Capacity Building Through Collaboration: Ethical Applications of the Science of Behavior Analysis in Public Schools

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).

At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Identify tactics for initiating engagement with educators who hope to develop the capacity to assess or intervene with dangerous behavior.
2. Describe collaboration techniques to adapting behavior analytic consultation and technology to educational settings and work alongside non-BCBA^® practitioners.
3. Understand the ethical responsibility of behavior analysts to use collaboration to improve their practice in educational contexts relative to dangerous behavior.