By Matt Harrington, BCBA · Behaviorist Book Club · Research-backed answers for behavior analysts
BACB-authorized CE providers have met a set of organizational and content standards established by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board, and their courses count toward the CE hours required for BCBA and BCaBA recertification. Authorization is a quality floor — it establishes that courses meet basic structural and content requirements — but it does not guarantee that content reflects the current state of the science, that presenters have appropriate expertise, or that learning objectives are meaningful. BCBAs should evaluate individual courses for clinical rigor beyond checking the authorization status of the provider.
Evaluating CE content accuracy requires using your own foundational knowledge as a reference. Check whether behavioral terminology is used correctly and consistently. Verify whether research claims are supported by citations and whether those citations, when checked, actually support the claims made. Notice whether the presenter distinguishes between well-established findings and emerging or contested positions. Be particularly attentive to content that presents clinical approaches without any discussion of their evidence base or that makes efficacy claims that exceed what peer-reviewed literature supports.
Section 1.05 requires that behavior analysts maintain competence in the areas in which they practice through ongoing professional development. The standard is not satisfied by completing the minimum recertification hours if those hours do not address the practitioner's actual competency gaps. BCBAs are responsible for honestly assessing their clinical knowledge and selecting CE that develops identified weaknesses, not only activities that are convenient to complete. Recertification compliance and genuine competence maintenance are related but not identical obligations.
Crowdsourced CE platforms aggregate content from multiple contributors — individual practitioners, researchers, training organizations — rather than producing all content internally. The advantage is topical breadth: crowdsourced platforms can cover a much wider range of clinical topics than any single provider could produce. The risk is quality variability: contributor expertise, content accuracy, and presentation quality may vary substantially across courses on the same platform. BCBAs using crowdsourced platforms should evaluate individual courses rather than assuming consistent quality across the platform.
Conference technology platforms can extend reach through live-streaming of sessions, on-demand recording access after the conference, virtual attendance formats that include question submission and session participation for remote attendees, and archived content libraries that remain accessible for months or years post-conference. These mechanisms make conference content accessible to practitioners with travel, scheduling, or budget constraints. The primary limitation of virtual conference access is the absence of the informal networking and collegial interaction that in-person attendance provides — a dimension of professional development that technology has not yet fully replicated.
Accurate representation of the field's intellectual history — including the contributions of women whose work has been underrepresented in how behavior analysis tells its own story — matters for professional culture, role modeling for early-career practitioners, and the historical record. When the field systematically underrepresents the contributions of specific groups, it produces a distorted understanding of how knowledge was actually developed and can inadvertently communicate who belongs in the field. Recognition programs that name and document these contributions are corrective acts with both historical and cultural significance.
High-quality learning objectives specify observable, measurable behaviors the learner will demonstrate after completing the course — not vague outcomes like 'understand' or 'appreciate.' Strong objectives use action verbs: identify, describe, distinguish, apply, evaluate. Objectives should be specific enough that a test item could be written for each one, and the course content should be visibly organized to achieve each stated objective. Vague or overly broad objectives — objectives that could apply to any course on the same topic — predict that the course lacks instructional precision and may not produce genuine learning outcomes.
A structured professional development plan begins with a self-assessment of current practice areas, clinical populations served, and identified knowledge gaps. Gaps can be identified through self-reflection, supervisor feedback, clinical supervision discussions, or comparison of current knowledge against the BACB Task List. Once gaps are identified, the plan specifies which CE activities will address each gap, in what timeframe, and how the practitioner will evaluate whether the gap has been closed. Plans should be reviewed annually and updated based on changes in caseload, evolving evidence base, and new professional role responsibilities.
Section 5.07 of BACB Ethics Code 2.0 addresses product and service endorsement. When BCBAs publicly recommend specific CE platforms — in supervision, on social media, at conference presentations — those recommendations function as professional endorsements. Any financial or professional relationship with the recommended platform should be disclosed when the recommendation is made. Recommendations that are presented as purely clinical when they are also shaped by business relationships are a transparency concern regardless of whether the recommended platform has genuine educational value.
When clinical referrals expand into areas where graduate training was limited — behavioral gerontology, pediatric feeding, trauma-informed behavioral care, school district consultation — targeted CE is a necessary but not sufficient component of competency development. Section 2.01 of BACB Ethics Code 2.0 requires competency before providing services in a given area, and competency in a new clinical domain typically requires CE combined with supervision or consultation from an experienced practitioner in that area. BCBAs should not substitute CE attendance for clinical supervision when expanding into genuinely new service areas.
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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.