Applied Behavior Analysis in Special Education: Misconceptions and Guidelines for Use

This article highlights behavior analytic contributions to special education, clarifies misconceptions, and illustrates ways teachers can embed applied behavior analysis (ABA) into their teaching practices to teach academic, social, and other skills to a wide range of learners through student-centers intervention plans. Specifically, the authors describe reinforcement-based interventions, data collection methods and analysis, functional communication training, and additional teaching strategies derived from ABA.