As of January 2023, there are 59,976 Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) with current licensure throughout the world. This number has substantially grown compared to the meager 392 persons so certified in the year 2000 (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2023) In the past 11 years, demand for Board Certified Behavior Analysts has increased by 4,209% (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2022). As the need for this resource has increased, the presence of BCBAs is becoming more prevalent in public schools today. A BCBA can be a beneficial and critical resource to teachers in aiding in their behavior knowledge, and classroom management. Since there is a scarcity of BCBAs in schools, it is important that a BCBA's time is spent effectively while working with teachers. To our knowledge, there is little to no research specifically targeting special education teachers and how they interact with BCBAs. A Multiperspectival Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis focus group was conducted with educators who interface with BCBAs. Findings indicated both barriers and affordances attached to special education teachers working with a BCBA. Implications for practice, implications for research, and limitations are discussed.

Transitions occur at many points in a child's educational journey. For children with disabilities, these changes in routine, service providers, and setting may be especially difficult and result in problem behavior. Special education teachers are expected to facilitate a smooth transition from one setting to another, teaching appropriate skills and addressing problem behavior as it arises. Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs), who have an expertise in problem behavior and skill generalization, are currently under-utilized in schools and could work collaboratively with special education teachers and other stakeholders to make it easier for students with disabilities experiencing a school transition. As only 12.16% of actively licensed BCBAs work in education, the literature on effective collaboration practices between BCBAs and special education teachers, particularly in transition, is scarce. We organized seven Multi Perspectival IPA focus groups, including a pilot study group, made up of 25 special education teachers and administrators who have worked with BCBAs. Results show that a duality exists among special educators in this work- special educators expressed both a genuine desire to work with BCBAs, as well as a desire to be acknowledged and respected for their own work and expertise with students, indicating a complexity in this collaborative relationship. Implications for practice, implications for research, and limitations are discussed.

The current investigation replicated and extended previous research on training of behavior professionals to implement functional assessment and analysis procedures. Specifically, the study extended procedures described by Metras to train board certified behavior analysts (BCBAs) to administer two components of the Interview Informed Synthesized Contingency Analyses (IISCA) by: (1) conducting the study in the context of a large residential/training facility for adults with ID, (2) including a participant who served as a behavior analyst for a caseload of individuals who lived and received services at the facility, and (3) adjusting the vignettes and interview scripts to reflect the change in context. This current study shows that, following a brief training sequence, the participant was able to accurately administer the open-ended interview and construct a synthesized test and control condition.

No description available.