Association for Behavior Analysis International

In the last two years, diversity, social justice, and cultural humility have received a surge of interest in the applied behavior analytic (ABA) community, likely largely bolstered by social movements such as MeToo and BlackLivesMatter. This symposium brings together four presentations that provide practical action items for research and practice. The first presentation, by Elizabeth Fong, will bring a broader historical perspective to the conversation surrounding diversity in ABA and will engage the audience in some brief self-reflective and group activities. The second presentation, by Jacqueline Ramirez, reviews research on cultural humility training and provides specific actionable recommendations that the audience can put into practice today. The third presentation, by Robyn Catagnus, presents results of a review of research published in six behavior analytic journals and assesses the presence of cross-cultural research published in these journals. The fourth presentation, by Zoey Ulrey, presents a conceptual functional analysis of leadership behaviors relevant to preventing harassment in organizations. The symposium concludes with a discussion by Denisha Gingles.

Any behavior analysts

The topics of cultural competence and cultural humility have received increasing attention in the behavior analytic profession. Although the terms are often taken as synonymous, they are not the same. The concept of cultural competence assumes that, after sufficient training, one might become competent in another’s culture. The concept of cultural humility asserts that one can never become fully competent in another’s culture, so a more realistic and productive goal is to become humble and open with respect to culture. The field of applied behavior analysis has done very little research addressing the topic. In fact, few training programs in behavior analysis include training in cultural humility as a requirement. A best practice for teaching these frameworks has not been identified and there is a critical need to outline the relevance of cultural humility and to expand on studies from similar disciplines that have a head start in identifying what works. Identifying best practices will enable practitioners to provide ethical, socially significant, and socially validated interventions to our consumers and families, thus remaining true to our ethical code and dimensions of applied behavior analysis.This presentation will make specific, testable recommendations for how behavior analytic training and research may be brought to bear on establishing culturally humble clinician repertoires of behavior.