The Culturally Responsive Practitioner

Cultural responsiveness isn't just a checkbox for ethical compliance, it is the very foundation of effective, compassionate, and successful behavioural intervention.

Why?

Cultural responsiveness determines whether all stakeholders, parents, teachers, and the clients themselves, actually agree on the behaviour of concern.

If the practitioner and the family don’t see eye-to-eye on the goals or the procedures, the intervention is doomed to fail. True responsiveness ensures that our behavioural goals are socially valid and that our procedures are acceptable to the people who have to live with them every day.

How Does Culture Shape Behaviour?

Culture is the ultimate ‘environment’. It serves as a community-wide system of reinforcement and punishment. A community that shares similar demographic variables establishes which behaviours will be differentially reinforced and labelled as appropriate) and which will not.

This cultural ‘programming’ impacts almost every facet of a client's life:

• Communication: From the way we say hello to the distance we stand from one another.
• Daily routines & habits: What time we eat, how we dress, and how we organise our day.
• Parenting styles: What ‘discipline’ or ‘independence’ looks like varies wildly across the globe.
• Respondent behaviours: Even our physiological reactions to certain stimuli are shaped by our cultural history.

Three Steps to Becoming a Culturally Responsive Practitioner

1. Start with self-awareness

Before we can understand a client’s culture, we must understand our own. What behaviours of yours are reinforced by your culture? We must be aware of our own ‘blind spots’ — the things we assume are ‘normal’ may just because they are familiar to us.

2. Seek knowledge (without stereotyping)

We must actively gain knowledge about the cultural groups we serve. However, there is a fine line here: we must use this knowledge as a guide, not a pigeonhole.
Learn the variables that might differentiate your view from your client’s, but always leave room for the individual's unique expression of their culture.

3. Develop the skill dimension

• The ‘skills dimension’ is where the rubber meets the road. It refers to specific, observable actions, such as:
• Deliver culturally responsive interventions to clients as needed. For example, adapting data collection to fit a family's routine.
• Offer choices of treatment components. For example, modifying reinforcement systems to include culturally significant items or social interactions.

Respond effectively to feedback on mistakes one emits related to cultural differences. For example, “I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. I realise now that my goal didn't align with your family's communication style”.

Culturally responsive care isn't about knowing everything about every culture; it's about having the humility to listen and the skill to adapt. When we align our science with a family’s values, we don't just change behaviour, we empower the client’s own culture to become the sustainable engine for growth and long-term success.

Reference

• Beaulieu, L., & Jimenez‐Gomez, C. (2022). Cultural responsiveness in applied behavior analysis: Self‐assessment. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55(2), 337–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.907
• Jimenez‐Gomez, C., & Beaulieu, L. (2022). Cultural responsiveness in applied behavior analysis: Research and practice. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55(3), 650–673. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.920