By Matt Harrington, BCBA · Behaviorist Book Club · April 2026 · 12 min read

Progressive ABA Curriculum Considerations: Innovative Approaches Across Settings

Overview & Clinical Significance

Curriculum development is one of the most consequential and most undertheorized aspects of ABA-based intervention. What to teach, in what order, with what level of individualization, and through what combination of instructional formats defines the content of every session for every client. Yet in many ABA programs, curriculum decisions are made by default — following a commercially available curriculum or replicating what was done with previous clients — rather than through principled, data-driven selection and sequencing.

This episode of the It's Hard to Be a Social Animal (IHTBS) podcast brings together Christine Milne, Jeremy Leaf, and Jonathan Rafuse for a continuing discussion of innovative curriculum development within the progressive ABA framework. The conversation goes beyond foundational curriculum principles to address how innovative approaches to curriculum design can be implemented across the diverse settings in which autistic individuals receive ABA services — including home-based, school-based, community-based, and clinic-based contexts.

For BCBAs, engaging with this content is an opportunity to examine their own curriculum decision-making processes and to consider whether those decisions are being made with the level of individualization, empirical grounding, and forward-looking perspective that the progressive model advocates. Curriculum that is innovative rather than routine produces more functionally meaningful outcomes and better prepares learners for independence across the varied demands of real life.

Background & Context

The history of curriculum development in ABA for autism has moved through several distinct phases. Early programs centered on foundational compliance, attending, and imitation skills — the prerequisites for instructional engagement. As the field developed, more sophisticated curriculum frameworks emerged that addressed verbal behavior, social skills, academic skills, adaptive behavior, and eventually executive function and self-management.

The progressive ABA framework, associated with practitioners including Dr. Justin Leaf and colleagues, approaches curriculum development from a principled base that emphasizes functional outcomes, individualization, and integration across skill domains. Rather than working through a standardized curriculum sequence, progressive ABA practitioners design curricula that are specifically mapped to the learner's current skill profile, their immediate functional needs, and the environments they navigate daily.

Innovative curriculum development within this framework means going beyond the standard curriculum offerings to address skill domains that are underserved in traditional ABA programming, developing instructional targets that are forward-looking relative to the learner's current level rather than retrospectively filling basic skill gaps, and designing curricula that cross traditionally separate domains such as verbal behavior, social competence, and executive function in ways that reflect the integrated nature of functioning in real-world contexts.

The discussion of curriculum across different settings — home, school, clinic, and community — reflects the recognition that curriculum cannot be setting-specific if it is to produce generalized, functionally meaningful outcomes. A curriculum designed exclusively for clinic delivery will not naturally transfer to the school or community contexts where the learner's competence ultimately needs to be demonstrated.

Clinical Implications

Innovative curriculum development has direct implications for how ABA programs are structured at both the individual and systemic level. At the individual level, it implies that curriculum planning should begin with a thorough assessment of the learner's functional needs across all relevant settings, not just the deficit areas identified by standardized assessment tools. Functional skills — those that are immediately useful in the learner's daily life — should receive priority alongside developmental prerequisites.

At the systemic level, innovative curriculum development requires that clinical teams have the knowledge and flexibility to design individualized curricula rather than simply selecting from existing libraries of programs. This demands ongoing professional development, regular case consultation, and supervision models that prioritize conceptual depth over procedural fidelity. Agencies whose clinical culture treats curriculum as a fixed library of programs rather than a dynamic, individually constructed sequence are less well-positioned to provide the quality of progressive ABA described in this course.

Cross-setting curriculum integration is a specific clinical implication of the IHTBS discussion. Curricula designed for home settings may emphasize daily living skills and caregiver-mediated instruction, while school-based curricula emphasize academic and social skills, and clinic-based curricula emphasize discrete skill acquisition and verbal behavior. Innovative curriculum development creates explicit connections between these setting-specific programs, ensuring that skills acquired in one context are immediately leveraged in others rather than remaining siloed.

For learners transitioning between settings or approaching key transition points such as entering school, moving from early intervention to school age services, or aging out of eligibility for specific services, curriculum decisions are particularly high-stakes. Innovative curriculum planning for these transitions should begin well before the transition occurs and should specifically address the skill demands of the receiving setting.

