Providing Fieldwork Supervision in a School Setting

Is the School Setting a Good Fit for ABA Fieldwork?

Dr. Allison Gohring supervises ABA (applied behavior analysis, the science of understanding and changing behavior) fieldwork in school settings. Her focus is fieldwork (supervised hours required before certification). Her first question is not about forms. It is whether the site can hold the work at all. She meets with every new trainee before they start, and she wants clear answers first.

Can you get permission from your principal or your special education director? They need to know this is happening. If the principal will say no, the plan may not work. Can you get parental consent for your students? Your students will most likely be your clients. That consent is not optional.

Can you actually change what happens in the room? That last question stops a lot of people. Gohring has worked with paraprofessionals and RBTs (registered behavior technicians) who had no room to act. The lead teacher told them this is what we do, and this is what we will always do. No behavior change was possible. So there was no real fieldwork either.

Schools also move fast, and the hallway requests start early. She described a trainee who gets stopped three times a day. Staff want a behavior fixed right now. That is not how the work goes. You cannot fix a behavior until you know its function (the reason a behavior keeps happening). Part of supervision is building a system for those requests.

There's nothing that we can say, fix it.

From the talk — Dr. Allison Gohring

Who Is the Client When Your Classroom Is the Site?

Page 16 of the BACB handbook (the rule book for certification) defines the client. The client is the direct recipient of behavior analytic services. Other people touched by the work can fit that definition too. Parents, caregivers, and other schools count when they receive the training. Sometimes the client is a whole group.

In a school, clients stack in layers. The students in the room are the first layer. The paraprofessionals you train can be the second. A district training group can be the third. Someone asked if the client could be the teacher and her class. Gohring said yes. The teacher learns ABA by spotting it in her own room. Then she learns it again by using it there.

The handbook asks for one more thing. The trainee and the supervisor must hold a formal relationship with the client who receives services. The handbook lists three ways to set that up, and you need only one. The trainee and supervisor work at the same organization. Or each one holds a service contract with a specific client. Or both hold a contract with the organization where the client gets services.

Gohring supervises from a distance, with trainees in schools in several states. The first route is out, since they do not share a workplace. She uses the second one. Parental informed consent does that job, and the ethics code (the BACB rules for conduct) requires it anyway. She also uses a short form stating that the parent knows their child's teacher works under her supervision. On top of that, she gets written permission from the principal or the special education director. Districts do push back sometimes. Her reply is simple: the school gets professional development that makes the teacher better.

As far as I'm concerned, everybody in the world can be a client because we could always use some behavior analytic services.

From the talk — Dr. Allison Gohring

The Paperwork: Contract, Consent, and the Administrator Letter

Start with the supervision contract, and read it carefully. Gohring checks hers against the handbook and against section four of the ethics code. She also noted that the supervisor training curriculum dates to 2012, while everything else has been updated. She has trainees read their own contract and consent form. Then they name the rule behind each line. Finding the rule yourself is the real skill.

That habit matters, because the requirements are not only the supervisor's job to track. No rule says your supervisor must remind you to send in the monthly verification form. She still teaches her trainees where each piece comes from. Everyone needs to know the requirements, whatever setting you work in.

Her contract lists her certificate number, her license for that state, and the date she took her supervision course. She offers to talk with any parent who has questions. Her consent form also covers recordings. If a recorded observation is needed, she asks for extra permission, even by email. No consent for a student means that student stays out of the observation. The same holds for any procedure you lack consent for.

Confidentiality belongs in three documents: the supervision contract, the administrator letter, and the informed consent. In a clinic you are looking at HIPAA (a health care privacy law). In a public school you are looking at FERPA (a school records privacy law). Gohring asked the room a blunt question. Suppose she sees a face or hears a first name, and the child lives 700 miles away. What could she ever find again? In her opinion, that is not a violation. Someone in the discussion pointed out that a child's school and grade narrow down who they are. She agreed, and pointed to district policy, which lists what student information is public.

Start With the Whole Classroom, Not One Student

Gohring starts at the level of the whole room. She treats it like a workplace system, what she calls an OBM approach (organizational behavior management, ABA applied to adults at work). Is there a system in place so the teacher can teach? That means tier one supports (classwide supports for all students). Look at the rules, the routines, and the prompts on the wall. Look at how often the teacher uses reinforcement (rewarding behavior to make it happen again), and what schedules are already running.

Then the trainee hunts for the ABA that is already there. She starts with the assumptions and dimensions of ABA. Next they walk the test content outline (the BACB exam topic list) with one question. What are you already doing, and how? One trainee heard a teacher say a student did it for no reason. That breaks determinism (behavior always has a cause). So now they go find the reason.

Gohring was never an RBT herself. Teachers use ABA every day. New teachers just do not see it yet. Teachers are also paid to raise student achievement. Finding better ways to do that is the job, not a side project. This is why she does not ask for a contract on every child at the start.

The payoff of a school site is the range of clients. A full class may hold 20 students. A self contained room may hold six or seven. A special education teacher may pull students from several rooms. She has worked with RBTs who had one client the entire time. She did not like that as training, and she does not run her supervision that way.

