“I thought I would be a teacher,” says Megan Breault ’13MS ’25PhD, who earned an undergraduate degree in sociology and elementary education. “During my undergraduate practicum [in a public school], I loved working with the students who had more challenges accessing the curriculum. The teacher pointed out that I seemed to like working with this population of students more than working with the whole group.”
Though she wanted to work with children, Breault didn’t know about the field of behavior analysis until her first job as a 1:1 ABA Behavior Technician, when she worked under a Board Certified Behavior Analyst® who had earned her degree from Simmons. “I saw how much progress students made using Applied Behavior Analysis and knew right away this was a field that I wanted to be a part of,” she says.
A Simmons ‘Double Shark’
Throughout her Master of Science in Behavior Analysis, Breault provided ABA services to students with developmental disabilities, which included establishing behavior protocols and training parents on protocol adherence, while also supporting students in achieving learning objectives.
After graduation, Breault became a Case Supervisor at a special education school, where she developed educational and behavioral programming and conducted functional behavior assessments and behavior intervention plans for students with developmental disabilities. Breault worked with educational administrators, behavior therapists, and special education teachers to ensure that student needs were met.
In 2015, Breault became a Clinical Director, where she supervised clinicians and maximized outcomes for clients. Adopting this role signified a shift in her career.
“I had the opportunity to do research in that new role, and was working under a Simmons PhD student at the time, who I really admired. I felt like I had so much more to learn as a researcher and leader, which was what first interested me in pursuing the PhD program at Simmons.”
“During my master’s program, I felt that Simmons held a high expectation of students, while the faculty were supportive in helping you meet the standards and goals. I wanted to continue learning in a program that had such a great reputation, especially being local in the Boston area,” she says.
During her doctoral studies, Breault also discovered her love of teaching in higher education. She continues to teach at Simmons while pursuing research opportunities and caring for her young children.
Parenthood has also had an impact on her work. In October 2025, Breault co-presented “How Becoming Parents Changed How We Work with Parents,” with fellow Simmons graduates and professors at the BABAT 2025 Annual Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts. The talk emphasized the role of empathy and compassion, and guidelines for assessing and responding to parental stress.
Research on Autism and Education
In January 2026, Breault presented her dissertation research at the Contemporary Developments in Behavior Analysis Virtual Conference, hosted by the Department of Behavior Analysis. Her research focuses on equivalence-based instruction: a way to set up teaching procedures so that concept formation can be demonstrated without direct teaching. For example, after learning that “cat” goes with a picture of a cat and that “cat” means “gato,” the learner would know “cat” and understand that all three — word, picture, and translation — represent the same thing.
Breault notes that individuals with autism often struggle to make these connections on their own; the goal of the approach is to achieve those new connections between concepts — also called "novel responding" — without having explicitly trained students in the connection itself.
“The research I presented looked at ways to make it easier for educators to implement these concepts in their classrooms,” says Breault.
“It’s an errorless teaching methodology that maximizes outcomes,” adds Breault, as making errors can be problematic for students with autism, hindering them from achieving their goals.
Understanding the Needs of Autistic People
As for the future study in support of people with autism, Breault hopes that people will rely on science for answers.
“Applied behavior analysis is an evidence-based method that leads to positive outcomes for people with autism,” she says. “We ought to let science be our guide when making decisions about how to support people with autism and their families.”