Generalisation vs supporting learners in the natural environment
Wednesday 19th February 2025
Written by Veronica Dunning, UKBA (Cert.), BCBA, QBA, CEO & Clinical Director
From my experience as a parent and talking to other families, it’s important that ABA programmes support children and young people in learning skills that have an immediate effect in their daily life.
When talking to families and from past experience, we ‘parents’ struggle with being given the hardest part of teaching to do. For example, a young person learning to match cards at the table doesn’t automatically learn to tidy up around the house, or to find items in a supermarket with a visual shopping list. And to ask parents to generalise in that way is too hard for many families.
We plan generalisation in a way that makes it more realistic for our families to support maintaining skills. Social skills, leisure needs to be a focus too.
What they find hard on a daily basis with their families, in school is our focus as behaviour analysts here at Blossom ABA. It should be the young people we work with who give us their targets, based on what is functional and meaningful to them.
As behaviour analysts it helps to observe and provide initial assessments as a blank canvas, and although we use assessment tools, they are more of a guide to us as they can be efficient in plotting a learners profile although many assessments miss areas that are important to our learners. The BACB offers guidance on ABA programme components to ABA providers that are useful, but knowledge of a number of assessment tools and different language curricula helps us establish efficient goals too.
However, no one can fit in square boxes and we need to have the flexibility to think outside the box and consider our learners’ needs, readiness for learning, context and also level of happiness.
Teaching skills that are already embedded in the natural environment help families maintain rather than generalise which tends to be quite hard if a young person has a flash cards/table based programme. If we start in the place where skills are going to be needed, we start with function.
Table work is important and it has its place, but a number of our learners need to start in the natural environment and table work comes after they’re more ready for formal teaching. We never drop the teaching in ‘real life’ and ‘where it should happen in the first place’. We can’t afford to wait so long with our learners, they find it easier and families become more motivated to maintain skills. It’s easier when it can be naturally maintained after mastery.
For example, matching skills can be taught via tidying up around the house and identification and labelling of items can include the young people’s own items to start with.
If we need to run a very rigid maintenance schedule which means a learner will forget if we drop it for a a short time, we need to consider whether that skill needed to be taught in the first place and how meaningful it is for our learners. You always remember something that has meaning to you.
There’s nothing we like best than celebrating true and meaningful progress and to listen to our children and young people about what they consider important. Even if they can’t use their voices at times, they can communicate if we give them time and if we are constantly assessing their levels of happiness too.
We love working with our children, young people, families and schools and setting realistic goals that are meaningful to them.
