A SURVEY ON THE CONDITIONS FOR THE TEACHING OF EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR IN UNDERGRADUATE PSYCHOLOGY COURSES

Abstract

The teaching of Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB) in the laboratory, existing since the creation of the first Psychology courses in Brazil, has been object of recent discussion due to the substitution of real laboratories (with rats) for virtual models. In addition, there are other aspects of the Experimental Psychology (EP) and Behavior Analysis (BA) teaching in undergraduate courses for which little or no data is available. The objective of this research was to investigate some characteristics of EP and EAB teaching in undergraduate Psychology courses of public and private higher education institutions in Brazil. The data was collected through an online survey from undergraduate courses. We obtained 249 responses, of which 160 were considered for analysis. It was verified that the distribution of the answers was equivalent to the distribution of the courses over the regions of the country. The results indicate that 20% of the courses do not have any laboratory (real or virtual) and 40.63% do not have a real laboratory. The northeast region has the highest percentage of courses without any laboratory and the region with the lowest percentage is the southeast. Regarding the training of EP and EAB teachers, it was found that 26.26% have training in areas other than those disciplines. It was also verified that among the courses that represented the sample 5% did not have any professor able to teach EP or EAB; 31.88% have one teacher; 33.75% have two teachers; 16.88% have three teachers; and 12.50% have four or more teachers. The implications of these results for the training and limitations of this study are discussed.