Ethical Considerations

Curriculum development carries significant ethical weight because the skills that ABA practitioners choose to teach — and those they choose not to teach — fundamentally shape the life trajectory of the individuals they serve. Code 2.09 (Treatment Modifications) and related standards establish that practitioners must make treatment decisions based on the client's needs and outcomes, which in the curriculum context means that program design decisions should be based on a genuine functional needs assessment rather than on convenience, resource constraints, or habit.

Code 2.15 (Least Restrictive Procedures) has curriculum implications as well. Teaching skills that enable greater independence and reduce the need for external support is consistent with this principle applied at the curriculum level — a curriculum that deliberately builds self-management, problem-solving, and independence skills is more consistent with the spirit of least restrictive practice than one that perpetuates dependency on adult-mediated support.

Client dignity and self-determination, addressed across multiple BACB Ethics Code provisions, are relevant to curriculum selection. BCBAs working with older children, adolescents, and adults should involve the learner themselves in curriculum discussions to the extent possible. Curricula that are imposed based exclusively on professional judgment without input from the learner or their family may not reflect the learner's actual priorities and may undermine motivation and engagement.

Code 1.05 (Non-Discrimination) requires cultural sensitivity in curriculum design. Skills that are valued in one cultural context may not be relevant or appropriate in another. BCBAs should ensure that curriculum decisions reflect the family's cultural values and the learner's actual social and community environment rather than a single normative standard.

Assessment & Decision-Making

Innovative curriculum development begins with a comprehensive skills assessment that maps the learner's current repertoire against the functional demands of their current and anticipated environments. This goes beyond a standard curriculum-based assessment to include ecological inventories of the home, school, and community settings the learner navigates, activity-based assessments that evaluate skills in the contexts where they will be used, and futures-planning conversations with caregivers about the environments and roles the learner will need to succeed in over the next several years.

From this assessment, curriculum priorities should be identified collaboratively with the family using a combination of practitioner expertise and family values. A curriculum priority matrix — organizing potential targets by functional relevance, developmental appropriateness, and generalization potential — is a useful planning tool for translating assessment data into curriculum decisions.

Sequencing decisions should be guided by the principle that skills should be taught in an order that produces the most rapid access to functional outcomes. This may not always follow a strict developmental sequence — sometimes a slightly more advanced skill is more immediately functional than a lower-level prerequisite, and teaching the functional skill first produces motivation and engagement that supports the prerequisite learning as well.

Once a curriculum is established, ongoing data review should inform continuous curriculum modification. Skills that are not progressing should be examined for whether the instructional approach needs adjustment or whether the target itself needs to be reconsidered. Skills that are mastered should be reviewed for whether they are being used functionally in natural contexts. Curriculum decisions should be revisited at every formal program review and documented with the clinical rationale for any changes.

What This Means for Your Practice

The conversation in this IHTBS episode models the kind of collegial, intellectually engaged approach to curriculum development that produces innovative ABA practice. BCBAs who expose themselves regularly to peer discussion about curriculum — through podcasts, case consultation, professional development, and peer supervision — are more likely to develop the breadth of perspective needed to design truly individualized, innovative curricula.

For practitioners, the most direct action is to examine your current curriculum decisions and ask whether they are genuinely innovative or whether they are routine replication of what has been done before. If your clients' curricula look similar to each other because you are working from a standard program library, that is a signal that more individualization is possible. A functional needs assessment, futures planning conversation with the family, and review of the learner's ecological demands should yield a set of curriculum priorities that is specific to this learner rather than generic to the population.

For supervisors and clinical directors, supporting innovative curriculum development requires building the organizational conditions that make it possible. This includes allocating time for curriculum planning within the clinical schedule, providing supervision that engages with curriculum questions at a conceptual level, and creating a culture where practitioners feel empowered to propose curriculum modifications based on their clinical observations.

For agencies, investing in curriculum development resources — training, consultation, and access to current evidence — is a quality assurance investment. The quality of an ABA program's curriculum is a direct determinant of the quality of its outcomes, and agencies that prioritize curriculum development will see this reflected in client progress data and family satisfaction.