Richard Foxx's 1985 distinction between behavior technicians and behavioral artists named something that practitioners in the field had sensed but struggled to articulate: the gap between doing ABA correctly and doing ABA well. Shahla Alai-Rosales, drawing on decades of clinical practice and supervisory experience, extends that framework through the lens of expertise development, humble learning, and communal supervision — three constructs that together describe what separates a practitioner who applies procedures from one who genuinely understands them.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Missouri Association for Behavior Analysis
Take This Course →Including ethics, supervision, and topics like this one. New live CEU every Wednesday.
Join Free →As supervisors in behavior analysis, our overall goal is to contribute to healthy, caring, and expansive conditions for individuals and groups within our intervention systems. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight and discuss three areas that may positively influence our attainment of this goal: 1) understanding and developing clinical expertise; 2) developing a humble posture of ongoing learning; and 3) focusing on communal and reflective supervisory practices and how they relate to relationship development, shared purpose and postures of learning. Expertise in most fields requires sophisticated application of principles and techniques, contextual assessment and decision making, problem-solving skills, reflective practices, and reinforcers related to excellence. Our field and the world are undergoing dramatic, and sometimes confusing, changes. How we continue to learn and dynamically respond to need and purpose is an important component of developing meaningful expertise. Responsiveness requires articulation of shared purpose and building relationships with one another that nurture continued growth, safety and valued outcomes. The presentation will include rationales, descriptions, measurement considerations, and practical suggestions to further our collective leadership efforts.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 3 | Supervision |
Shahla Alai-Rosales, PHD, BCBA-D, CPBA-AP is a Professor in the Department of Behavior Analysis at the University of North Texas. She has taught courses in Texas, Europe and the Middle East on a variety of topics, including ethics, early autism intervention, parent training, behavioral systems, applied research methods, technology transfer, behavior change techniques, and cultural diversity. Shahla has published and presented research on social justice, ethics in early intervention, play and social skills, family harmony, and supervision and mentoring. Shahla has more than four decades of experience working with families and has trained hundreds of behavior analysts. She has received awards for her teaching (SGA ‘Fessor Graham Award), her work with families (Onassis Scholar Award), and for her sustained contributions (UNT Community Engagement Award, TXABA Career Contributions Award, the GSU Lutzker Distinguished Lecturer, the ABAI Donald M. Baer Distinguished Lecture, and the 23-24 University of Kansas ABS Outstanding Alumni Award). She was a member of the Behavior Analysis Certification Board, the ABAI Practice Board, the ABAI DEI Board, APBA Board, the advisory board for ASAI and an Associate Editor for Behavior Analysis in Practice. Shahla is co-author of Building and Sustaining Meaningful and Effective Relationships as a Supervisor and Mentor (LeBlanc, Sellers & Alai, 2020) and Responsible and Responsive Parenting in Autism: Between Now and Dreams (Alai-Rosales & Heinkel-Wolfe, 2022).
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.