Bridging the Research-to-Practice Gap Through Effective Professional Development for Teachers Working With Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience a variety of externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, gaps in academic achievement, and increased rates of dropping out of school. Thus, it is essential that students with EBD receive evidence-based academic and behavioral supports from skilled and knowledgeable teachers to improve student outcomes. Unfortunately, teachers typically receive limited professional development in classroom management practices and other supports targeting the unique needs of students with EBD. In this manuscript, we describe (a) challenges in the field related to supporting students with EBD, (b) current practices in professional development, (c) a multitiered-system-of-support framework for organizing and providing professional development, and (d) the need for more research on efficient and effective professional-development supports for teachers of students with EBD.

Development of the School Mental Health Self-Efficacy Teacher Survey Using Rasch Analysis

“…Analysis of the Wright map results suggests teachers may need additional support and training on supporting students with mental health needs such as responding to students with suicidal thoughts, discussing mental health concerns with parents/guardians, and providing academic instruction to students with internalizing and externalizing concerns. School mental health professional development should follow best practices of explicit training in evidence-based practices and intensive and ongoing professional development supports (State, Simonsen, Hirn, & Wills, 2019). Teacher preparation programs should also consider implementing preservice training opportunities and courses to proactively improve preservice teacher confidence for successfully serving expanded school mental health roles (Phillippo & Blosser, 2017; Weston et al, 2008).…”

Implementation of Promising Practices that Support Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

“…Effective professional development systems include both initial training and ongoing coaching for implementing, sustaining, and adapting practices to better meet the needs of students and their contexts (Gettinger & Stoiber, 2016;Reddy, Dudek, & Lekwa, in press). Training is necessary to acquire the skills to implement the practices in this article, but systems for ongoing coaching, including providing educators with visual performance feedback may be needed for school personnel to implement them with fidelity (Noell, Volz, Henderson, & Williams, 2017;State, Simonsen, Hirn, & Wills, 2019).…”

Teachers’ Experiences With Difficult Bullying Situations in the School: An Explorative Study

“…Previous studies have shown that teachers find it difficult to support the unique needs of students with emotional and behavioral difficulties (State, Simonsen, Hirn, & Wills, 2019; Stefan, Rebega, & Cosma, 2015; Taylor & Smith, 2019). Our findings highlight that this is also the case in bullying situations.…”