“I am taking a class at school where I am learning about these single-system designs, but when I go to mypracticum, my field instructor doesn’t believe in evaluation and won’t support me in this. I am...

“I am taking a class at school where I am learning about these single-system designs, but when I go to mypracticum, my field instructor doesn’t believe in evaluation and won’t support me in this. I am caught between a rock and a hard place. What am I supposed to do?” Response to Case 8 Sadly, there are still some good practitioners out in the field who are not convinced that evaluation is a vital and necessary part of good practice. While we personally hope that these people see the light—or at least bow to the collective wisdom of accrediting bodies that mandate that students know how to evaluate their own practice in field settings—we appreciate your situation. There are several things you might do. First, inform your advisor about these limitations on your education, and perhaps your school can apply some needed pressure. Second, failing this, try to link up with some colleagues whose agencies do permit them to evaluate their practice. You could share a case, or even better, consider attempting to be a teacher yourself to convey these skills to a cooperative practitioner at that other agency who might be willing to evaluate his or her own case. Both methods will give you the hands-on experience you need. A third method is to conduct a single-system evaluation on yourself—identify something you would like to do more or less of, read the literature on how to do this while you are keeping a baseline, then intervene and maintain the measurement of the targeted behavior and analyze the results. This way, you get to be both client and practitioner, and you might gain a useful perspective on evaluation that you might not see in any other way.