Making 60 or 90 Minutes of Client Contact Fit a School Day

The monthly contact rule changed. It used to be at least 15 minutes a month. It is now 60 minutes for supervised fieldwork. Concentrated fieldwork (the more intensive hours track) asks for 90. Gohring likes the change. Watching trainees with their students taught her more about their practice, and more about what the students need.

Her fix is several short contacts. One trainee does 30 minute observations. Another mixes 30 minute and 15 minute blocks. Sometimes a session ends early, after about 20 minutes. The blocks just have to add up to 60 or 90 minutes, or more.

Let the length follow the work. Early assessment may need 30 minutes or more to see the whole thing. Ongoing work can be smaller. Fifteen minutes of a reading group works. So does one student on one activity. Do not book an hour if little will happen for most of it. A one to one session may run 15 minutes. A rotation of centers may run 30 to 40.

I mean I'm sorry but I can't watch for 60 minutes. I can't.

From the talk — Dr. Allison Gohring

Plan the Observation, Then Give Feedback Fast

Gohring does her client contacts live over Zoom. That works because supervision is her full time job and she keeps two trainees. Many supervisors use recorded observations instead. They work all day and supervise in the evening. She called that completely understandable. Recorded observations just need their own consent.

Before each observation, the trainee plans which ABA concepts the supervisor will see. She asks for that plan straight out. Almost anything on the test content outline shows up in a classroom sooner or later. Picking a target gets easy once the trainee knows how to look.

Feedback lands during the session or right after. One trainee wears an earbud, so Gohring can guide her live, and that has worked well. Another trainee has a busier room, so they meet right afterward. She writes notes while she watches. The trainee can then read what she was thinking minute by minute.

She is strict about data. Teachers see a problem and want to fix it today. Her answer is to ask for the data first. Then the trainee goes back and takes baseline (where the behavior starts out). Then they talk. If a trainee says anything without a number attached, she asks where the data is. She also noted how thin teacher training is on behavior. She taught one behavior management course during her three years as an assistant professor. She said the instructor who taught it the other two years explained positive and negative reinforcement incorrectly.

What am I going to see so I know what to look for?

From the talk — Dr. Allison Gohring

Restricted and Unrestricted Activities Inside a Classroom

Restricted hours (hands on direct service time) are the easier half to spot. Direct work with a student is restricted. That holds whether a teacher, a paraprofessional, or an RBT does it. Running a treatment or skill acquisition program (a program that teaches new skills) is restricted. So is collecting data while you run that program. Teaching a skill program yourself is restricted. Teaching someone else to run it is not.

Unrestricted hours (the analyst side of the work) run on different verbs. Gohring borrowed her list from a trainee: assess, research, develop, train, measure, supervise, graph, and analyze. In a school that looks like school assessments and fidelity checks (did the plan get followed). It looks like data you collect as the analyst. It looks like preference assessments (finding out what a student likes). It also means reading the evidence base before you pick an intervention.

A lot of the unrestricted work is writing. The FBA (a study of behavior causes) and the BIP (a written plan for behavior) both count. So do data sheets and protocols. Gohring also writes a BIP at a glance as a technical assistance page, which makes the plan far less overwhelming. She wants plans written technologically (clear enough for anyone to run). A substitute or a paraprofessional may be the person running it.

Training staff is unrestricted, and schools are full of aides who need it. So is adjusting a plan from the data. So is graphing, interpreting, and running a fidelity check on yourself. Fluency protocols (fast and accurate skill use) count as well, and they do not have to target problem behavior. Reading is behavior. Saying letter sounds is behavior. Writing answers to multiplication problems is behavior. If nobody hands you unrestricted work, go find some. Ask your supervisor what unbillable work you can help with. School BCBAs (board certified behavior analysts) are swamped. Some of them probably should not take on a trainee at all.

being able to see and say your letters is a behavior.

From the talk — Dr. Allison Gohring

What Does Not Count, and Where the Gray Areas Are

Page 16 also lists what you cannot count. Course assignments do not count. Conferences and workshops do not count, and neither do podcasts. Gohring said she wishes both did, and that the BACB does not agree with her. Crisis management training, CPR, and billing systems are out as well. None of that is behavior analytic.

Meetings are a judgment call. A meeting with little or no behavior analytic content does not count. An IEP meeting (a special education planning meeting) can count in part. Say you spend 30 minutes of a 90 minute meeting on a behavior plan or on behavior concerns. Count those 30 minutes. Interviewing a parent about behavior fits here too.

Role play that is not tied to a client does not count either. The discussion still made room for practice. Multiple exemplar training (practice a skill many ways) builds fluency before you touch a client's plan. Teach differential reinforcement (rewarding one behavior over another) in a group session. Then send the trainee to use it with a real student that week. A trainee who does not understand the skill cannot apply it.

Assessment is the real gray area. Diagnostic and intellectual assessments are named as not countable, and academic testing does not count on its own. Someone in the discussion pushed back on that line. If an assessment gives you baseline or function, and it shapes the treatment plan, it starts to look behavior analytic. Gohring agreed in part. The diagnostic test itself is still a no. But you can build a task list of the steps you must run. You can find the baseline and the ceiling (the top of a student's range). Graphing those results and applying them to your intervention is behavior analytic. She also pointed at F3 of the content outline, which covers designing and evaluating assessments of relevant skills, strengths, and needs.

I don't know any of my teachers who have ever done intellectual assessments

From the talk — Dr. Allison Gohring