1.0 Introduction
Behavioral, Emotional and Social Difficulties (BESD) are a collective term that comprehensively describes a wide range of complex and chronic disorders suffered by many people. The most comprehensive definition of BESD is enshrined in country’s special education law; the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA defines BESD as a condition exhibiting one or more of the characteristics described below over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
These characteristics are: first, the inability to learn that is unexplainable in terms of intellectual, sensory or health basis. Second, is the inability to have effective interpersonal relationships with colleagues and tutors. Third, students exhibit abnormal behaviors in ordinary circumstances. Fourth, students are characterized by depression and a generally invasive mood. Finally, these students tend to be afraid when confronted with personal or school related problems. Though, IDEA does not consider social maladjustment as a form of BESD unless it has been previously determined that the student suffer from BESD. However, the National Mental Health and Special Education Coalition proposed a less stigmatizing definition based on psychiatric diagnosis. The result of this is that emotional disorders are now referred to as BESD; which according to the coalition is more humane.
2.0 Characteristics of Emotionally Disturbed Students
According to Achenbach, BESD basically takes two patterns: evident and subtle. Thus students suffering from BESD can exhibit either subtle or evident symptoms. Generally, BESD is characterized by the following. First, these students have a tendency of being withdrawn and isolated from their peers. Second, some of these students exhibit disruptive and sometimes disturbing behaviors to the norm. Third, other students suffering from BESD can exhibit hyperactivity, lack of concentration and disinterest in activities around them. Fourth, most of these students have poor social skills; they cannot keep friends, constantly engage in brawls, and abhor group work and have poor communication skills. These students keep quiet when spoken to, have extraordinarily fast or slow speech and their pitch of speech is abnormally high, low, loud, soft or scratchy. It is important to mention the above mentioned characteristics of BESD are of the evident category. According to the National Dissemination Center, some of the characteristics that fall in the subtle category include anxiety, weird motor movements, abnormal mood swings, school-phobia and deterioration in emotional wellbeing.
Some of these abnormal persistent motor movements include: habitual nail-biting, rocking, sucking of the thumb and drowsiness. In class these students exhibit inability to acquire learning skills effectively, extreme learning deficiencies, class non-attendance and little motivation for learning. Abnormal mood swings include daydreaming, depression regardless of circumstances or exhibits a wide array of emotions for no apparent reason. Also, students with BESD talk ceaselessly and carelessly without regard for their colleagues and authority. These students also portray an inability to learn from experience; disciplinary measures do not result to behavioral change. Thus these students are prone to impulse action and have poor judgment. They have no sense of consequence as far as their actions are concerned. Sometimes these students move around aimlessly and excessively and have a tendency to move objects around compulsively. Other students are over-jealous of their colleagues for no apparent reason and have a heightened sense of paranoia.
3.0 Socioeconomic Background of Emotionally Disturbed Students
A lot of research has been carried out to ascertain the relationship between BESD and socioeconomic factors. Specifically these researches have zeroed in students with socio-cognitive and aggressive tendencies. Thus, the purpose of these researches has been to explain how socio-cognitive tendencies develop. Many theorists suggest that a hostile family environment has a negative impact on a student’s socio-cognitive development. Thus, this review shall seek to determine the role played by hostile home environments, socio-demographic disadvantage and maternal depression on emotional development of students. To have a more realistic picture, several researches and findings shall be critically examined.
According to research, family structure plays an important role in emotional development of students. Most North American children are born and raised conventional household set-up; stable nuclear families comprised of heterosexual parents and biological children. Variations for a long time were on the basis of regional and racial differences. In the past decades, there has been a massive deterioration in traditional family values. Presently, most households are characterized by separation and divorce, bi-sexual and interracial marriages, single-parent set-up and cohabitation. All these changes from the traditional household set up have had diverse impacts on the emotional development of most students. Generally, biological children from a household where parents are heterosexual and married are more stable emotionally. This does not however imply that all non-traditional households are hostile environments. Thus, family structure affects children’s emotional development in terms of familial functions, economic deprivations and exposure to stressful conditions. This implies that the issues of importance are the circumstances children are exposed as a result of specific family structures and not the family structure itself. Though, it is clear that divorce, separation, adoption and single parenthood present new challenges that are not evident in traditional family set-ups. These challenges have a great bearing on emotional development. They include economic deficits, parental deficits, absentee parenting, and parenting malpractices, exposure to marital and stepfamily conflicts and family dysfunction.
