Within an experimental vignette design, 224 certified teachers participated in this online study by completing a researcher created rating scale that assessed expectations for a child described in a randomly assigned vignette; a child without mental illness, a child identified with an emotional behavioral disorder, and a child identified as returning from acute psychiatric care. Results from the current study revealed reliable scales; learning, cooperation, self-control, and teacher self-efficacy. Findings indicated teachers reported significantly different expectations for children identified with mental illness in comparison to typical children in the areas of self-control and cooperation; specifically, teachers reported lower expectations for students to use self-control and cooperate if they have a history of the label Emotional Behavioral Disability (EBD). Further, teacher certification in the area of special education was a predictor for ratings of teacher self-efficacy to work with children labeled with EBD or a psychiatric hospitalization. In the whole sample, special education certification was a predictor variable for ratings of expectations for teacher self-efficacy. Years experience also predicted teacher self-efficacy. The results of the current study help support the argument for teachers to receive more training to assist children with mental illness and psychological problems, as participant responses clearly indicated a need for additional training and assistance when presented with challenging cases in the real world.

<p>Student behavior, such as in students with EBD (Emotional and Behavioral Disability), can cause disruptions and be difficult to direct in a positive manner (Stoutjesdijk, Scholte, & Swaab, 2012). Perceptions of these students happen before the student ever enters the classroom. Many general education teachers develop a negative perception of any student labeled EBD and that perception impacts the way the teacher interacts and perceives the actions of the student with EBD. It was found that teachers were over 80% more likely to give negative responses to the students with emotional and behavioral disability than to general education students (Sazak-Pinar, Elif & Güner-Yildiz, 2013). Often when teachers perceive students with EBD in this fashion, the student begins to develop a view of negative self-worth and begin to question if they have any value (Gallagher, 1997).</p> <p>This study was done to gather information and build a pathway to develop a training handbook that can be a resource for existing and future teachers. This training handbook focuses on techniques, but not simply the techniques by themselves. These techniques stress the needs to work with other skills. No technique works all alone nor for every student. Flexibility is paramount and this handbook will assist the reader in understanding how to incorporate techniques to best assist students with EBD.</p>

The academic underachievement of children and adolescents diagnosed with conduct disorder is well established in the literature. However, no study to date has explored the contributions of personal and contextual variables to specific areas of academic functioning in this population. In this study measures of basic reading, reading comprehension, mathematics reasoning, and numerical operations were assessed using the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT) in 63 participants with childhood onset (CO) conduct disorder and 27 participants with adolescent onset (AO) conduct disorder. Participants were enrolled in a residential treatment facility between 1998 and 2002 at the time of evaluation. A series of ANCOVAs were conducted to evaluate how verbal IQ, onset subtype, comorbid ADHD, and residence location (urban versus nonurban) influenced each academic area. Only verbal IQ was significantly related to all academic areas. After adjusting for the variance explained by verbal IQ, comorbid ADHD did not significantly influence academic scores. After controlling for verbal IQ, participants with either CO or an urban residence were found to have significantly weaker scores in basic reading. Urban residents with CO had significantly weaker performance in mathematical reasoning. Numerical operations scores were the weakest among the four academic areas for both onset groups, and verbal IQ explained a relatively small portion of the variance. Overall, a larger portion of the variance in academic scores was explained among the AO group than the CO group, suggesting subtler complexities among the CO population that are yet unknown. This study highlights the heterogeneity among the conduct disorder population and variation in academic risk by demographic markers. If these results replicate across studies, they may represent a more parsimonious organization of patterns of characteristics that will provide treatment utility for clinical work and educational intervention beyond what is currently used.