Program Description
The BCBA respecialization certification program is geared toward behavior analysts and those working in related disciplines to update their licensure and/or develop mastery of behavior analytic theories and procedures. The program prepares students to sit for the examination to become a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and can be completed in under a year, depending on field supervision availability.
The Chicago School's board certified behavior analyst courses, as well as our EPE (Executive and Professional Education) programs, are built on a foundation of practical applied psychology.
Distinguishing characteristics of the BCBA certification program include:
- Relevant Classroom Experience—To ensure that your professional education experience is relevant for you, most of our professors ask students to bring their actual workplace challenges to class as examples and to help develop real strategies for solving them.
- Distinguished Faculty—The practitioners and scholars that make up our faculty understand the latest research and how to translate that research into practical applications for today's work environments.
- Designed for Working Professionals—Our board certified behavior analyst courses go beyond simple classroom lectures; they're more like interactive workshops that go out of their way to draw your professional experience into the learning process.
- Workplace Diversity Expertise—Multicultural awareness and a sensitivity to diversity issues are increasingly important to working professionals in today's global workplace. As such, workplace diversity expertise is a fundamental component of our BCBA certification courses as well as all of our executive education programs.
Department
Concentrations
Licensure
Prepares students to sit for examination to become a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)
Total Credits
18
Fieldwork Requirements
Students wishing to complete supervised fieldwork (practicum) at an approved site will take either five (group supervision only) or 10 (group and individual supervision) additional credits of online coursework. Students are not required to complete supervised fieldwork with The Chicago School.
Sample Courses
Behavior Analytic Theory
Participants will learn to analyze human performance problems and to identify their causes by applying behavior analytic theory. Successful participants will demonstrate mastery to: (1) Explain the effects of environmental and genetic influences on human behavior according to the principles and processes of operant and respondent learning and the ABC model to behavior (2) Discriminate between the philosophical truth criteria used by behavior analysts to evaluate changes in human behavior and truth criteria used in other theoretical frameworks (3) Identify environmental variables that may influence a specified behavior (4) Perform a functional analysis of a specified problem behavior.
Intervention Design
Participants will learn to develop and design interventions that best address the client's performance problems in a systemic way including training, management, and resource solutions. Successful participants will demonstrate mastery to: (1) Recommend the best behavior analytic solution to a client's performance problem based on appropriately collected and analyzed data, the best interests of the client and other stakeholders, and BACB guidelines for best practice (2) Distinguish between correct and incorrect implementation of teaching and management procedures with regard to appropriate teaching of prompting and fading, discriminations and generalizations, shaping, chaining, fluency, reinforcement and reinforcement schedules, extinction, and punishment (3) Design and implement each procedure correctly.
Intervention Evaluation
Participants will learn to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of behavior analytic interventions. Successful participants will demonstrate mastery to: (1) Evaluate research on procedures for solving human performance problems on the effectiveness and efficiency of the procedures studied using behavior analytic truth criteria as a guideline (2) Evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and return on investment (ROI) of solutions to human performance problems to determine whether the problem has been solved.
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