A Qualitative Study of Students with Behavioral Problems Participating in Service-Learning

Students with severe behavioral problems have an extraordinarily high risk for experiencing failure in school. Students receiving special education services under the classification of Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD), for example, have lower grades and fail more courses than students in any other disability category (Lane, 2004; Wagner et al., 2005). Compared to their peers in general education, students with EBD are twice as likely to be retained, and three times more likely to drop out; compared to their peers with disabilities, students with EBD are four times more likely to be excluded from the general education classroom (Rosenberg, Westling, & McLeskey, 2008). Students who have not been classified with a disability but present severe behavioral problems in school, i.e., students at-risk for EBD, often face reactive administrative strategies such as suspension or expulsion, and/or curricular inflexibility which have little positive effect and in many cases reduce students‘ chances for success (Anderson & Kincaid, 2005; Kern, White, & Gresham, 2007).

The issue of appropriate classroom placement and curriculum for students with behavioral problems has been extensively discussed in the literature (Simpson, 2004).