If you want to learn about some of the reasons BST is amazing, then keep reading. I absolutely love BST. It’s one of my favourite and most used tools.

Behavioural Skills Training (BST) provides an evidence based framework to teach an abundance of skills ranging from…

• Social Skills – Teaching turn-taking, conversation skills, and personal space.
• Daily Living Skills – Practising personal hygiene routines, dressing, and organising school materials.
• Safety Skills – Teaching road safety, stranger awareness, and online safety.
• Class Skills – Raising your hand in class, giving work in, and tidying up.
• Emotional Regulation – how to self manage their emotions in tricky situations

Why is BST Effective? Well, to name a few…

• It breaks learning into manageable steps, making it accessible to different learners (we love this in ABA)
• The combination of instructions, modelling, practice (role play), feedback, and follow-up ensures skill mastery.
• It promotes active learning, which enhances retention and generalisation – we learn by doing.
• BST can be applied across various people and settings, including the learners we work with, staff training, and parent training, in homes, schools, and the community.

So What Are The Steps To This Wonderful Tool???

1. Instructions
   • Explain the skill in a clear, developmentally appropriate way.
   • Use visuals, social stories, videos or comic strips etc to bring it to life (I love a PowerPoint for this).
   • Example: Teaching a child about giving personal space.
2. Modelling
   • Demonstrate the behaviour we want the learners to engage in (in an engaging and relevant way).
   • Use role-playing, peer models, or video modelling (I like to utilise my GCSE in drama and act it out).
   • Example: The adult acts out giving personal space to someone else or the learner (think arms distance).
3. Role Play
   • Get the learner to practise the skill. They need to role play the behaviour you just modelled. Practice makes perfect!
   • Practice in different settings for generalisation.
   • Example: The child practises giving personal space at home, in school, in the community, to a variety of people.
4. Feedback
   • Give immediate, specific praise and constructive feedback (e.g. this was excellent/next time try to remember this).
   • Use differential reinforcement to shape the behaviour.
   • Example: “Well done for keeping an arms length away! Next time, try to not put your arm up.”
5. Follow-Up
   • Catch the learners doing what we want them to do more of and reinforce!
   • Example: If you see the learner giving personal space to a new person they are introducing themself to, tell them afterwards how great it was that they gave personal space!

I’m aware that there are usually 4 steps to BST, but I chucked in a cheeky fifth step because it’s super important to be on the lookout for the skill.

So there you have it, an intro level summary of one my fav things in ABA. I’ll likely post again about this soon, maybe with more of a focus on it’s application for staff training.

I’d love to hear some of your stories about BST and what it’s helped your children/children you’ve worked with achieve – leave a comment below 👇

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Have a question about ABA? Feel free to contact me through my blog or email me at james@abaconnect.co.uk

Thanks for reading!

James