Behav Analysis Practice (2015) 8:159–160 DOI 10.1007/s40617-015-0072-1

DISCUSSION AND REVIEW PAPER

An Alternative Strategy for Selecting a Graduate Program: Comments on Dixon et al. (2015) Philip N. Hineline 1

Published online: 24 July 2015 # Association for Behavior Analysis International 2015

Abstract While the rankings based upon frequencies of publication, supplied by Dixon et al. (2015), identify individuals and programs worthy of prospective students’ attention, I have focused upon other criteria when mentoring students who are deciding where to apply for graduate study. Those criteria concern the student’s particular interests, and questions concerning what it is like to work with a given mentor or within a given program. Besides perusals of web sites and queries directed to prospective mentors, students already working with that mentor can provide valuable information. Provision for hands-on training in the application of behavioral principles is essential to a high-quality program, and availability of conceptually oriented courses and of a supportive verbal community are additional considerations, especially if a mentor is not frequently available for informal conversation. As alternatives, the Behavior Analysis Certification Board’s credential has the limitations of any multiple-choice examination as an evaluation of hands-on competence, and the accreditation of programs by the Association for Behavior Analysis International omits many mentorships that have trained outstanding behavior analysts via Bapprenticeships^ within programs that are not primarily behavior analytic.

Keywords Mentoring . Graduate program selection . Verbal community . Hands-on training

* Philip N. Hineline [email protected] 1

Temple University, 3020 Midvale Avenue, 19129 Philadelphia, PA, USA

I am awed by the productivity of some of my colleagues in behavior analysis, several of whom appear prominently in Dixon et al.’s (2015) rankings of graduate training programs and their faculties. Consistent with the rationale of that article, it is reasonable to infer that students exposed first-hand to the highly ranked colleagues and programs will have a better-than-average chance of acquiring the conceptual basis, and especially the work habits that can enhance their own future contributions to our field. Nevertheless, when I have mentored undergraduates who are deciding where to apply for graduate study, BWho’s produced the most publications?^ is not a question that has occurred to me. Instead, I have typically begun by asking the student, BWhose work interests you most, or what issues strike you as especially important?^ Sometimes, these questions will immediately yield answers that prompt me to suggest particular names and universities. If not, I’ve found that some thematic prompting will provide guidance for the student’s next step, which in any case is to do some additional reading, to identify or confirm the identification of potentially appropriate graduate mentors. To provide an establishing operation, I point out that while it will initially serve to develop or confirm the student’s interests, the further reading will serve as preparation to approach a prospective mentor. Meanwhile, I remain available to discuss progress and possibilities while this individualized study is in progress. The student’s agenda, then, is preparation ultimately to write in an informed way to one or two (no more than three) people, expressing specific interests in their work, and asking about the prospects of working with them. Note that this preparation will inevitably focus upon people who publish, but not necessarily upon those who publish most. Having identified likely mentors, the next step is to visit the relevant web pages to learn as much as possible about the programs they are affiliated with. Then, ideally, one would attend the annual meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, to make personal contact with the

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prospective mentor, and also to meet students who are currently working with him or her. From these, one can learn important things about research and teaching style. How available is the prospective mentor on a day-to-day basis? Are there regular research meetings? Can one develop one’s own line of work, or must one fit in with a professor’s ongoing projects? What is the amount and nature of interaction between students? Is it common for graduate students to collaborate? If it is a Master’s program, what is the likelihood of students going on for the Ph. D.? If the relevant ABAI meeting is past, I can provide some help from personal experience, but importantly, the student can still contact the prospective mentor via email and ask many of the same questions. Properly doing behavior analysis entails gathering and assessing real-time data on an ongoing basis. Thus, a most important question concerns whether a graduate program provides for practice on the requisite skills of accomplishing this. Ph. D. programs in behavior analysis will assure this is so by means of the dissertation requirement. A Master’s thesis can do the same, but those skills may also be acquired through less extensive research projects, practica, internships, and the like. In any case, hands-on applications of behavior-analytic principles should be taken as essential to a high-quality program. Behavior analysis is more than a mere collection of techniques, however. It is a conceptual system comprised of coherently interrelated principles framed in a special language. Each principle is instantiated by experimental operations, and the validity and potency of each principle is strengthened by its relationships with the others. When applications do not work as planned, a fluent understanding of this conceptual network becomes important for figuring out what is going on. Furthermore, to fully understand those interrelationships and to take advantage of the coherence of the system, one must become conversant with the language in which it is described. Thus, a graduate program must provide a thorough grounding in that conceptual system, both through conceptually oriented courses and, ideally, through a local verbal community comprised of students and instructors. If such a verbal community is lacking, then frequent availability of the mentor becomes especially important. To be sure, one must also learn to introduce and explain the behavior-analytic approach outside that specialized community when communicating with parents, teachers, business executives and employees, and colleagues from other intellectual traditions. This will entail not only minimizing technical terms, but also speaking and writing in ways that are not strictly compatible with the Bbehavior-analytic dialect.^ Especially those who work in applied settings (but members of conventional psychology departments as well) will be

Behav Analysis Practice (2015) 8:159–160

continually immersed in verbal communities with conflicting implicit assumptions. The budding behavior analyst will be challenged to communicate effectively without drifting into a muddled understanding of behavioral principles. Thus, provision of a supportive verbal community after graduation becomes important; it can be achieved outside of one’s employment, by availability of an affiliated chapter of ABAI. Given the likelihood of employment being the greatest within the region of one’s graduate training, such a chapter in reasonably close proximity is a favorable incidental characteristic of a graduate program. The strategies I have described here, and the characteristics that they focus on, do not lend themselves to development of Ba universally accepted metric of training in behavior analysis^ (Dixon et al., p. 7) that could serve potential employers and employees by supplying a certificate or index of competence. At present, the BACB exam is the best we can offer to serve as such a credential for individuals. Besides being limited to verbal repertoires and multiple-choice questions as the method of assessment (which we know is problematic, given the risk of disparity between saying and doing), that exam is heavily biased toward the topics of autism and special education. It follows that the credential is of limited use for identifying people qualified to work in the wide variety of settings where behavioranalytic principles are applied—settings that range from the performance and safety of people in industrial settings to the wellbeing of animals in zoos. Regarding programs, accreditation by ABAI is a useful index, but it omits many mentorships that have worked well as Bapprenticeships^ within programs that are not primarily behavior analytic. In addition, my strategies may not seem likely ones for those who initially encounter behavior analysis outside of academia, perhaps merely seeking employment as Bbehavioral specialists^ rather than seeking an alternative world view. Furthermore, many are limited to the geographical regions where they currently live. In these cases, there is no substitute for seeking out people with relevant competence and experience—potential employers, people who have undertaken distance learning, people who hold the kind of position one aspires to obtain. For these, the identification of the field’s ten most published is not likely to be relevant. Author note Philip N. Hineline is currently Professor Emeritus at the Temple University, where, for more than four decades, he maintained an active research laboratory and routinely taught at both graduate and undergraduate levels. A past Editor of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and a past President of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, he has received several awards for outstanding research, teaching, and contributions to the field. He can be contacted at [email protected] and at 3020 Midvale Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19129.

An Alternative Strategy for Selecting a Graduate Program: Comments on Dixon et al. (2015).

While the rankings based upon frequencies of publication, supplied by Dixon et al. (2015), identify individuals and programs worthy of prospective stu...
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