Association for Behavior Analysis International

When students have complex behavior needs school teams often struggle to maintain student engagement and safety. An appropriate education includes evidence-based strategies for teaching new skills and for decreasing interfering behaviors when universal behavior supports have failed. Unfortunately, teachers and school-based staff often struggle to meet the needs of these students and have limited access to training related to evidence-based behavior analytic technology. Behavior analysts are uniquely equipped to address complex behavior needs of students and to address skills of educators whose lack of skill presents barriers to educational service delivery. Behavior analysts can be welcomed as a collaborative member of an interdisciplinary team when they value teaming relationships and follow their ethical responsibility to collaborate with colleagues to identify and implement solutions. This panel has a cumulative 55 years of experience working with school systems at various levels (e.g., individual, classroom, district, statewide) across 5 states. We will discuss our efforts in public schools to support students’ educational programming and to build capacity in educators’ skills while discussing key elements of the BACB Ethical Code (e.g., collaboration, scope of practice, addressing interfering conditions to service delivery). Audience members will be encouraged to ask questions for the panel’s response.

This presentation would be appropriate for board-certified behavior analysts who have experience with clinical or school-based applications for severe problem behavior who are interested in coaching educators to put intensive behavior interventions in place. If practitioners or researchers would like to improve their skills for collaboration as a means of building service delivery capacity in educators, then this would be a beneficial session for them.