
Our annual workshop was recently held in Madrid with the participation of Dr. Richard W. Malott. These workshops are becoming a key element in the development of the international networking and the dissemination of our institution among scholars and professionals in the field. Into that aim we recently applied to host the ABA International Conference. Our goal for the next year is to have our BACB accredited program fully implemented. Ideally, students will meet coursework and supervision requirements upon program completion. We look forward to become the main reference for behavior analysis training in the country. In addition, we aim to be a tool for professional and clients helping to provide information and meeting opportunities.