The Working group for the Competency and Dissemination Strategic PIllar has been actively working to achieve the strategic goals established by the ACBS Board. This website is an ongoing effort to organize information relevant to issues of competency and dissemination of practices that fall under the umbrella of Contextual Behavioral Science.
Most recently this includes contributing to the International Standards of Training and Supervision in Psychological Therapies Based on Contextual Behavioral Science.
The Pillar has dedicated time to reviewing and summarizing existing measures of competency in CBS approaches.
Competency measures for specific CBS-informed approaches
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT)
Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP)
Internet-based interventions
Mindfulness-based approaches
Process-Based Therapy (PBT)
Supervision
What has the working group been doing?
Guided by the ACBS Board's call to action: “We envision a scientific community in which members of ACBS could find evidence informed guidelines on how to learn, how to apply, and how to measure their skill development over time,” the working group has
● Held bi-weekly and/or monthly meetings to determine the process and content of the information needed to create a thorough report for the ACBS Board.
● Reviewed definitions of competency and explored how to write about competency in ways that are consistent with the principles of CBS.
● Conducted an extensive literature review to assess the current published status of competency training in CBS approaches. This led to the development of the webpages describing specific CBS-informed approaches.
● Hosted multiple panels at ACBS World Conferences to continue dialogue about issues relating to competency with the ACBS community.
Competency and Dissemination panels from ACBS World Conferences
- International perspectives on CBS competency and dissemination - Panel presented by Sean Wright, Carmen Luciano, Zhuohong Zhu, Amanda Muñoz-Martinez, Steven Hayes, Hannah Bockarie (June 2022)
- Putting the task force report into action - Panel presented by Maria Karekla, Rhonda Merwin, Steven Hayes, Louise McHugh, Kenneth Fung (June 2022). This was a separate panel on putting the task force report on scientific strategies for CBS into action. It is directly relevant to the topics of competency and dissemination.
- Report from the ACBS Strategic Pillar for Competency and Dissemination - Panel presented by Raul Manzione, Alycia Zink, Sean Wright, Giovambattista Presti, Robyn Walser (June 2022)
(shared the results of the competency literature review)
- CBS competencies: The good, the bad, and the need - Panel presented by Steve Hayes, Russell Kolts, Raul Manzione, Robyn Walser, and Sean Wright (July 2023)
(discussing the strengths, challenges, and future directions of competency assessment in contextual behavioral science approaches).
- Implementing CBS training standards worldwide - Panel presented by Jim Lucas, Sarah Pegrum, Sean Wright, and Sarah Cassidy (July 2025)
(an interactive discussion with the audience about the need for and the challenges with international training standards).
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