Emotional Behavior Disorders

When working with children that are classified as having special needs in an educational setting, the team approach whether it’s a classroom team of teachers and their support staff or the teacher working in conjunction with external team members such as administrators, specialists and family members has always been a vital component for success.

This especially holds true when working with students who have been classified with emotional and/or behavior disorders (EBD). This paper will examine a group of educational team members for a student with EBD and the challenges they face in regards to diagnostic concerns in conjunction with the way EBD is defined, and their ability to provide appropriate instruction and services for the EBD student.When working with children that are classified as having special needs in an educational setting, the team approach whether it’s a classroom team of teachers and their support staff or the teacher working in conjunction with external team members such as administrators, specialists and family members has always been a vital component for success. This especially holds true when working with students who have been classified with emotional and/or behavior disorders (EBD). This paper will examine a group of educational team members for a student with EBD and the challenges they face in regards to diagnostic concerns in conjunction with the way EBD is defined, and their ability to provide appropriate instruction and services for the EBD student.The student our team is working with attends classes that are classified as “full inclusion,” which places a special education teacher as a partner with a general education teacher in a classroom setting.

Therefore, two members of our team are the general education teacher and the special educationteacher. The general education teacher’s role of expertise is to provide structure in the classroom, teach subject specific curriculum, administer assessments, and promote student development. The special education teacher’s role is to coordinate the support for a student with disabilities who is included in general education classrooms. Their area of expertise includes individualizing instruction, implementing modifications that tailor general education activities, and creating life-skills curriculum.There are two more members of the team that need to be introduced. First is the school counselor.

Their area of expertise that they lend to the team is in conducting assessments, providing support for the student and the team, serving as a resource for the student’s behavior or mental health, and counseling the student. They may also call on the school psychologist for support in administering and interpreting standardized tests to determine eligibility for further special education services. The school psychologist can also assist school personnel in assessing the student’s classroom performance, which can include conducting behavioral assessments. The last member of the team is the student’s parents or guardians. In most instances they have the closest relationship with the student and will have the longest tenure in regards to understanding the student’s educational history. They can also share insight about the student’s educational and personal goals.

Their area of expertise comes in being able to provide the most accurate and complete information about the student.When a child has been evaluated, diagnosed and designated as a student with EBD, certain criteria as defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) must be met. The student’s educational performance must be adversely affected over an extended period of time by the following behavioral characteristics.  An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors. An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.  Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.

 A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression. A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems. Although our student was recently diagnosed as EBD, this is never a simple diagnosis to formulate. This is due to the vagueness and subjectivity of the definition EBD stated in the Federal guidelines of IDEA, as well as the co-occurrence of other underlying issues and disabilities that are often prevalent in individuals with behavior problems. A good example of this complexity is seen in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which contains eighteen major classification areas, which are then grouped into more than two hundred specific disorders. What makes this even more difficult from an educational perspective is that the psychiatric categories don’t necessarily align with the criteria mandated in IDEA, so a student with an emotional or behavioral psychiatric diagnosis still may not qualify for special education services.

When examining the definition of EBD in IDEA for diagnostic purposes, there have been concerns and criticism. The overall issues with the definition come in that they are vague and subjective when it comes to the decision making process in categorizing a student. For example, the term inability to learn is very open ended and is not clear in whether it means solely from an academic perspective or can a deficiency in social learning and social skills be included as well?The statement regarding building and maintaining interpersonal relationships in itself is not clearly defined and the definition regarding behavior and feelings under normal circumstances is very open to interpretation when the word normal is used. Also the terms over a long period of time and measuring by a marked degree in the definition are unclear and open to interpretation as well. The definitions and guidelines of EBD, along with many other of the mandates contained in the Individual with Disabilities Education Act have evolved over time.

This would leave one to believe that at some point the definitions and protocol that guide decisions in classifying a child as a special education EBD student, will become more distinct in the future. There have been other professional agencies that have offered alternative proposed definitions of EBD that seem to be more specific in nature. This is especially true when it comes to associating emotional and behavior issues and academic performance in an educational setting. The National Mental Health and Special Education Coalition offered this definition in 1992. ? The term emotional or behavioral disorder means a disability characterized by behavioral or emotional responses in school programs so different from appropriate age, cultural, or ethnic norms that the responses adversely affect educational performance, including academic, social, vocational, and personal skills.