Project

Emotional Disturbance in General Education: Supporting Teacher Readiness

Students qualified for special education services under the federal disability category of emotional disturbance, as with students in other disability categories, are increasingly being included in general education classrooms for part or all of their school day. Many general education teachers report feeling unprepared to teach students with emotional disturbance, with some feeling negatively about these students being in their classrooms. Research suggests that general education teachers indeed do not receive enough preservice or inservice training on topics highly relevant to the specific needs of students with emotional disturbance such as direct instruction of social skills. While texts exist for general education teachers to read on the topic of supporting students with emotional disturbance in the classroom, there is a need for more texts that are easy to consume while still being informational and practical. To address this need, this teacher researcher created a guide for U.S. K-12 general educators, which addresses several important topics related to instructing and otherwise supporting students with emotional disturbance in the general education classroom. The content of the guide was informed by an examination of the content of several existing texts and an identification of consistently mentioned topics and gaps in the literature. The guide was created digitally in viewable and printable formats.

Items in ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.