Secondary teacher and mental health professional views of students with school adjustment problems.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare secondary teachers' and mental health professionals' views regarding the urgency of various types of school adjustment problems, the prognosis of students with these problems, arid prescriptions for students with these problems.Participants were presented with hypothetical cases depicting four male secondary school students, each with a particular school adjustment problem. Findings of this study indicate that secondary school teachers consider students with acting-out, disruptive behavior to be more urgently in need of special attention than are students who are shy, anxious, or withdrawn. Mental health professionals, however, did not differentiate between the cases in their urgency ratings. Overall, respondents'judgments appear to be greatly influenced by their professional orientations. Student problems related to the teaming process seemed to be most salient to teac.hers, whereas mental health professionals adopted a more "whole student"perspective.Numerous efforts have been made to examine patterns of teacher identification and teacher actions on behalf of students with school adjustment problems (Davis, 1978;