TOM SHARPE, M.S., Ed.D., BCBA-D, ESE Educational Consulting, Inc. And

1. Practice and Implications for BCBA Professional Preparation: Lessons Learned from University and Service Delivery Perspectives. TOM SHARPE, M.S., Ed.D., BCBA-D, ESE Educational Consulting, Inc. And Karin Torsiello, M.S., BCBA Behavior Basics, Inc.

2. What a Contemporary Opportunity  -- Growing Professional and Lay Receptivity -- Committed ABAI and State Professional Organizations re: Marketing and Visibility -- Rapidly Expanding Populations in Need … Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Range of MR Across Life Span Range of LD and BD Across Lifespan Health Behavior Across Lifespan (also including athletics) Behavioral Gerontology Range of Clinical Diagnoses that require Behavioral Application a. Bipolar Disorder b. Oppositional Defiance Disorder c. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder d. Asberger’s Syndrome e. Etc. … the list goes on and on here 7. Business and Industry 8. … and last but not least, Public and Private Education across the lifespan. -- Ever expanding scientific data base supporting situation and client specific effective practices.

3. Toward A Residency-Based, Deliberate Practice, Research-Bonded, Behavioral Approach to Professional Education • We need to move rapidly down the professional preparation evolutionary trails of: • Medicine • Dentistry • Etc. • And away from the largely craft knowledge and intuitive approach of clinical psychology.

4. Some Notes That Go To OurCore Philosophy • 1. It is the daily practices and related interactions of caregiver and clientele that matter most to an effective therapeutic environment. • 2. Most daily practices (i.e., behavior and setting events) may be strongly correlated with long-term measures of skill acquisition and learning. • 3. We want to know RIGHT NOW how effective a particular educational environment may be, and if not optimal, FIX IT, in the near and long term. • 4. And, WE NEED TO TRAIN THESE SKILLS!!!

5. What are our Recommended Applications? • Establish select Professional Development Site relationships with public, private, and non-traditional education, therapy provision, and behavior services agencies. • Logically sequence academic professional preparation program coursework to include data driven guided practice and closely supervised observation, professional assisting, and professional practice activities connected to each core training course. • Develop and implement a collaboratively applied research agenda to include subject-matter content and professional implementation components, and to be sensitive to caregiver and clientele behavior, and professional skills content characteristics. • Collect quantitative behavioral data to determine immediate and long-range effects of professional practice within and across a variety of professional settings. • Establish a data-driven technology of effective professional practice by establishing a professional preparation  professional practice  research & development feedback loop, with each activity informing and improving upon the others.

6. The Traditional BACB Curriculum • ABA 601 Origins and Philosophy of Behavior Analysis – 3 • ABA 606 Principles of Applied Behavior Analysis – 3 • ABA 609 Developmental Disabilities – 3 • ABA 604 Practicum I – 4 • ABA 602 Behavior Analysis and Learning – 3 • ABA 603 Experimental Evaluation of Behavioral Interventions – 3 • ABA 607 Applied Developmental – 3 • ABA 608 Practicum II – 4 • ABA 605 Ethical Practice and Assessment in Behavior Analysis – 3 • ABA 610 Verbal Behavior Interventions – 3 • ABA 611 Practicum III – 4 … To Include Board Certification Testing Prep

7. The One Calendar Year (or with other programs 2 yrs) Intensive Approach • Can we adequately train in one calendar year? – TYPICALLY NO!!! • Have we covered all that a new practicing BCABA or BCBA should conceptually and applicatively know? – DEFINITELY NOT!!! • Are the BACB residency standards rigorous enough? – • 1. AMOUNT OF TIME – QUALIFIED YES . • 2. RIGOR OF EXPERIENCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY • THEREOF – TYPICALLY NO!!!

8. Some Additional Core Areas that Require Coverage • Pharmacological awareness … including treatment connections, side effects, cautions, etc. Particularly as we experience greater overlap with clinical psychology. • Business Model awareness … including the principles and practice of establishing treatment provision services via a corporate model. Includes: • 1. Hiring and human resources issues. • 2. Billing, private and public pay, insurance relationships, etc. • 3. Corporate establishment and tax issues. • 4. Local, private, public, state, and federal agency opportunity interface. • 5. State by state regulations, requirements, and procedures regarding behavior planning and service provision. • 6. Pricing structures, marketing, and across services competition. • Expansion of residency accountability requirements to ensure effective practice post graduation.

