How to Use Whole Group Responding: Session 260 with Bill Heward

The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

Dr. Bill Heward was gracious enough to return to the podcast in Session 260. In this episode, we talked about a handful of different topics, including how to respond to criticisms of reinforcement practices, and the international dissemination of the excellent book, Let's Make a Contract, which he coauthored with Dr. Jill Dardig.

However, we spent the majority of the time discussing Bill's extensive knowledge of whole-group responding practices in classroom settings. Specifically, we talk about how he first learned about this practice, why he wanted to study it, how he and his colleagues carried out one of his better known studies on the topic (Lambert et al., 2006), and lots more.

Along the way, Bill offered lots of great advice for practitioners who are interested in trying out these low-tech/high-impact strategies. During the conversation, Bill mentioned a talk that I gave at the 2023 BABAT conference, and in the podcast I mentioned that my colleagues and I created an online course based on that presentation. At the time of the interview with Bill, the course was not yet available. However, I'm happy to report that it is out now.

The course is called, "When Not to FBA: Five Quick Strategies for Improving Behavior in the Classroom." So if you're working in school settings and you're supporting teachers in classrooms, please consider checking this out.

Back to the interview, one of the things that makes Bill such an awesome podcast guest is that he comes with lots of resources. In fact in this case, he sent me an Google Drive Folder chock full of articles, studies, and many other resources. So instead of listing each resource individually here in the shownotes, I'll go ahead and link the folder and cut out the middleman (click here to get access to it).

While we're on the topic of Bill's generosity, he wanted me to remind you that the website, contractingwithkids.com has several free downloadable contract templates. Click here to check them out.

This podcast is brought to you by:

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• The Behavioral Toolbox. thebehavioraltoolbox.com is a new education and training site that my colleagues Anika Costa and Dr. Paulie Gavoni and I have been working on for over two years. We have two courses available: our first course, Ready, Set, Consult! and our newly released course, When Not to FBA: 5 Quick Strategies for Improving Behavior in Classrooms.