Classroom management strategies for students with emotional and behavioral disorders

Abstract

Department of Language, Learning, and Leadership Elementary students who exhibit behavioral problems often underachieve in all academic subjects, especially in developing their reading skills (Haak, Downer, & Reeve, 2012). This issue of student emotional and behavioral disorders creates a problem of classroom management for teachers. This review and synthesis of the literature to address the question of what are effective classroom management strategies for use with school age students exhibiting emotional and behavior disorders has produced three findings. The first is that research has identified three main types of classroom management strategies that produce positive impact on students with emotional and behavioral disorders: classroom instruction, teacher positive feedback and praise, and student self-monitoring. The second finding is that of the three types of strategies, the classroom instruction and teacher positive feedback and praise increased the time on task and academic performance of these students. Classroom instruction appears to produce positive academic results at the early elementary and late middle school levels, while teacher positive feedback and praise appears to produce results across all grade levels. The third finding is that student self-monitoring appears to be the type of classroom management strategy that decreases negative emotional and behavioral incidents by students with emotional and behavioral disorders across all grade levels. As a result, this strategy type also increases student time on task. These findings are relevant to the professional development of general and special education teachers, and will be dispersed to them through a professional development project in the form of a digital brochure. [from abstract]