IDEIA and the means to change behavior should be enough: Growing support for using applied behavior analysis in the classroom.

Abstract

What and students do can be understood. By analyzing the classroom, can make themselves more organized and more responsible so that they can encounter fewer disappointments (Heward & Wood, 2003). This available method by which the environment can be analyzed to understand behavior is called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ABA is a scientific approach for discovering environmental variables that reliably influence socially significant behaviors and developing technology of behavior change that takes practical advantage of those discoveries (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2007). Practitioners of ABA are guided by five documents regarding ethical behavior: Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (American Psychological Association, 2002), The Right to Effective Behavioral Treatment (Association for Behavior Analysis, 1989), The Right to Effective Education (Association for Behavior Analysis, 1990), Guidelines for Responsible Conduct for Behavior Analysts (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2001), and the Behavior AnalystTask List (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2005). Referring to these documents for guidance, behavior analysts can best answer three questions related to their service (Cooper et al., 2007): What is the right thing to do, what is worth doing, and what does it mean to be a good practitioner? By adhering to these guidelines, practitioners will have a ready source of reliable, accurate, and valid data to inform educational decision making. The methods of ABA have successfully served the public in a wide variety of areas. These areas include education (Dardig et al., 2005), health and exercise (De Luca & Holborn, 1992), language acquisition (Barbera & Kubina, 2005), AIDS prevention (DeVries, Burnette, & Redmon, 1991), and parenting (Kuhn, Lerman, & Vorndran, 2003). Several successful and popular methods using ABA principles in the classroom are Direct Instruction (Adams & Englemann, 1997; Englemann & Carnine, 1991), school-wide positive behavioral support (Tobin, Lewis-Palmer, & Sugai, 2001), curriculum based measurement, and curriculum matching (Hale et al., 2007). While treatment for autism is currently a popular area of research (Borrero & Borrero, 2008; Jerome, Frantino, & Sturmey, 2007), ABA methods have been established as effective for reducing target behaviors displayed by individuals with disabilities as well as non-disabled individuals (Didden, Duker, & Korzilius, 1997; Weisz, Weiss, Han, Granger, & Morton, 1995). Despite over 40 years of data supporting the effectiveness of behavior analytic methods, misconceptions and opposition remain. Opponents of ABA often attack the use of sequenced, structured instruction as compromising the intellectual development of the learner (Kim & Axelrod, 2005). Contrasting existing views in education and psychology, ABA seeks to identify present environmental contingencies that determine behavior rather than conform to mentalistic explanations of behavior. Further opposition to ABA claims that its methods are insensitive to the interests and needs of the learner. In putting the resistance to using ABA methods in schools in a nutshell, Glass (1993) may have said it best, teachers do not need data-based findings of experiments to decide how best to teach children. This popular resistance to the scientific method has been a significant barrier to the dissemination of ABA teaching techniques. That ABA has the documented empirical ability to address behaviors affecting education is now exceptionally relevant. The field has the means to assist schools in the development of effective assessment and intervention procedures (Kates-McElrath, Agnew, Axelrod, & Bloh, 2007). Recent federal legislation now mandates that schools use behavioral methods that have been employed in ABA since its inception. …