Clinical BCBA Fieldwork is Not Enough: Get Our BCBA’s Into Schools!
Written by Katie Graves, PhD | Edited by Jordan Husa
A recent survey of Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs), Board Certified Behavior Analysts-Doctoral (BCBA-Ds), and Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBAs) found that 12.19% and 6.21% of respondents, respectively, reported working primarily in educational settings (Behavior Analyst Certification Board [BACB], n.d.a, b), making educational practice the second largest primary area of professional emphasis for these practitioners. Therefore, our graduate students who are being trained for these certifications must get experience in school settings.
Another nationwide survey found that BCBAs who completed supervised fieldwork in school settings rated their graduate preparation more positively across the eight areas of educational practice than BCBAs who did not have school-based fieldwork experience.
The evidence is clear: BCBAs often end up working in schools and need to have experience in schools during their graduate training. The harder question is how universities can provide that experience in a way that is useful to graduate students, manageable for school partners, and genuinely beneficial to the students receiving support.
One possible answer is a co-implemented Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) partnership.
Bridging the Gap Between Coursework and Practice
Graduate programs do an important job of teaching the foundations of behavior analysis. Students learn how to define behavior, select assessment methods, collect and analyze data, develop functional hypotheses, and recommend function-based interventions. However, applying those skills in a school is different from practicing them through a textbook example.
School-based FBAs rarely unfold under perfect conditions. Student schedules change, staff have limited time, behavior may occur infrequently or vary across settings, and team members may bring different perspectives to the same concern. Graduate students need opportunities to navigate these real-world complexities while maintaining technical quality and valuing the expertise of educators and families. These are experiences that cannot be fully recreated through coursework alone, making authentic partnerships with schools an important part of graduate preparation.
At the same time, many school districts face their own challenges. Schools are responsible for understanding and responding to persistent student behavior, but they may not have enough behavioral expertise, staff capacity, or time to complete high-quality FBAs. Outsourcing an evaluation can help meet an immediate need, but it may result in a report developed at a distance from the people who know the student best. Asking school teams to complete the entire process internally, however, may exceed their current capacity.
The Navigators program was developed to fill the space between those two approaches.
“These are experiences that cannot be fully recreated through coursework alone, making authentic partnerships with schools an important part of graduate preparation.”
What is the Navigators Program?
The Navigators is a student-centered behavioral consultation program offered through TLC. Its purpose is not simply to answer, “How do we stop this behavior?” Instead, Navigators helps teams ask a more useful question: “What is this behavior communicating, and how can we create the conditions for this student to be successful?”
Through the program, graduate interns work alongside BCBAs and school teams to complete co-implemented FBAs. Interns may participate in reviewing records, conducting stakeholder interviews, planning direct observations, organizing and analyzing data, developing functional hypotheses, and translating findings into feasible recommendations.
This is not a model in which an intern independently completes an FBA and sends a report back to the school. It is a collaborative process with clearly defined roles, structured coaching, and quality review. The school team contributes its knowledge of the student, educational environment, available resources, and history of support. The Navigators team provides behavioral expertise, assessment structure, analysis, and guidance. Together, the partners develop recommendations that are both function-based and realistic for the educational setting.
What Does Each Partner Contribute?
A successful partnership requires more than finding a school willing to host a graduate student. Universities, supervising BCBAs, and schools must establish shared expectations from the beginning.
Universities can identify graduate students who have completed foundational behavior-analytic coursework and are ready to apply their skills. They can also help ensure that students have qualified fieldwork supervisors, understand ethical and confidentiality requirements, and receive credit for appropriate fieldwork activities.
Supervising BCBAs provide the clinical and technical oversight needed to ensure high-quality assessment practices. They review interns’ work, provide ongoing coaching and feedback, support the interpretation of assessment data, and ensure that hypotheses and recommendations are supported by the available evidence.
School partners provide the contextual knowledge that makes an FBA meaningful. Educators and related service providers help clarify the concern, describe when and where behavior occurs, participate in interviews, support agreed-upon data collection, and evaluate whether proposed strategies are feasible. Families should also be meaningfully included whenever appropriate.
Before beginning a case, partners should agree on the referral question, responsibilities, permissions, timeline, communication procedures, data-collection expectations, and process for reviewing the final report. These details may not be the most exciting part of a partnership, but they prevent confusion and protect everyone involved.
Learning More than Assessment Procedures
The greatest value of school-based experience is that graduate students learn much more than how to complete an assessment form.
They learn to operationally define behavior in language that school teams can understand and use. They learn how to gather information from people who may view the same behavior differently. They learn to identify patterns across interviews, records, and direct observations rather than relying on a single source of information. They also learn that a technically sound recommendation is not helpful if it cannot reasonably be implemented in the classroom.
Perhaps most importantly, interns learn how to collaborate, an essential skill for school-based behavior analysts who rarely work in isolation. They learn to participate in multidisciplinary teams, communicate with families, explain behavioral findings in clear and accessible language, and support teams in making informed decisions while respecting the school’s role in the student’s educational program.
These skills are difficult to develop through coursework alone and are strengthened through authentic collaboration and experience in school settings.
“These skills are difficult to develop through coursework alone and are strengthened through authentic collaboration and experience in school settings. ”
Benefits that Extend Beyond the Graduate Student
A well-designed partnership should not treat a school as merely a training site. It should produce meaningful benefits for the school team and the student.
Through the Navigators model, school teams receive support in developing clearer behavior terminology, stronger functional hypotheses, and practical, function-aligned recommendations. Because team members participate in the process, they also gain a better understanding of behavioral assessment and become more confident contributing to future FBAs.
Students benefit from interventions that align with the function of their behavior while also considering the realities of their school environment. Ideally, this leads to more consistent support, greater participation in instruction, and improved access to meaningful educational opportunities.
Universities benefit as well. Partnerships provide preparation programs with direct information about the skills their graduates need in practice. They also help build a pipeline of behavior analysts who understand schools and are better prepared to serve in educational settings.
A Partnership, Not a Placement
Giving graduate students “school experience” should involve more than simply placing them in a school building. Meaningful preparation requires intentional learning experiences supported by carefully selected cases, clearly defined roles, qualified supervision, structured assessment procedures, ongoing feedback, and genuine collaboration with school teams.
Programs like the Navigators demonstrate how universities and local partners can create meaningful experiences that address real school needs while preparing the next generation of behavior analysts. Through each FBA, graduate students gain authentic experience, school teams strengthen their understanding of behavior, and students receive support that is individualized, function-based, and grounded in their educational environment.
When thoughtfully designed, these partnerships can strengthen graduate preparation while providing meaningful support to schools and the students they serve.
“Meaningful preparation requires intentional learning experiences supported by carefully selected cases, clearly defined roles, qualified supervision, structured assessment procedures, ongoing feedback, and genuine collaboration with school teams.”
