Teacher-student relationships can influence the academic, social, and behavioral adjustment of children and youth. Students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) experience poor quality relationships with teachers. The current study explores the importance of working alliance (i.e., agreement on tasks and goals, bond) among teachers and their students. Seventy-six teacher-student dyads completed measures of classroom working alliance, perceptions of the student-teacher relationship, student engagement, and student behavior (i.e., externalizing and internalizing behavior). Findings indicated that (a) students and teachers have weak agreement about the quality of their alliance, (b) working alliance was associated with student engagement, and (c) students’ externalizing symptomology predicted teacher ratings of alliance. Interpretation of these findings, study limitations, and suggestions for future research and practice are discussed.

The current study examined the most common reason for behavioral referrals and the effects of student gender, teacher age, teacher experience, and school setting on reasons for behavioral referrals to the schools intervention team or the Individual Education Plan (IEP) team. Additionally, it examined the self-efficacy of teachers and compared the self-perceptions of teaching general education students with behavior problems with perceptions of teaching students identified as having an Emotional Disturbance (ED). Participants included 179 general education teachers, grades K-12, from the state of Kentucky and additional teachers recruited from Facebook from across the U.S. Participants completed a survey about their self-efficacy in working with general education students and students with ED and their most recent male and female behavioral referral, either to an intervention team or to the IEP team. The most common reported reason for referral was defiance. This was true for both male and female students. Teachers reported referring more male than female students. Additionally, teachers reported significantly higher self-efficacy when working with general education students compared to students with ED. The relevance of findings to current research, the implications for school districts, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Students identified as “emotionally disturbed” face resistance to inclusion in classrooms with typically-developing peers on the part of the general education teachers. This study aims to address whether the classroom label of “emotionally disturbed” affects teacher efficacy and whether this relationship is moderated by the amount of applied inclusion training a teacher has received. General education teachers will read identical case studies of a student who either spends some of his school day in an “Emotionally Disturbed Class” or a “Self-Regulation Skills Class.” They will complete a measure of student-specific teacher efficacy and then report how many hours of inclusion training that involved direct interaction with students with emotional and behavioral difficulties they have had. An analysis of covariance is predicted to show higher reports of teacher efficacy in the “Self-Regulation Skills Class” condition than in the “Emotionally Disturbed Class” condition, and this relationship is expected to be even stronger as the amount of applied inclusion training increases.

Students with ED often exhibit disruptive behavior in the classroom that adversely affects the learning environment (Cook, Gresham, Kern, Barreras, Thornton, & Crews, 2008). Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students tend to be over-represented in this category of disability. Despite the fact that the majority of students identified with ED are male, females do represent 23.6% of this population (U.S. Department of Education, 1998; Yell, Meadows, Drasgow, & Shriner, 2009). Additionally, a large number of individuals with ED are high school age (Wagner, Friend, Bursuck, Kutash, Duchnowski, Sumi, & Epstein, 2006). Interventions used with this population have often been punitive in nature, designed to control behavior rather than to help an individual improve (Newcomer, 2003). Efforts of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 and the Individual with Disabilities Act (IDEA) require the use of scientifically-based practices when addressing academic and behavioral goals. A variety of interventions for students with ED have been investigated. While many of these interventions produce degrees of positive change, they often demand a great deal of time and effort from the teacher (Wagner et al., 2006). Video self-modeling (VSM) is an intervention involving an individual watching him/herself on video demonstrating desired and appropriate behavior. It has been proven successful with other challenging populations (e.g., individuals with autism) (Buggey, 2005). Few studies of VSM have been conducted with secondary students with ED. The present study was designed to analyze the effects that VSM had on four secondary CLD students with ED across a variety of behaviors, including laughing obnoxiously out loud, using profanity, and requesting help. Multiple baseline designs across students were used to evaluate performance. The results indicated all four participants exhibited immediate and significant gains upon implementation of the VSM intervention, and that those gains were maintained after cessation of intervention. The findings suggest that VSM may represent a positive behavior change intervention worthy of consideration for CLD secondary students with ED. / text

The Allegheny County Department of Human Services implemented the Partnership for Youth Transition Program (PYT) to provide services for transition aged youth in Allegheny County who suffer from Severe Emotional Disturbance. One of the goals of this program was to enhance the perceptions of opportunity of goal attainment held by this population. This research is a program evaluation of the PYT program to find out if the PYT program was successful in enhancing these perceptions. This study uses a Paired-Samples T-Test, a Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient and an Analysis of Variance to see if the perceptions of opportunity changed during PYT program involvement, and to analyze if other variables (risk, service involvement and demographic characteristics) had any influence on these perceptions. The evaluation found that the perceptions of opportunity did improve and that there was a relationship between the factors of risk and service involvement and the perceptions of opportunity of PYT program participants. After discussing the findings of these results, policy recommendations are proposed. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts / Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy / MA / Thesis

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of an interdependent group contingency commonly referred to as the “good behavior game” (GBG) on reducing disruptive behaviors in a dedicated classroom for students with emotional behavioral disorder (EBD). The participants were four eighth-grade middle school students, with a primary diagnosis of EBD. The intervention targeted inappropriate and disruptive behaviors during two class periods (math and science), as well appropriate alternative behaviors. The class was divided into two teams, with the four participants divided evenly amongst both teams. If a team met the criterion for both inappropriate and appropriate behavior during experimental sessions, each team member received an edible reinforcer (candy). In addition, teams that met the weekly goal of winning the most games earned a trip to a classroom with younger peers to participate in a social activity (pizza party, movie and popcorn, etc.). The results indicated a decrease in inappropriate behaviors, as well as an increase in appropriate behaviors. The results suggested that the GBG is a beneficial group interdependent contingency that can be implemented in many classroom settings, including an alternative EBD middle school classroom. .

The purpose of this study was to examine the complete number of failures for the school year, 1948-1949, in the elementary school of a small Texas town in an effort to determine the relative weight of emotional maladjustment and other factors as causes of such failures; and, if possible, to advance suggested remedies for such failures.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This interpretive study makes explicit the cultural cognitive structures on which education professionals rely as they determine an elementary-aged child as having an emotional and behavioral disorder through a critical discourse analysis of teacher talk and participant structure analyses.

No description available.

Women in general have been historically overlooked in society and, more recently, in research females with emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD) have been unnoticed (Rice, Merves, & Srsic, 2008). The purpose of the current study is to build a foundation of knowledge and practices for educators and researchers to better support and education this unique population of females. To better understand females with EBD, the researcher imposed a three-phase study, situated in two frameworks-the Culturally Responsive Theory Framework (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 1995) and the Participation-Identification Model (Finn, 1989), to look into the predictors of school engagement for females with EBD. In the first phase the researcher utilized quantitative data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2 to build three structural equation models (SEM) on the predictors of school engagement for students with EBD. Results and procedures are discussed for each SEM created. During phase two the researcher shifted the focus to females with EBD and interviewed six current females with EBD, ages 14-17. The participants were engaged in separate interviews that allowed the researcher to uncover additional variables necessary for females with EBD to engage in the school setting. The third phase consisted of an intersection of phases one and two to create a newly developed SEM model for females with EBD merging the interviews and the SEM built in phase one. The newly developed SEM is provided for future research, as well as are the provision of recommendations and implications of the results from the study.