With limited opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction and formal training outside of conferences or fee-for-service workshops, some behaviour analysts may find it challenging to acquire and maintain important clinical and professional competencies. Time constraints, heavy caseloads, deficient professional networks, and limited organizational resources may lead some clinicians to conduct outdated, unsupported, or contextually inappropriate assessment and treatment procedures. Although the effectiveness of behavioural skills training for teaching specific skills to behaviour analysts is well established in the literature, it can be time consuming and may not be feasible to develop every skill that practitioners need to stay competent in their areas of practice. In contrast, communities of practice are flexible peer-based groups that facilitate learning through repeated engagement in joint activities. We first evaluated self-reports of participant satisfaction and then evaluated pre-and posttest scores on 3 practice topics to determine the utility of the community of practice meetings. Results showed that behaviour analysts responded favorably to membership and that participation in the sampled community of practice meetings led to improvements in all targeted skills. This article explores the concept of community of practice and its potential utility for behaviour analysts. Public Significance StatementIt has been suggested that practicing behaviour analysts may find it difficult to set aside time from their busy schedules to learn and/or maintain important professional skills. In this study, we found that a community of practice meeting (i.e., a peer-based group that facilitates learning on practicebased topics) produced an increase in three important skills for practicing behaviour analysts.
Physical activity is defined as any body movement that requires energy expenditure. It has important physiological, mental health, academic, and cognitive benefits for children and youth.Despite these advantages, a large proportion of this population does not meet the minimum recommended amount of physical activity. Recent studies have shown that the interdependent group contingency (IGC) and dependent group contingency (DGC) improve physical activity; however, no comparison of the effects of these group contingencies on physical activity has been conducted. We used a multielement within a concurrent multiple baseline across classes design to compare the effectiveness of these group contingencies to increase physical activity in two classes of grade 5 students. Both group contingencies increased physical activity in both classes, with the IGC producing slightly higher levels of physical activity than the DGC at the class-wide and individual levels of analyses. Conversely, side effect data suggest that participants in both classes preferred the DGC. Results are discussed within the context of treatment decisions and suggestions for future research.
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