Dear Ms. Lewis,
Thank you for your article published in Mother Jones, “What if everything you knew about disciplining kids was wrong?” You make terrific points in highlighting how children with difficult behavior in school require a great deal of support and are often caught in a cycle of negative behavior. Discussing how teachers and administrators often rely on outdated punishment approaches, and how challenging behaviors can worsen over time without appropriate intervention is an important topic to which to bring attention. While many outdated and ineffective methods are used to address problem behavior in schools, modern methods based on B. F. Skinner’s work are well-supported as effective, and we feel that your article presents a narrow and misinformed representation of the well-established field which has grown from Skinner’s early work – applied behavior analysis (ABA).
Practitioners of ABA aim to improve socially important behavior by using interventions that are based upon principles of learning theory and that have been evaluated in highly controlled experiments using reliable and objective measurement. ABA methods are used to support students in many ways, including increasing on-task and social behavior, teaching new skills, generalizing those skills to new contexts, and reducing interfering behavior. While these behavioral approaches have evolved from Skinner’s mid-20th century work, as you cite in your article, the claim that the field relies on the philosophy that “human behavior is determined by consequences and bad behavior must be punished” is inaccurate, as is your comparison of students to Pavlov’s dogs. These claims reflect an erroneous understanding of learning theories, and we wish to share with you how these theories are used today as evidence-based practice in schools.
Some key features of ABA include direct observation, ongoing data collection and analysis, the use of evidence-based approaches, and a focus on socially significant behavior. Social significance means that what we are assessing and teaching is important to the student and their family, appropriate for the setting, and helpful in making the student more successful in a variety of ways. This includes anything from academic programs, to social interaction, to self-care and hygiene (which is in direct contrast to Dr. Greene’s experience with behavioral approaches not addressing these “basics”). Observation and data collection allow us to objectively demonstrate if the approaches we are using are making a positive change, and to modify our approaches accordingly. Many studies show that ABA is effective in increasing behaviors and teaching new skills (National Autism Center [NAC], 2015; Wong et al., 2014, 2015). In addition, many studies demonstrate that ABA is effective in reducing problem behavior (NAC, 2015). The United States Surgeon General (1999) even concluded that “Thirty years of research demonstrated the efficacy of applied behavioral methods in reducing inappropriate behavior and in increasing communication, learning and appropriate social behavior.” Therefore, while it may be helpful to many students, based on overwhelming support from empirical research, your claim that social-emotional development support is a “more advanced” approach than behavior analytic approaches is simply false.
ABA has been used in classrooms in particular to assess and identify the function of behavior (Bloom, Iwata, Fritz, Roscoe, & Carreau, 2011), support classroom teachers in reducing students’ problem behavior on a consultation basis (Noell, Witt, Slider, Connell, Gatti, Williams, & Duhon, 2005; Putnam, Handler, Rey, & McCarty, 2005; DiGennaro Reed, & Jenkins, 2013), to successfully support children with significant problem behavior and social challenges in inclusion classrooms (Johnson, Meyer, & Taylor, 1996; Harrower, & Dunlap, 2001; Chan, & O’Reilly, 2008), and to help students improve social skills and behavior through self-management (Koegel, Koegel, Hurley, & Frea, 1992), and with the help of peers (Sasso, & Rude, 1987).
A key misinterpretation of these approaches is that they rely on bribes or rewards, which are “at odds with self-control and undermine motivation.” Simply put, reinforcement is anything that increases a behavior in the future. This doesn’t always look like a “reward,” as even seemingly “bad” attention (for example, reprimanding a student) may increase behavior going forward. Instead, we use assessment to determine precisely what changes to a student’s environment will increase or decrease a behavior. As cited above, these techniques can even teach students to monitor and manage their own behavior. Behavior analysts also focus on “generalization” and “maintenance” as primary dimensions of their clinical practice, meaning they use established technologies to ensure that students are able to demonstrate these behavior changes over time and in a variety of places and situations. Our overall goal is for the student to be independent and successful in the classroom, alongside their peers, without the need for outside supports. In other words, we aim for students to be self-motivated, and we are often afforded the opportunity to see them succeed on their own when intervention is appropriately implemented, consequently successful, and then systematically removed.
While we disagree with your understanding of ABA, we agree on many points. Expulsions and suspensions are overused in the school system, and punishment is often ineffective and comes with poor side-effects. The Behavior Analyst Certification Board Professional and Ethical Compliance Code mandates that practitioners of ABA avoid aversive approaches, and always use positive approaches prior to punishment techniques. Additionally, punishment approaches are reserved for behavior which is dangerous to the client and others, and if they are in fact necessary, they should always be used in conjunction with positive approaches.
We agree that you should first identify the reasons for poor behavior rather than turning to punishment. As you wrote, “the goal is to get to the root of the behavioral problem,” which is a strong reason that ABA has developed technologies to assess behavior and identify the function. These assessments allow ABA practitioners to use a function-based treatment, addressing the primary cause of the behavior and eliminating the need for trial-and-error. This also allows us to identify and teach functional replacement behaviors – those which may replace problem behaviors, as you suggest. Unfortunately, these behaviors are not always easily identified by students or others. Although ABA practitioners strongly believe that students and their families should always play a primary role in their treatment decisions, often behavioral problems require more intensive assessment than self-report. If, as you say, “solutions are always as simple as asking the student what they need to succeed,” we may all be out of work quite soon.
We also agree that you can and should develop relationships with students, particularly those with behavior problems, and that staff and others can become reinforcing through positive interactions. We refer to this process as “pairing” and regularly associate ourselves with things (including social interaction) that students enjoy, so much so that the colloquial recommendation to “make yourself a big M&M” has been used in our field for decades.
Finally, we absolutely agree that more positive approaches in the classroom are often more successful, and that changing approaches is a difficult process for many school personnel. As you say, the mentality of “consequences” in the sense of “not letting the student get away with it” is misinformed, and we now have a myriad of research on how to better support students in a positive and effective manner.
As outlined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, methods used to address problem behavior should be evidence-based, and in order to be effective, we feel that it is important to focus on the function of behavior rather than defaulting to “punishing” students, and to demonstrate that what we are doing is effective. We hope to see more school settings focused on teaching useful replacement behaviors, especially those which will help students be successful in the classroom and with their peers, and we hope that children and families are key decision makers in this process.
Respectfully,
Allison Parker, MA, BCBA
Renee Wozniak, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Association for Science in Autism Treatment
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