My name is Joslynn Bigelow and I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) in the state of Oregon. Having grown-up in the Portland Metro area and with a particular love for the Pacific Northwest, I completed my schooling in Oregon, earning a Bachelor’s in Secondary Education with an Endorsement in Language Arts at Concordia University, Portland. I am a licensed secondary education teacher as a result. I followed this with a Master’s in Special Education with certificates in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at Portland State University. While my education pertains primarily to interventions in classrooms and clinics, I have a particular passion for serving persons with disabilities in sports. I’m driven to pursue pathways that allow for me to affect change for this population at the greatest levels possible.
My true interest lies in sport, specifically soccer. I believe that sports are an amazing platform for mentorship, behavior supports, learning, and more. The benefits to the individual in sport are incomparable to the classroom or clinic setting. Movement leads to healthy bodies and minds, and the dynamic nature of a sports setting contributes to developmental opportunities relating to communication, motor skills, behavior management, and more. While there is a large amount of literature that suggest ABA to be an effective therapeutic practice, there is minimal research on the effects of ABA, specifically in sports psychology (Martin, et al. 2004).
Other theories and practices for developing sport through behavior intervention have proven effective. However, the limited journals discussing the impact and ease of use when implementing ABA in sport is cause for further investigation. Single-case subject design is commonly used to measure efficacy amongst sport psychologists and other related professionals, leading to growth of ABA in sports in recent years. Guidelines for effective use suggest that athletic performance and other life skills can be influenced by ABA interventions in sports settings (Virués-Ortega & Martin, 2010). Throughout my life, I have seen first hand how adaptive sports can be a helpful tool for service delivery and behavior intervention.
If you take anything away from this post, it is this: soccer makes for a superb learning environment. As many professionals in the ABA field know, generalization and maintenance of skills are integral to the growth they want to see in their clients accessing behavior support services. On the field, players (verbiage replacing clients for the remainder of this post) benefit from the individual development of being a sport-specific athlete- self-management, development of technical skills involving their bodies, decision-making, self-advocacy, and more. The team environment allows for interpersonal communication, modeling, collaboration, and more. Not to mention, the coaches and staff are fine-tuning their leadership and education abilities (especially if they happen to work in the behavior field) establishing instructional control, promoting independence, prompt-fading, shaping the behaviors and skills they want to see, etc. There is so much more to this sporting environment that makes for the aforementioned “superb learning environment,” and I speak from experience.
In Oregon and nationwide, I am constantly looking for ways to qualitatively develop and improve education and sporting settings for persons with disabilities. Most recently, I was the Director of Unified Champion Schools (UCS) with Special Olympics Oregon (SOOR), and I now serve SOOR as a contractor. Other previous experience includes: behavior specialist, teacher on special assignment, and transition/post-secondary special education teacher for an education service district (ESD). My school background made serving UCS a cinch understanding the landscape for education in Oregon and already having my finger on the pulse of adaptive sport here as well. In addition to the initiatives above, I facilitate TOPSoccer- an adaptive soccer nonprofit serving players with disabilities called. In addition, I am the state chair for TOPS, overseeing programs statewide. I collaborate with other organizations including Down Syndrome Sports of America, CP Soccer, Power Soccer, and more to offer increasingly excellent soccer opportunities to players of all abilities. I implement many ABA-type skills in my coaching and more so in my coach/leader education. Giving individuals who work with players the language and evidence-based backing for concepts that will enhance their mentorship of players is what I’d call a “no brainer” in combining ABA with sport. It was this conflation of worlds that led me to Angie Pickering, BCBA and CEO of Tracker!-D.
Interest in the combination of soccer and ABA sparked my search for “great minds” here in Oregon. Simply put, ABA in sports follows similar protocol as any other context: identify the behaviors for target in coaches, athletes, etc. and develop protocol to influence behavioral performance accordingly (Roane, Ringdahl, & Falcomata, 2015). While arguably simple, it takes experts at their craft to appropriately implement ABA in lesser developed areas. Angie is known in local circles as an “expert BCBA” and when I approached a colleague at Portland State University to refer me to individuals who think outside of the box and aspire to create improved opportunities for persons with disabilities, Angie was an easy and quick referral. After one conversation, we found ourselves on similar paths to affect change for our clientele. I have been removed from the formal ABA space for some time and sought Angie’s input and support to get reacquainted and stay connected with the field. Thus, a supervisory-type relationship has formed and prompted me to reflect on previous supervision experiences and my own guidelines of practice as I enter into supervision roles myself.
My relationship with Angie is one of many that led me to create my own business- Say How Consulting LLC. Her expertise and lived experience supplied me with guidance and knowledge I could not have otherwise sourced in a timely manner. I am grateful to my friend, mentor and colleague and encourage you to explore the world of AKP Consulting!
References
Martin, G. L., Thompson, K., & Regehr, K. (2004a). Studies using single-subject designs in sport psychology: 30 Years of research. The Behavior Analyst, 27(2), 263–280. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03393185
Roane, H. S., Ringdahl, J. L., & Falcomata, T. S. (2015). Clinical and organizational applications of Applied Behavior Analysis. Elsevier/AP, Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier.
Virués-Ortega, J., & Martin, G. L. (2010). Guidelines for sport psychologists to evaluate their interventions in clinical cases using single-subject designs. Journal of Behavioral Health and Medicine, 1(3), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0100549
