A Model for Training Science-Based Practitioners in Behavior Analysis

Malott (2018) drew a road map for graduate training.

The map tells faculty to build every course around two journals: JABA for applied tactics and JEAB for basic principles.

When evidence feels thin, students open Skinner’s original books before they Google a treatment package.

The paper is a model, not an experiment, so there are no numbers.

It gives a year-by-year course grid, reading lists, and supervision scripts that put primary research first.

Blydenburg et al. (2016) asked program directors what their own courses miss.

The directors admitted they skip basic research and several task-list areas.

Malott’s model answers that survey by baking JABA and JEAB into every semester.

Najdowski et al. (2003) warned against teaching the EST list like a holy book.

They wanted students to study mechanisms, not brand-name therapies.

Malott extends that call: skip the package names and read the experiments that discovered the principles.

Moore (2022) later handed faculties a ready-made syllabus on radical behaviorism.

That semester plan slots neatly into Malott’s philosophy arm, showing the model is still growing.

If you supervise master’s students, you can lift the reading order wholesale.

Start each new topic with the original JABA article, then the JEAB study that seeded it.

Your trainees learn to cite data, not acronyms, and they leave with a reflex to open the journal before they open Facebook.