How We Prevent the Prevention of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Popular rhetoric supports prevention, but action does not match the rhetoric. Legitimate concerns are promoted to primacy, precluding preventive action. Prevention may be thwarted by expressing overriding concernfor labels and stigma, objecting to a medical model andfailure-driven services, preferring false negatives to false positives, proposing a paradigm shift, calling special education ineffective, misconstruing the least restrictive and least intrusive intervention, protesting the percentage ofchildren receiving services, complaining that special education already costs too much, maintaining developmental optimism, denouncing disproportional identification, defending diversity, and denying or dodging deviance. The mechanisms explaining the avoidance ofprevention include delayed negative reinforcement ofprevention, immediate positive reinforcement ofcompeting behaviors, social punishment of prevention, and modeling. Implications for practice are suggested

Separate and Better: A Special Public School Class for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

“…Research suggests that a systematic response to low levels of misbehavior can effectively reduce coercive interactions and maintain appropriate behavior by intervening early in the chain of events (see Cypress Group, 1996;Kauffman, 1999b;Nelson, 1996). The teachers' three-tiered cooldown system (see Table 2) was consistent with this model.…”

“…Fuchs & L. S. Fuchs, 1994;Hockenbury, Kauffman, & Hallahan, 1999Kauffman, 1989Kauffman, , 1993Kauffman, , 1994Kauffman, , 1999aKauffman, , 1999bKauffman, , 1999cKauffman, , 2001Kauffman & Hallahan, 1993Kavale & Forness, 2000;MacMillan, Gresham, & Forness, 1996). The success of special education in providing appropriate schooling for students with disabilities is not as dependent on the collaboration of general and special educators as it is on incremental improvement of the quality of academic and social instruction provided by special educators (i.e., on better implementation of special instruction, such that students with disabilities are exposed to more competent, intensive, and sustained instruction).…”

“…The idea that these differences should be viewed as normal or tolerable, if not completely acceptable, strikes us as disingenuous at best and incompatible with prevention and encouraging of social maladjustment at worst (see Kauffman, 1999b). Behavior that is a disorder cannot be tolerated without serious risk, either to others in the environment, to the child himself, or to herself, or to both.…”

“…The keys to the success of the management systems used in the classroom were (a) the abundance of positive interactions and opportunities that far outweighed the need for reprimands or punishment, (b) the "catch-it-early" approach that facilitated the prevention of problem behaviors before they escalated, and (c) the teachers' efforts to address not only inappropriate behavior but also the context and culture that serves to maintain it (see Kauffman, 1999b;Manno, Bantz, & Kauffman, 2000, for elaboration).…”

Antisosyal Davranışları Önlemeye Yönelik Başarıya İlk Adım Erken Eğitim Programının Etkililiği ile İlgili Yapılan Bilimsel Çalışmaların İncelenmesi

“…Buna ilişkin, okul öncesi öğretmenlerinin çocukların sosyal etkileşim, öz-kontrol (self-control), öz-düzenleme (self-regulation) ve sosyal becerilerini geliştirmek için uygun fırsatlar sunmaları gerektiği belirtilmektedir (Tomris, 2012). Kauffman (1999) bir erken müdahalenin başarılı olabilmesi için risk altında olan çocuğa müdahalede bulunmanın yanında, çocuğun içinde bulunduğu çevreye de doğrudan öğretim ve destek verilmesinin önemli olduğunu vurgulamaktadır. Yine Kauffman, etkili bir müdahalenin çok boyutlu olması gerektiğini, çocuğun özellikleri kadar çevrenin kültürel yapısının ve özelliklerinin de ele alınması gerektiğini ileri sürmektedir.…”