Exploring the validity of university‐based practicum tailored to develop expertise in addressing challenging behavior

Lambert et al. (2022) looked back at six years of a university practicum. The course trains graduate students to assess and treat severe challenging behavior.

The paper is a case series. It describes the practicum setup, not student or client outcomes.

The authors show how the practicum is built. Students get real cases, close supervision, and repeated cycles of assessment and treatment design.

No numbers on how well the students or clients did are given. The paper is a road map, not a score card.

Lambert et al. (2022) is the twin of another paper by the same team. That paper adds a function-informed decision framework and shows mixed client results. Together they split one story: here is the training model, and here is what it achieved.

Kaur et al. (2025) counted 76 case-series like this. Most also tracked challenging behavior in autism or ID. The review shows the design is now common for showing how well treatments hold up across many real clients.

Johnson et al. (2009) took the university idea into the community. They moved training out of campus clinics and into public mental-health centers. Their report is early and descriptive, just like the target, but shows the next step: real-world placement.

Singh et al. (1985) sketched the dream first. That paper said doctoral students need broad, hands-on experience to solve any behavior problem. Lambert et al. (2022) give the living example 37 years later.

If you run a practicum, copy the parts you like: heavy supervision, real cases, and repeated practice. If you teach, use the paper to show students what a specialized challenging-behavior track can look like. If you hire, ask new grads if they had this kind of deep-dive training.