Dear APBS Community,
I am excited about what we have to offer at this year’s conference. We have taken the opportunity to reimagine the conference, leveraging past attendees’ input to include more networking opportunities, collaboration, and new opportunities to celebrate you and your daily work. I hope you will consider joining us in St. Louis, Missouri, March 12-15, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch. This week, the call for proposal will open. We appreciate your patience while our new Executive Director, the Board of Directors, and the Annual Conference Planning Workgroup have been diligently working to ensure a dynamic conference experience for each of you.
The theme for the 2025 APBS conference is “Together Towards Tomorrow: Uniting PBS across the Lifespan.” By choosing this topic, I hope that we can take stock of the contributions of self-advocates, practitioners, and researchers alike to deepen our understanding of positive behavior support and its impact on our lives. I hope to highlight links between current research and practice to celebrate our strengths and identify new areas for exploration. And, I hope to outline directions towards a future where we are united in our shared goal of advocating for the use of positive behavior support across tiers, in many types of settings, and at all life stages.
A focus on systems, practices, data, outcomes, and equity is central to the success of PBS no matter where we work and with whom. Uniting PBS across the lifespan brings together our members’ varied experiences and areas of expertise for a common purpose. This vision ensures our organization’s continued dedication to implementing PBS in a range of school, home, community, and facility settings. It is woven into fundamental questions we all strive to answer in our work, including how we can best set folks up for success to meet behavioral expectations, how we can ensure the practices we implement are culturally and contextually relevant, and how we can effectively use data to engage in a cycle of continuous improvement.
We welcome submissions for papers and panel proposals. Here is an illustrative sample of topics:
- Supporting Child Development Through the Use of PBS in Early Childhood Settings
- Integrating PBS, Academics, and Mental Health Within a Multi-Tiered System of Support
- Using PBS to Teach Functional Skills to Individuals with Significant Disabilities
- Ensuring Equitable Access to Educational Supports Through PBS
- Increasing the Use of PBS Practices in Classroom Settings
- Supporting Parents by Advocating for PBS at Home
- Enhancing PBS Supports for Adults Living in Residential Facilities
- Alignment of Systems, Data, Practices, and Outcomes Across all Three Tiers of the PBS Framework
We hope you will consider joining us in St. Louis, Missouri, March 12-15, 2025. There are so many new and exciting opportunities for you to learn, connect, and engage with colleagues all over the world! Keep an eye on your inbox and on apbs.org as more information is coming this week!
Sincerely,
Sarah Wilkinson
President, Board of Directors
The Association for Positive Behavior Support