Using Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s Value-Creating Education to Cultivate Humanistic Behaviorists: A Case Study

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) has gained increasing attention in many countries across education, psychology, healthcare, organizational management, and social work. ABA is a research-based approach to help individuals develop socially significant behavior and improve their lives. Different countries have organizations to provide training and certification programs locally, nationally, and internationally such as the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI), the Asians and Pacific Islanders Association for Behavior Analysis (APIABA), and the Malaysia Association of Behaviour Analysis (MABA). For years, ABA has been focused on individual, egocentric, and self-oriented behavior. Because behavior changes cannot happen without one’s inner breakthroughs and resolutions to be the change, it is necessary to center ABA practice on humanistic, compassionate, and socially-oriented behavior to sustain human well-being and the development of society. In this article, we use the ABA programs in higher education accredited by ABAI as a case study to explore how the value-creating education framework developed by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi can cultivate humanistic behavior analysts. ABAI verifies university programs in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom to fulfill the Behavior Analyst Certified Board (BACB)’s coursework requirements. This case study, emphasizing humanity in behavioral analysis, can potentially maximize the practice of ABA globally.