Association for Behavior Analysis International

The new Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2020) requires all BCBAs to engage in professional skills and culturally responsive practices which maximize the effectiveness of their services while treating others with compassion, dignity, and respect; however, resources to guide the training and incorporation of these practices remains limited. This symposium will describe four studies examining practices and future directions for the training of these skills. The first presentation describes a survey which evaluated the strengths and deficits of various professional skills for BCBAs. The second presentation will review potential barriers to effective supervision skills and present data on the utility of an assessment tool to guide BCBAs in their supervision practices and professional development. The third presentation will describe a study evaluating the use of behavioral skills training to teach culturally responsive practices to graduate students. Finally, the fourth presentation will describe a study evaluating procedures to increase the inclusion of content on diversity and culturally responsive practices in behavior analysis courses. To end, the discussant will review the findings in each presentation and consider areas for future research.

The target audience for this symposium will be students, researchers, and practitioners that are interested in the study and teaching of professional skills and DEI practices. Given that this symposium will offer supervision CEs, we anticipate a large number of attendees (i.e., 100+).

The rapidly increasing demand and increased number of BACB certificants in recent years results in many new BCBAs moving into the role of supervisor without the necessary skills and supports. In 2018 the BACB reported that the “most common actionable ethical violation is improper or inadequate supervision or delegation of responsibilities”. It is essential to the sustainability of ABA that we are meeting the needs of all individuals, families, trainees and practitioners. In this presentation we will discuss some of the barriers to ensuring quality supervision and attempts to address them will be reviewed. We will introduce the Supervisory Skills Assessment Tool (SSAT). The SSAT evaluates professional skills such as bidirectionality, perspective-taking and problem-solving. This allows mentors to create individualized competency criteria to ensure scaffolded support and training is provided to new BCBAs prior to independent supervision. Lessons learned from the initial stages of the pilot and next steps will be discussed.