Cultural Responsiveness in ABA: What BCBAs Actually Do

Cultural responsiveness is the ongoing work of spotting your own cultural biases and adjusting your services to fit each person's background. In applied behavior analysis (ABA), it is not optional. It is written into the BACB (Behavior Analyst Certification Board) ethics code as Code 1.07, "cultural responsiveness and diversity."

It matters because the same behavior can mean very different things to different people. A direct comment can sound efficient to one person and rude to another. A treatment that looks effective to a clinician can feel wrong to a family. Below, four clinicians explain how they put cultural responsiveness into practice with clients, families, and their own teams.

Cultural responsiveness is part of the ethics code#

Mackenzie Sandler is a BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst, the credentialed clinician who designs and oversees behavior plans). She builds her whole talk on unconscious bias around one fact. Checking your own bias is a job requirement.

1.07 is specifically cultural responsiveness and diversity. So as a BCBA, we are tasked with evaluating our own biases. It is built into our code.

From the talk — Mackenzie Sandler

Sandler applies the code broadly. She says ABA services involve more than the client. They include the learners, the individuals, and the stakeholders around them, like family members. Her focus in that talk was direct, client-facing work with people of different abilities, including autistic and neurodivergent people.

In a later talk, Sandler applies the same code to workplaces. There, the "client" might be your employees, your team members, or a whole system. She calls this the same core ethics principle, shifted to fit a new setting. The point stays the same. You need the right information to make choices that work for everyone involved.

Start by checking your own biases#

How do you evaluate a bias? Sandler wants it to be practical. She describes taking "practical and measurable" behavioral steps, using ABA itself. She also points to ACT as a helpful tool. ACT (acceptance and commitment training) is a way of noticing your thoughts and acting on your values.

Next, she names everyday habits that keep skills growing. These include professional development sessions, reading articles, and mentorship. Each one, she says, can steadily increase your knowledge and skills in cultural responsiveness and diversity.

In an earlier talk on clinical practice, Sandler links this to cultural humility. She calls cultural humility "a lifelong commitment to self evaluation and critique." First, she says, you step back and look at yourself. You figure out who you are and what perspective you bring to the table. Then you can start to analyze your own behaviors, views, and biases. That self-check is the base everything else is built on.

Learning never stops#

Sandler treats cultural responsiveness as an active habit, not a box you check once. In her clinical practice talk, she describes it as constant learning from many sources.

coming back to our cultural responsiveness and diversity as a clinician, we want to make sure that we're constantly engaging in activities like today, reading articles, you know, attending conferences

From the talk — Mackenzie Sandler

She widens the circle well past formal training. She says to learn from families, clients, and supervisees. She also names other professionals: OTs and PTs (occupational and physical therapists), educators, psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical providers. Her goal is to learn how each of them approaches the skills ABA is trying to teach.

we have to acquire those knowledge and skills and continue to grow, continue to pause and ask ourselves questions.

From the talk — Mackenzie Sandler

Sandler gives a simple reason for all this effort. Everyone is their own unique self. You cannot meet the needs of people with diverse backgrounds if you stop asking how your own view shapes your work.

Helping supervisees find their biases too#

Code 1.07 does not stop with you. Sandler points to a second part that is easy to miss.

the second piece of this code is also evaluating biases of our supervisees and trainees.

From the talk — Mackenzie Sandler

Her approach has two steps. First, get skilled at spotting and handling your own biases. Then help your supervisees and trainees identify theirs. She says she loves growing her own skills and then mentoring them out to others.

In her clinical practice talk, Sandler extends this to colleagues as well as trainees. She talks about mentoring new BCBAs through their first year with the credential. She asks what that support should look like. How do we help them grow in a new career? Her answer is to be the mentor who helps them meet their own needs and the needs of the people they serve. Cultural responsiveness spreads through a team this way, one supervision relationship at a time.

Same behavior, different meaning#

In her talk on teams and systems, Sandler gives a clear example. Picture a supervisor from New York City who speaks very directly. People around them see that style as professional and efficient. It gets to the point fast.

Now picture a supervisee from the rural South. That person may hear the exact same words as abrupt, disrespectful, or even hostile. Sandler stresses that the behavior is identical. Only the cultural lens is different.

Neither perspective is unethical. Neither one is wrong, right? We just are trying to identify people's perspective on cultural... respect of what their outlook is on the behavior and the expectation.

From the talk — Makenzie Sandler

This is the heart of her point. Cultural responsiveness does not mean picking a winner. It means noticing that each person's expectations come from their background. A supervisor who understands this can change how they deliver a message. A supervisee who understands this can stop reading bad intent into a style.

What goes wrong when teams miss it#

Sandler warns that ignoring culture has real costs inside an organization.

we need to recognize that cultural influence is behind perceptions.

From the talk — Makenzie Sandler

When people do not see this, she says, relationships get damaged. That can happen in supervision, between employees, or across a whole system. She gives examples. Teams can split into "BCBAs against techs." Staff can lose trust in leaders who seem abrupt. Those leaders may just come from a different background.

She lists other effects too. One is reduced psychological safety (feeling safe to speak up or make mistakes at work). Another is broken feedback, where feedback is delivered poorly or not heard. A third is misattribution of performance issues. That means blaming someone's skills when the real problem is a cultural mismatch. Sandler points to performance reviews as one place this shows up.