9. The Deliberate Practice Conundrum • Or restated: • HOW DO WE PROVIDE MEANINGFUL DELIBERATE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE EXPERIENCES THAT ENSURE RAPID AND RELIABLE TRANSFER OF TARGETED IMPORTANT SKILLS INTO LIFE LONG INDEPENDENT PRACTICE? • Goes to legitimacy of professional licensure.

10. Traditions in Professional Education: Lots of Perspectives • Quantitative Methods • --- Descriptive (Anderson & Barrette, 1978) • --- Correlational (Sweeting & Rink, 1999) • --- Experimental (Goldberger & Gerney, 1986, 1990) • Qualitative Methods • --- Interpretive (Behets, 2001; Chen, 2001; Cothran & Ennis, 1999) • --- Critical Theory (Hickey, 2001) • Applied Behavior Analysis • --- Teaching Practices (Ingham & Greer, 1992; Witt, et. al., 1997) • --- Curriculum Models (Sharpe, et. al., 1995; 1996) • --- Teacher-Training (Sharpe, Balderson, & So, 2004)

11. The Non-Application Challenge:Research Data Non-Use in Professional Practice – or “Why Don’t We Practice our own Methods when it comes to Prof. Prep???” The traditional SRC Skinnerian lens may be too narrow for meaningful application in interactive settings. • There is simply too much data from too many methodological sources to absorb. • There is a wealth of “bad” data; with the “good” data ignored or distrusted as a result. • Positivism and objectivity (e.g., ABA methods) have, until recently, been pushed aside by a relativist and constructivist epistemology in graduate professional preparation. • Landrum, 1997; Sharpe & Koperwas, 2003

12. A Longstanding Pedagogical or “Professional Training” Conundrum: Do We: Talk About How to Provide Services Effectively? 2. Engage in Deliberate Practice Learn-How-To-Provide Activities?

13. Two Appealing Answers We Have for Increasing Data Use and Recommending Question #2 • --1-- Interagency Collaboration • --- University and training professionals working together • --- Shared leadership roles in professional training and professional practice • --- Collective research and development work products • --- Mutual problem solving and mutual accountability • Co-Answering the Questions of: • --- What do we want treatment service settings to be like? • --- How do we get them to be that way? • Co-working Toward: • --- A co-developed knowledge base for professional preparation • --- A co-implementation of data-supported treatment practice

14. The Second Answer for a Genuine Residency Approach …As If You Didn’t Know   • --2 -- Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) • --- Repeated measures over periods of time, facilitating trend analysis • --- Treatment exposure to all participants using alternative design strategies to • control for internal validity concerns • --- Rigorous data reliability and treatment fidelity procedures • --- Multiple method compatibility (e.g., ABAQualitative Methods) • --- User friendly data analysis techniques yielding immediate application • Some Important Features • --- Based on positivism and universal truth theory of science • --- Emphasis on reliable direct observation • --- Emphasis on testability and quantitative measurement • --- Encourages careful and systematic replication • --- Private events are verbally reported through social validation • Sharpe & Koperwas, 2003; Sharpe, Balderson, & So, 2004

15. Toward A Residency-Based, Deliberate Practice, Behavioral Research-Bonded Approach to BCBA Preparation Borrowing from the Medical Model, whilst Attempting to Survive Within the Mainstream Clinical Psychology and Professional Education Cultures Or No More Reliance on “Craft Knowledge and Intuition”  

16. Implications That Direct our Behavior Systems Approach • Increasing Innovation in Data Collection and Analysis Techniques Toward More Complete Functional Analysis of Complex Interactive Therapeutic Settings • Facilitating Laboratory Simulation Activities for Professional Training • Demonstrating that Data Matter a Great Deal in Professional Practice Decision-Making through Feedback and Goal-Setting Experiences in Applied Professional Settings • Basing Professional Practice on the Need to Know What Works Rather than the Need to Believe • Documenting and Disseminating More Meaningful and More Relevant Professional Practices for Therapeutic Benefit

17. A Recommended Residency Experience Progression • 1. Learn a common behavioral language designed to discuss operationally daily professional practice in ecological and situational context. • 2. Provide a wealth of laboratory simulations of effective and not-so-effective situationally specific daily practice. • 3. Provide a variety of residency-based, deliberate practice professional practice opportunities under the collaborative guidance of trained University and practicing professionals. • 4. Disseminate current research and development information to professionals in training.

