Teaching Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Self-Reported Practices: What Is Working and What Are the Needs?

Abstract

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) exhibit a wide variety of difficult behavior, and the responsibility of educating them is equally difficult. Students with EBD face historically bleak outcomes. Additionally, EBD teachers have had a continual nationwide shortage. They have the highest turnover rate and have more teachers on emergency certification than any other teaching group. Multiple literature analyses have concluded that evidence-based practices are widely absent in EBD classrooms, and student outcomes have had dismal improvements (Bradley et al., 2008; Gage et al., 2010; Harrison et al., 2019; Simpson et al., 2011). However, most of this research has focused on either specific intervention strategies or meta-analysis of previous literature (Bradley et al., 2008; Conroy, 2016; Conroy et al., 2008; Freeman et al., 2019; Lewis et al., 2019; Lloyd et al., 2019; Wagner et al., 2006) and have not focused on what teachers report happening in EBD classrooms. This mixed-method exploratory study examined the resources teachers reported using to support their students, the prevalence of evidence-based practices, and whether there is a correlation between access to evidence-based resources and teachers’ intent to continue teaching and confidence in their ability. This study explores some of the current instructional practices, barriers, and needs occurring in classrooms supporting EBD students in Arizona. Implications and recommendations for future research are included.