Supervising people from different cultures#

Lauren Donovan works with professionals and organizations across different countries and cultures. She says cultural responsiveness belongs in supervision itself. That includes your own meetings with supervisees and how you teach them to work with others.

Her first example is about feedback.

there are some cultures where Speaking up to a supervisor is really hard.

From the talk — Lauren Donovan

Donovan explains that some supervisees will never question authority. They will not voice disagreement or say they are struggling. They just focus and get the job done. Some supervisors might love that. But Donovan wants their feedback. She says it took her a long time to get it. She had to build trust and create more intentional chances for honest feedback.

Her second example is about boundaries.

You might work with someone where their professional boundaries are different than yours.

From the talk — Lauren Donovan

She once worked with someone who treated client families like extended family. Her first reaction was "You are their teacher, not their friend." Later, she felt she had been a little culturally inappropriate herself. Professional boundaries still matter, she says. But what they look like can differ by culture. So they worked together to define that boundary. Donovan covers more of these supervision skills in Supervising Beyond Technical Skills: Professionalism, Communication, and Clinical Judgment.

Respecting norms in the room#

Donovan's next example is physical. It shows that culture affects even where you sit.

we had to be really mindful of where we were sitting in the room during- an in-person meeting

From the talk — Lauren Donovan

At one school where she worked, seating depended on whether people in the meeting were male or female. She sometimes had to switch chairs to respect different boundaries and cultural experiences. These are details that a clinician from another background could easily overlook.

Her advice is simple. Often, you can just ask. Many people are open to talking about their norms, especially with a supervisor. Donovan says to make sure those conversations happen rather than guessing.

She also says to stay culturally responsive and appropriate in feedback meetings. Supervisees learn in different ways, so feedback will look different for each person. The same care carries into clinical work. Donovan notes that every family and household structure might look different. Language and communication may differ too. A responsive clinician plans for that from the start.

Social validity looks different across cultures#

Dr. Shane Spiker brings cultural responsiveness into crisis management. He ties it to social validity (whether the people served find the goals, methods, and results acceptable and important).

What we deem effective and what we deem appropriate is not going to be socially valid across every culture.

From the talk — Dr. Shane Spiker

Spiker gives a direct example. There may be times when a clinician cannot use physical restraint because it would be culturally problematic.

the use of medication, physical restraint, all of those things could be taboo and the use of punishment may be an acceptable recourse instead.

From the talk — Dr. Shane Spiker

He also notes that he has worked with many families who expected physical discipline for their child. Spiker says this all goes back to social validity. He suggests framing crisis procedures in terms of cultural relativity, cultural significance, and cultural importance.

So where do you begin? Spiker says to start by assessing. He points to a 1996 process called the culturally informed functional assessment interview, or CIFA. It is a structured way to bring a family's culture into the assessment before you plan treatment.

When adults are the decision makers#

Matt Harrington took a related question during a Q&A on assent-based care. Assent means the learner's ongoing willingness to take part, shown through words or behavior. An attendee asked how to stay culturally responsive with families where adults make the decisions. In those homes, children are expected to help carry out the adults' vision.

Harrington was careful. He said it is hard to answer without knowing more about the specific culture. Even then, he would want to meet the parents first. But he offered a framework. Using assent-based care over the long term still means adults are the decision makers. It just means there is more flexibility. You reach the goal by a different route than a more disciplinarian one.

He calls his approach "show then tell." The caregiver still makes the decision. But instead of 30 minutes of homework time, the decision might start at one minute. Once the child succeeds, the parents see that their authority works, because the child is complying. That is probably the success they were looking for. Then you show progress as the time or expectation grows.

What the research says#

Published work in behavior analysis backs up what these speakers describe.

Beaulieu and Jimenez-Gomez point to the 2020 update of the BACB Ethics Code as support for addressing diversity in practice. They call self-assessment of your values, biases, and culture a critical step toward culturally responsive services (Beaulieu & Jimenez-Gomez, 2022). That matches Sandler's focus on starting with your own biases.

A study in Ontario surveyed 428 ABA providers and service recipients. Providers and recipients differed in their demographic backgrounds. Providers reported little training in how to serve diverse families. Recipients rated providers' skills fairly well, but there was room to improve. The authors call for more training and a two-way relationship between behavior analysts and families (O’Neill et al., 2023).

Training can help. One study used behavioral skills training over telehealth with seven graduate students. Most of their clients did not share their cultural, ethnic, or religious backgrounds. The training improved cultural responsiveness along with interviewing and compassionate care. For most participants, the gains held after training ended (Gatzunis et al., 2023).

Another article focuses on Latino families. It explores cultural values, systemic barriers, and the use of acceptance and commitment training. It offers recommendations for assessment, treatment design, and collaboration (Baires et al., 2023).

FAQ#

What is BACB code 1.07? Code 1.07 is the "cultural responsiveness and diversity" section of the BACB ethics code. It asks behavior analysts to evaluate their own biases. As Mackenzie Sandler notes, it also asks them to evaluate the biases of their supervisees and trainees.

Is cultural responsiveness the same as cultural humility? They are closely linked. Mackenzie Sandler describes cultural humility as a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation. She frames cultural responsiveness as the active work that follows, like reading, training, and learning from families and colleagues.

How can a supervisor be more culturally responsive? Start by learning each supervisee's norms. Lauren Donovan builds trust so quieter supervisees feel safe giving feedback. She also suggests simply asking people about their boundaries instead of guessing.