18. Once we Develop Collaborative Professional Relationships, How Do We Do All This??? • -- Incorporating a Consistent Set of: • Instructional, • Feedback and Goal Setting, and • Assessment Tool / Research and Development • Procedures into a Professional Preparation Education Program. • -- Providing a Set of University Class Activities as Preparation for the Above Applied Experiences. • All goes to the Teaching Tennis example.

19. Computer Technology Really HelpsKahng & Iwata, JABA, 1998, 31(2); Sharpe, 2004, Encyclopedia of Behavior Modification and Cognitive Behavior Therapy • BEST System (7.0 & 7.1) -- Sharpe & Koperwas • Behavior Observer System -- Martin • DATACAP -- Emerson & Adrian • Data Collection Assistant -- Saunders • Direct Observation Data System -- Johnson • Ecobehavioral Assessment -- Greenwood • Event-PC -- Ha

20. Lineal Mechanics Number Rate Duration Percent Discrete Recording Interval Recording Time Sampling Systems Theory First, Last, Longest, Shortest, Span Inter-Response Time Conditional Probability Multiple, Overlapping Event Recording Recording in Real Time Combining Measurement and Description Capabilities

21. Exploring Additional Measurement Lenses • Complexity: The number of different behaviors and events necessary to complete description of behavior transactions. • Rhythm: Regularity of behavior transactions with the probability of temporal occurrence the main analysis. • Coherence: Actual versus possible number of different behavioral transactions, determining the predictability of the total behavior-event system. • Velocity: Rate of behavior change. • Fluency: Correlation among rhythm, coherence, and velocity.

22. A Professional and Scientific ChallengeWe Want to do this with our Trainees • Overcoming the mainstream education and social science mischaracterization of the analysis of behavior as a mechanistic, linear, rule-governed, exclusionary, and largely technocratic enterprise. • Presenting the applied analysis of behavior as compatible with contemporary performance- and outcomes-based education and social science reform initiatives. • Operating from a framework of more complete analysis through: • --- Linguistic description (talk about what occurs) • --- Topographic representation (display what occurs) • --- Transactional modeling (quantify what occurs) • of complex interactive settings.

23. Again, Computer Technology Really Helps! • More complete and readily understandable data descriptions • New and alternative data lens capabilities • Immediacy of data-driven goal-directed feedback • Immediacy of across educational episode comparisons • Facilitates multiple form data collection • Facilitates multiple method data analysis • Increased data management capability for long-range portfolio construction • Facilitates data-support of professional training methods • Encourages new and alternative educational experiences designed for more effective professional preparation

24. Some Short-Term Professional Preparation Data Illustrating How a Behavior Systems Analysis Lens Operates

28. Some Long-Term Professional Preparation Data Illustrating Behavior Systems Training Effects When Used as a Long-Term Feedback Plus Goal-Setting Instrument

34. Collection Platforms Obs. System Construction Keyboarding Collection Methods Multi-Tasking for Experimental Research Video Synchronization and File Merging Functions On-Line Data Viewing Pause and Editing Capabilities Ease of Use Analysis Platforms Discrete Measures Time-Based Measures Sequential Data Sophisticated Behavior Graph + Statistical Capabilities Individual- or Across-Data File Analyses Reliability Analysis for Staff Training and Interobserver Agreement Windows Applications Compatibility Lets Look at the BEST Data Tools – Some other Day 

35. Preface and Focus Developing A Common Language Video Laboratory Experiences Feedback Strategy Examples Textbook Help (Sharpe & Koperwas, 2003) Internet Help (TomSharpe23@yahoo.com ) Software Tool Assistance (www.skware.com; or TomSharpe23@yahoo.com ) - Lets Also Look at / Make Our Own Hands on Training Applications