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Newsletter

Volume 31 | 2008 | Number 3

A Place at the Education Reform Table: Why Behavior Analysis Needs to Be There, Why It's Not as Welcome as It Should Be, and Some Actions that Can Make Our Science More Relevant

By Dr. William L. Heward, BCBA, The Ohio State University

Improving the effectiveness of public education is one the most important challenges facing U.S. society today. For more than four decades behavior analysts have provided powerful demonstrations of how their science can promote learning in the classroom. In spite of this evidence, behavior analysis is, at best, a bit player in our country’s efforts to reform education.

Observational studies consistently reveal a huge gap between what research has discovered about effective instruction and what is practiced in the majority classrooms. The scope and depth of the knowledge-to-practice gap in education has caused many behavior analysts to lament its existence, discuss and analyze possible reasons for it, and suggest ways to shrink it (e.g., Axelrod, 1991, Baer & Bushell, 1981; Binder, 1994; Carnine, 1992, 1997, 2000; Deitz, 1994; Fowler, 1994; Greer, 1983, 1991; Heward & Cooper, 1992; Kohler & Strain, 1992; Lindsley, 1992; Skinner, 1984; Stone, 1991). This presentation is an effort to extend and contribute to that discussion. I identify a dozen attributes of applied behavior analysis (ABA) that make it well-suited to help improve education, review characteristics of ABA and those of contemporary education philosophy that impede the acceptance and adoption of behavioral practices in the classroom, and suggest some actions that educators, practitioners and researchers can take to enhance and further ABA's contributions to effective education.

Why ABA Is Good for Education

The defining dimensions of ABA (Baer, Wolf, & Risley, 1968, 1987; Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2005), characteristics of ABA-inspired lesson plans and instructional strategies, and effects on student learning when those teaching plans and strategies are implemented systematically suggest that ABA is good for education for the following reasons:

  1. ABA is meaningful.
  2. ABA is effective.
  3. ABA is focused.
  4. ABA is broadly relevant.
  5. ABA is self-correcting.
  6. ABA is accountable.
  7. ABA is public.
  8. ABA is doable.
  9. ABA is replicable.
  10. ABA is empowering.
  11. ABA is optimistic.
  12. ABA knows motivation.

Why ABA’s Impact on Education Has Been Limited

After considering the impressive list of ABA’s positive attributes, one might reasonably exclaim, “Wow! What’s not to like about ABA? It is all good for education.” The following list of reasons may help to explain why ABA has not had anywhere near the impact and influence on education its positive characteristics suggest that it should:

  1. ABA’s basic assumptions about the purpose and process of education are incompatible with the views of many educators.
  2. ABA’s data do not interest educators.
  3. ABA’s data do not matter because educational decisions are seldom informed by data on student learning.
  4. ABA’s empirical pragmatism is antithetical to education’s retreat from objective science.
  5. ABA seems too simplistic.
  6. Other approaches promise more.
  7. ABA’s use of reinforcement goes against current beliefs in education.
  8. ABA is an easy mark for criticism.
  9. Some teachers view ABA as a threat to their creativity and independence.
  10. ABA places the responsibility for student learning on teachers and schools.
  11. Implementing behavioral approaches yields too little reinforcement for teachers.
  12. Behavioral educators have insufficient understanding and control of the contingencies that govern the adoption and maintenance of effective practices.
  13. ABA has yet to prove its value to the students about whom society cares most.
  14. Improving education is not an urgent mission for society.

Reconciling the Opposing Reasons

As a partner and contributor to improved education, ABA has a lot to recommend it (e.g., it’s meaningful, focused, effective, self-correcting, doable, replicable, and so on). Unfortunately, many educators perceive ABA as a largely irrelevant approach based on a mechanistic worldview and an overly simplistic theory. While some educators recognize ABA as a source of techniques for managing problem behavior, few appreciate what ABA can contribute to curriculum design and academic instruction.

If the reasons given here regarding ABA’s value to—and lack of adoption by—education are on the mark, many of ABA’s strengths are also its weaknesses: ABA’s predisposition for explicit instruction of carefully defined skills is viewed as out-of-context teaching; ABA’s emphasis on direct and frequent measures of student performance is thought to obscure authentic learning, if not prevent it altogether; ABA’s requirements of procedural fidelity and repetition are viewed as threats to teachers’ independence and creativity; ABA’s use of reinforcement is thought to have detrimental effects on students, and so on.

What can those who wish to see ABA play a more influential role in education do? Four actions that may help are described here.

Develop a Technology of Adoption

Although ABA has produced a scattered research literature on factors that influence the adoption and sustained use of instructional practices by teachers and schools, such studies represent a very small fraction of behavioral research in education. Most behavior analytic research in education consists of discovery-oriented studies designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of various curricular and instructional arrangements. Perhaps this is because researchers believe that discovery-oriented research is more glamorous or is held in higher regard by university promotion and tenure committees. I have heard academicians state that before an investigator can conduct meaningful research on the dissemination and adoption of a science-based educational strategy, he or she must first be heavily involved in fundamental research designed to discover and analyze the functional variables and principles that comprise the strategy. I disagree.

