Behavior Skills Training (BST) is generally considered to be an essential part of training anyone who might need to be trained—parents, teachers, registered behavior technicians, or students who want to become BCBAs (Board Certified Behavior Analyst).
BST includes several things that are very helpful for training including:
- Describe the skill and provide a rationale
- Provide a written description of the skill
- Model the skill for the learner
- Ask the person to practice the skill
- Provide feedback to the person on their performance of the skill
- Continue until the person demonstrates the skill at a mastery level
The research on the effectiveness of BST is extensive. It is a very effective training procedure for a wide variety of skills. Frequently you will hear BCBAs say that I told them what to do and they still aren’t doing it! Well, why would you think they would be able to do it just because you told them what to do? Research has shown over and over that just telling them doesn’t work. You need to also provide training. Many skills need to be taught to BCBA students through BST. The odds of someone becoming a great BCBA without BST training are low.
One common obstacle when working in real world settings is that it is very difficult to use the student’s time to maximum effectiveness. The student may need training on a particular type of problem (e.g., functional assessment, natural environment teaching, chaining), but usually schedules don’t allow for us to move a student to a different client to maximize their learning. The client’s needs have to come first. I believe most people, while they get through all their supervision hours, could have used a lot more BST in different aspects of their training that simply didn’t work logistically.
That might be OK, as the BCBA should be considered a minimum qualification. Of course, our ethical guidelines teach us that we must seek supervision when we don’t have the relevant training and experience to handle a particular client problem. We all need a lifetime of Poogi.
What I fear is that BST might teach an unintended lesson. Specifically, someone else is responsible for my learning. In my view, in order to be a professional, you need to be active in trying to POOGI. That means independently finding relevant peer-reviewed research, studying that research, asking lots of questions, initiating to take on new projects, taking data on your own performance, following up with study of what you learned at conferences, connecting with other professionals who specialize in areas where you are weak, and probably hundreds of other activities. Certainly, supervision can encourage these behaviors, and I believe they often do. But are we as careful in fading our prompts in supervisees as we are with clients? I doubt it. BST is an essential training activity for supervisees. But if you aren’t careful, it will create prompt dependence.