When client progress stalls in ABA settings, the clinical instinct is to revise the treatment plan — adjust the prompting hierarchy, change the reinforcer, add a new skill target. This response is often appropriate, but it addresses only one level of a multi-level system.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Verbal Beginnings
Take This Course →Including ethics, supervision, and topics like this one. New live CEU every Wednesday.
Join Free →When providers don't work together, clients fail to make efficient progress towards mastery of the knowledge and skills they need for successful lives. "Things Fall Apart." Ethical leaders do what it takes so that providers will act in each client's long-term best interest. "If you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system wins almost every time." We can use behavior analysis to engineer provider behavior change at the system, process, and individual levels of a school, center, or tutoring program, to solve its organizational performance problems so that every client will make efficient progress towards mastery of the knowledge and skills needed for a successful life. I will tell the story of a preschool for children with autism that was losing clients and staff because it lacked a pragmatic organizational performance engineering process to ensure provider, parent, and client success. We designed and implemented the EARS process of organizational performance engineering to solve this problem. The EARS process has the following steps: 1) Evaluate client progress using frequent, accurate, and sensitive measures, to identify as soon as possible when a client is not making efficient progress. 2) Analyze the causes of provider performance problems using direct, accurate measures. 3) Recommend changes in provider resources, training, and management based on the analysis. 4) Solve provider performance problems by designing and implementing changes in provider resources, training, and management.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 2 | Supervision |
| COA | 2 | — |
Since earning his Ed. D. in Educational Psychology from the Behavior Analysis in Human Resources program at West Virginia University, Dr. Bruce has taught behavior analysis in both undergraduate and graduate programs and consulted with variety of organizations. He is the author of Instructional Design Made Easy—a workbook for designing more efficient learning programs, and EARS, a pragmatic, organizational performance engineering process that can be used to improve how people work together so that every client or student makes efficient progress. EARS is an acronym for 1) Evaluate student progress; Analyze causes of teacher performance problems and the performance problems of those who provide resources, training, and management to support the teacher; Recommend changes in teacher and provider resources, training, and management; and Solve provider performance problems by designing and implementing recommended solutions. In addition to conducting EARS workshops, he is writing a second book, Engineering Schools for Student Success, and designing a web-mobile application, “Progress Charter‚” that will make it easier for schools to design and implement the EARS process.
Side-by-side comparison with a clinical decision framework
Research-backed educational guide for behavior analysts
Research-backed answers to common clinical questions
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.