Children who are raised in broken or single-parent families are prone to experiencing poverty and economic depravity. As a result, most of these can only afford to reside in low income neighborhoods characterized by poor service provision, lowly-funded schools and high crime rates. Hence students from such families tend to have extreme anxiety, join felonious groupings and generally have poor pro-social and interpersonal behaviors. Due to the economic hardships these families are subject to, absentee parenting is a common factor and this adversely affects the emotional development of children. Studies reveal that parenting has been found to deteriorate in divorced households; this results to stress and depression in most children. Poor parenting and limited parental contact result to the development of aberrant emotional tendencies in children. Active parental engagement in their children’s affairs results to stable emotional development. Thus, it is clear that emotional instability is highly dependent on the nature of parenting children are subject to. Though, research reveals that children from stable single-parent households are less prone to BESD.
Most studies reveal that children from families characterized by marital conflict and dysfunctional family relations are emotionally disturbed. In fact, statistics suggest that 20-25% of children from divorced homes are exposed to pre-divorce marital conflicts which gradual reduce in the post-divorce era. To most children, home is a haven of safety, care and love. This is not the case in violence prone households; they become havens of anger, fear, anxiety and uncertainty. From research, it is evident that parental conflicts also result to a reduction in parental engagement and control over their children’s behavior and emotional development. Also, children from such homes embrace violence, aggression and intimidation as acceptable means of dealing with interpersonal challenges. Children from such homes have also been observed to have poor interpersonal skills as a result of their violent tendencies.
Children from cohabiting households are more prone to BESD than those from married households. This is because children from cohabiting families are subject to a low socioeconomic status. Research reveals that a cohabiting family is three times more likely to be poor than a married household. This is because a married man’s income is twice that of cohabiting man. It is also evident that cohabiting couples invest more funds in adult consumption rather than in their children; these couples are more likely to invest more in entertainment at the expense of their children. Also, of all family structures cohabiting families are the most fragile and unstable. To this effect, 7 out of 10 children in cohabiting households experience parental separation. This adversely affects their emotional development. Thus, children born in cohabiting families portray internalizing BESD characterized by an extremely high degree of emotional instability.
A great deal of literature available reveals that maternal depression also plays an important role in the occurrence of BESD in children. Specifically maternal emotional behavior has a huge bearing on children’s emotional development. For instance, studies suggest that depressed individuals are more likely to be angry in ordinary circumstances than non-depressed individuals. Depressed caregivers are prone to direct their anger at their children; this creates a hostile environment for emotional development of the children. Further investigations into maternal depression reveal that it is also associated with adverse home emotional environment. In most cases, it has been found that maternal depression occurs concurrently with marital conflict and distress. This kind of hostile environment according to studies makes children more prone to BESD. Empirical research reveals that children with depressed mothers have a low self-esteem; thus they tend blame themselves for any challenges they encounter and their shortcomings. They are also prone to resort to anger to resolve any challenges they come across.
4.0 How BESD Affects Learning
Not all students with BESD have learning disabilities. Though, a good number of these students experience difficulties in the school environment. Statistics from empirical research indicate that 60-80% of students with BESD also have learning disabilities. From the characteristic of BESD previously discussed, it is clear why this is so; BESD predisposes students to learning disabilities. This implies that students with BESD are more likely to perform dismally in school than their peers without BESD. As a result of behavioral challenges that children with BESD are prone to, educating them is always complex, problematic and overwhelming to most teachers. Studies consistently reveal that these students perform 1 to 2grades below their academic levels. Most of the academic challenges they go through emerge at a tender age and persist through later years if unchecked. Most of these challenges are unchecked because mitigation measures are only directed towards children with severe BESD. According to most theorists, academic under-performance is one of the indicators that a student has BESD.
Students with BESD are more likely to have challenges in reading. In fact most researchers suggest that the probable cause of behavioral problems in children with emotional disorders stems from the inability to read at tender ages. They are frustrated at not being able to read as effectively as their colleagues and thus resort to unruly behavior. Other are of the contrary opinion, they suggest that behavioral problems associated with BESD make students vulnerable to academic underperformance. It is however agreeable that the reason of academic underachievement in students with BESD is the deficits in language and speech development. Thus, it is clear that poor academic performance and behavioral problems go hand in hand and one cannot be separated from the other. To this effect, studies have pinpointed a few behavioral characteristics of children of students with BESD that explain academic under achievement. These behaviors are listed below.
