JAASEP WINTER 2026 Part 3 of 5
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Students with emotional disturbance (ED) are often reported to be among the most challenging groups to work with in the school setting (Stremel et al., 2021). Specifically, students with ED are more likely to have social skills deficits including difficulty developing positive interpersonal relationships.
They often engage in behaviors such as aggression and breaking rules and overall noncompliance which result in both peer and teacher rejection and often culminate with school discipline procedures of suspension and expulsion (Maggin et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2017) that are often not effective at reducing the unwanted classroom behaviors or negative social interaction with peers or teachers (Walker et al., 1996; Wheeler et al., 2012). Along with having some of the poorest academic outcomes, students with ED are the most at risk of school dropout, involvement with the legal system, substance abuse, unemployment, and experiencing mental health disorders (Garwood et al., 2021; Kumm et al., 2021; Lo et al., 2002; Maggin et al., 2016; Wagner, 2006; Wheeler et al., 2012).
Abstract
Previous research suggests that self-management interventions are effective across a variety of disabilities, behaviors, and settings to curb maladaptive classroom behaviors. However, based on a recent literature review, there is an overall lack of research focused specifically on interventions for the Emotionally Disturbed (ED) student population and an even greater void of research studies that intervened on non-academic behaviors with his population (Garwood et al., 2021). Thus, this current study sought to expand the 2021 review by 1) focusing on only on intervention studies and 2) going beyond flagship EBD journals to be more inclusive of published peer-review work. As a result, the current study reviewed 34 studies (1990-2021) that implemented self-management interventions on the behaviors of 97 students with ED. Each of these studies were carefully reviewed to investigate the effectiveness of the interventions on the participant’s target behavior. Using percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) and percentage of data exceeding the median (PEM) to calculate effectiveness, findings suggest that self-management interventions were moderately to highly effective across settings, including the general education setting, and across target behaviors. All findings are presented detailing the specific intervention’s effectiveness based on behavior targeted. In addition, social validity and limitations are discussed to aid in the continuation of research that delves into strategies that help teachers address the unique behavioral characteristics associated with students with ED.