Challenges and Considerations in Applying the Social Learning Theory Approach

Challenges include:

• Educators may resist changing their teaching style, particularly if they are more comfortable lecturing to youth.
  
  
• Training and maintaining skilled educators who:
  
  
  • believe in the efficacy of what they are teaching;
    
    
  • can model desired behaviors;
    
    
  • are skilled at leading role plays and other forms of behavioral practice;
    
    
  • can keep students on task and cover all required content in a session.
    
    
• The need, in some cases, to make environmental changes in the school, such as:
  
  
  • maintaining a low student to educator ratio to accommodate effective student skills practice and classroom management;
    
    
  • obtaining school and parental permission for potentially controversial skill-building sessions (e.g., condom practice) and community activities;
    
    
  • finding more classroom space to allow for student role play and participation in small group activities.

Other special considerations include the following:

• Scheduling is often a consideration for programs incorporating SLT. Educators may need to schedule multiple education sessions for SLT-based programs since learning and practicing new behavioral skills requires more time than less engaging, didactic approaches.

• Grant support for programs based on SLT may be easier to elicit from funding agencies. Funders prefer to support programs that are carefully crafted and grounded in well-researched learning theories, such as SLT.

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