Limiting research on dissemination and adoption to the small circle of investigators involved in the original discovery process is an inefficient and unnecessarily slow way to turn scientific discovery into technological applications. Developing an effective technology of adoption will require the combined and sustained efforts of many behavioral researchers and school practitioners working together. It will require not just more and better applied research, but also more and better applied practice (Johnston, 1996, 2000; Moore & Cooper, 2003). A positive sign for the future of education would be a sizeable number of early career behavior analysts dedicating their professional lives to studying the adoption and sustained use of evidence-based strategies.

Keep Telling Our Story

I agree with Foxx (1996), who said that every behavior analyst has been entrusted with a covenant to do everything possible to ensure the survival and success of the science. Behavior analysis must be promoted, not because it is “the right way,” but because it offers society a scientific approach to human affairs—in this instance, to one of society’s most important responsibilities: education—that is “unrivaled in its effectiveness” (p. 147).

Although the effective discussion and advancement of any science requires a technical language consisting of terms with precise and limited meanings, the scientific language of behavior analysis limits its attractiveness and accessibility to many educators and the public in general (e.g., Axelrod, 1992; Bailey, 1991; Foxx, 1996; Lindsley, 1992; Neuringer, 1991; Rolider & Axelrod, 2005). Behavior analysts must describe what they have to offer education in the language of the larger culture as that language is reflected in educational practice. Instead of avoiding words like critical thinking and self-regulated learners, behavior analysts should be helping teachers identify and apply alterable variables that will make their goals for students a reality (Fowler, 1994; Schwartz, 2005).

Maintain a Realistic Optimism

Given that most of the fundamental strategies of ABA have been “visible and available to education” (Baer & Bushell, 1981, p. 260) for decades, the size and protracted nature of the knowledge-to-practice gap is especially frustrating. However, there are reasons to remain optimistic. One reason is the continued progress within ABA to design curriculum and instructional practices with ever-increasing effectiveness (e.g., Twyman, Layng, Strikeleather, & Hobbins, 2005). The growing number of behavioral educators and school programs provides another reason for optimism. Although behavior analysts comprise a tiny percentage of professionals in education, there are more behaviorally oriented teachers and teacher education programs today than ever before (e.g., Alber & Nelson, 2005; Maheady, Harper, & Mallette, 2005; Webber, 2005), and there are more schools employing thoroughgoing behavioral systems that can serve as models for administrators and program developers (e.g., Johnson & Layng, 1994; McDonough et al., 2005). Additional hope that ABA may have an increased role in education might be found in federal legislation such as the No Child Left Behind act and the Reading First grants, and the Response to Intervention approach within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which emphasize explicit instruction and data based accountability.

Keep Nibbling

The best advice I have heard about how each of us might help close the knowledge-to-practice gap in education came from Fred Keller. When asked how behavioral educators could best promote and advocate for effective instruction in the schools, Keller replied:

The best advice I ever heard was offered by a friend of mine, Burrhus Skinner . . . Someone asked him what we can do to promote better education. Skinner was silent for a moment, then he said, “Well, I guess we just keep nibbling.” I take that to mean to keep on working is a small way, keep on promoting good things. When you see something good taking place, reinforce it if you can. When you see something going in the right direction, praise it. Anytime you see a model school that looks as if it’s applying good behavioral principles, give it your support. I believe the process is something like shaping. Don’t expect many big changes to take place. There's not going to be any revolution. But maybe, if we all keep on nibbling, we can change education. I don't know of any other way. (F. S. Keller in Heward & Dunne, 1993, p. 343)

Keller and Skinner offer us wise counsel. When we see a teacher or school doing something good, we should try to reinforce it. We should not think that a teacher’s or a school’s effort must meet the technical rigor and conceptual purity of a study in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis before we recognize it as “behavioral” and worthy of our support. Doing so will cause us to miss opportunities to make inroads, friends, and partnerships. Such an approach could put behavior analysts in a can’t-see-the-functional-forest-for-the-topographical-trees situation in which we do not recognize effective applications of behavioral strategies because we are looking for them by formal characteristics instead of by their outcomes; for example, failing to recognize an effective application of programming for generalization because the procedure is described as a “cognitive learning strategies” approach. Such a mistake is akin to a fundamental error that Skinner (1953) warned us about half a century ago: defining an operant by its topography instead of its function.

The primary goal of behavior analysts working in education should not be getting education to do more and better ABA; our goal should be helping education do better. We must remember that it is the product (student achievement and learning), not the process (and certainly not what that process is called) that is important. Because ABA is all about the analysis of function, it is ideally suited to help discover and refine educational practices that will produce improved learning. This is the essence of applied behavior analysis and the most important reason why it is good for education.

References

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