Generally students with BESD are disruptive in nature; this behavior not only hinders their learning but also that of their colleagues. According to studies, their disruptive behavior manifests in several ways. Some students with BESD are restless; they move around aimlessly and uncontrollably. This disrupts normal learning as the tutors try to restore some form of normalcy to the classroom. Secondly, most students with BESD have poor social skills. In this age and era where achievement is attributed to group work, this affects their educational performances negatively. Also, these students require special attention. This contradicts the educational policy of most schools; general education for all. Tutors also lack the patience and time to invest in these students to boost their academic performance. Disciplinary sanctions imposed upon students due to delinquent behavior also result academic underperformance. Finally, students with BESD skip class and school mostly. This implies that they lag behind academically.
5.0 Possible Strategies of Teaching Emotionally Disturbed Students
Some of the strategies that might be used to ensure that students with BESD attain academic excellence include the following. Use of peer tutoring has been proven over time to be an effective strategy in teaching students with BESD cutting across diverse teaching environments and educational levels. Peer tutoring is also referred to as peer mediated instruction. In this case, students are paired together in a bid to share teacher-selected instructions. Studies indicate that peer tutoring is of mutual benefit; it furthers the academic prowess of both the tutor and the tutee. According to Spencer (2002), peer tutoring in students with BESD not only increases their academic performance but also has a positive impact on social aspects of these students. As a result of peer tutoring, class attendance improves, punishment sanctions reduce and students embrace more group work because their interpersonal skills advance. Though, changes in the social behaviors of students with BESD are not a guarantee and thus occur on a limited basis. Peer tutoring is effective as a teaching strategy for students with BESD because it is a relatively cheap strategy to implement. Also, it has received acceptance from most stakeholders in the education sector; teachers, students and parents all embrace the strategy. Though, this strategy does not test the effectiveness of the curriculum in educating students with BESD.
Another possible strategy according to studies is to modify the curriculum to suit the needs of students with BESD. To this effect, Wehby et al conducted research to ascertain the relevancy of structured reading programs (open court reading) and supplemented reading programs (PALS) strategies of teaching students with BESD. They observed that reading skills improved tremendously. Academic performance on the other hand fluctuated; they attributed this to the short duration of their study. These strategies also had a positive impact on the social behaviors of the students with BESD. Deterrent behaviors in these students were observed to decrease significantly. Though, further research into the issue ascertained that the relationship between reading ability and the social problems that students with BESD are prone to get in is still unclear. What is clear though is the fact that many students with BESD respond positively to comprehensive reading programs as far as reading is concerned.
Students with BESD spend a great deal of their educational life in residential and elementary day schools. In these schools, more attention is placed on therapeutics rather than education so most of these students have difficulties fitting into the normal educational system. Thus, accreditation is one strategy of ensuring that these schools are committed to offering quality education to their students. Though, it is still unclear whether state agencies actually do the accreditation or not. Gagnon and Leone carried out studies to clarify this issue. They discovered that 90% of elementary day and residential schools are accredited. Though, the accreditation standards are suspect. This is because most of the schools that do not follow regulations set by the department of education are still in operation. They also discovered that though policies exist to enable students with BESD transit from these restrictive schools to normal ones, there was no one to implement them. Thus, it is safe to conclude that accreditation is an effective strategy in teaching students with BESD. Though, policy amendments need to be made to ensure smooth implementation.
5.0 The Future of Students with Emotional Disorders
Further research needs to be carried out as far as children with BESD are concerned. A lot of studies have been conducted on learning disabilities but for some strange reason, BESD has been given a wide berth. Thus to effectively educate these students and make sure they eventually fit in this ever dynamic society, it is pertinent a lot be invested in terms of research. Areas of concern include the socioeconomic factors that predispose children to BESD and possible mitigation measures. Also, more should be invested in educational strategies to make sure that students with BESD have access to quality education. Policy frameworks also need to be set in place to establish effective strategies to attain this purpose and better on the already existing strategies. In the future, early diagnosis measures are necessary to ensure that intervention measures come into play in good time.
In conclusion BESD, according to IDEA, the most comprehensive definition of BESD, is a condition characterized by unexplained inability to learn; inability to relate effectively with other students, abnormal behavior in ordinary circumstances and depression. This research will examine the various characteristics of BESD, socioeconomic backgrounds of children with BESD and the impacts of BESD to academic performance of these students. Finally, the study shall briefly touch on some of the probable teaching strategies in educating children with BESD and conclude by stating the future of student with BESD.
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