Pyramidal Training for FCT: What This Study Means for Your Practice

Staffing constraints are a reality in most ABA settings. When you can’t personally train every team member, how do you maintain quality? This study examines whether a “train the trainer” approach can effectively spread a complex skill—Functional Communication Training—without sacrificing treatment integrity. The findings offer practical guidance for clinicians looking to scale training while keeping standards high.

What is the research question being asked and why does it matter?

This study tackled a common staffing problem: Can staff learn a complex ABA skill like Functional Communication Training when you don’t have enough expert time to train everyone?

Many agencies want to use Behavioral Skills Training because it works. But BST can be hard to schedule across many staff or multiple sites. Pyramidal training tries to solve this by having one trained staff person train the next, and so on. If it works, a BCBA or lead trainer could spend less time running every training themselves.

The study also asked a question that matters for real clinics: When staff become trainers, do they still follow the BST steps correctly? “Training drift” is common—later trainers often skip modeling, practice, or feedback. If drift happens, the plan may look good on paper but break down after a few rounds. For clinicians, this matters because poor staff training leads to low treatment integrity and worse client outcomes.

What did the researchers do to answer that question?

Eight support staff at a community support company learned a five-step FCT package for escape-maintained behavior. The FCT steps moved from teaching a complex request (“Can we have it my way?”) to tolerating “no” (“okay”), then to completing increasing amounts of a task. Training and testing happened in an office using role-play with a confederate “student,” not with real clients.

They used a four-tier “train the trainer” setup. An expert trainer taught Tier 1, Tier 1 trained Tier 2, Tier 2 trained Tier 3, and Tier 3 trained Tier 4. The method was BST: instructions, video modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. Staff practiced each FCT step until they hit 90% correct across three sessions.

They measured three things: whether staff could verbally explain what to do in a hypothetical FCT situation, whether staff could actually perform the FCT steps correctly with the confederate learner, and whether staff ran BST correctly when they became trainers. They also did follow-up checks and asked staff and the company owner how useful they found the training.

How you can use this in your day-to-day clinical practice

If you need to train many staff but can’t personally train all of them, this study supports pyramidal BST as a “good enough to try” staffing plan—with guardrails.

Every staff member reached mastery for the FCT steps in role-play, even after four tiers of staff-to-staff training. You can likely spread a hands-on protocol faster by training a small first group very well, then having them train peers. But don’t assume this will work the same for every setting, skill, or staff group. The study used a small sample and role-play, not real client sessions.

Plan pyramidal training around performance, not attendance. Trainees had to practice and get feedback until they met a mastery rule (90% across three tries). If you copy this model, keep the “practice until correct” part—that’s what makes BST different from just talking about a plan.

In daily work, this means scheduling short rehearsal blocks where staff run the exact steps. Score them with a checklist and give quick feedback right away. Expect the full training time to be about one to two hours per person, based on this study. But your time as the expert drops because you’re not the only trainer.

Use simple tools to keep later tiers from drifting. Trainer integrity dropped as training moved down the pyramid—perfect in Tier 1, then lower and more variable later. Even though trainees still performed well in role-play, drift is a risk in real practice where things are messier.

A practical step: give peer trainers a short BST “trainer checklist” and require them to self-check each training. Did they give instructions, model, rehearse, give feedback, and repeat practice if needed? You can also spot-check one training session per trainer, or ask for a short video of one rehearsal and feedback segment. This lets you correct drift early without taking over the whole system.

Don’t over-weight “can they explain it” as your main proof of readiness. Staff improved at describing FCT, but their verbal accuracy stayed far below mastery for many people and dipped at follow-up. Meanwhile, their actual performance in role-play hit mastery.

For your clinic: prioritize what staff do in session over how well they can lecture about it. You can still teach “talking through the plan,” but treat it as a separate skill that may need extra practice—teach-back, short quizzes, or having staff explain one step at a time while pointing to the checklist.

Be careful about generalizing these results to real client sessions. This study didn’t test whether staff could run FCT with actual clients who engage in challenging behavior, and it didn’t report client outcomes.

Role-play is a strong start, but real sessions include stress, emotion, safety concerns, and competing demands. If you adopt pyramidal BST, build in an “in the real setting” step after role-play mastery. For example, after a staff member meets mastery in rehearsal, do the first one to three real sessions with live coaching, then fade support as they stay accurate.

Protect learner dignity when teaching escape-related FCT. This package used demands (cleaning) and escape as the reinforcer, including what staff should do when challenging behavior occurs. In your practice, make sure staff also learn to notice signs of distress, offer choices when possible, and keep demands reasonable. FCT should increase communication and autonomy, not just push compliance.

Also ensure the plan is function-based and agreed on by the team. Pyramidal training spreads whatever you teach—including mistakes.

Finally, use pyramidal training when your organization can support it, not as “set and forget.” This study shows pyramidal BST can spread skills efficiently, but maintenance can drop and trainer fidelity can slide.

Treat pyramidal training as a system that needs light ongoing checks, booster practice, and quick refreshers—especially for peer trainers. Your clinical judgment should guide how much support is needed based on risk level, staff turnover, and procedure complexity.

Works Cited

Ólafsdóttir, A. B., Sveinbjörnsdóttir, B., & Gunnarsson, K. F. (2025). Expanding the pyramidal staff training approach. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2025.2499447