Disabilities
Virginia Johnelle Voigt-Zabinski, one of the front-line pioneers of special education for students with disabilities at St. Cloud State University, explores the subject of Evidence-Based Interventions for Elementary Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorder (EBD) in one of her scholarly works in a much broader perspective. She aims to point out some of the solutions that can be implemented to assist students with EBD to live everyday life and, consequently, reflect such a change in their academics (Voigt-Zabinski, 2017). She explores these solutions, alternatively referred to as evidence-based interventions, in terms of how several special educators have actualized them for the overall academic prowess of students with EBD (Voigt-Zabinski, 2017). Voigt-Zabinski, narrows down her focus on four forms of evidence-based interventions: This paper will critically review her article on these interventions and evaluate their effectiveness in attaining the intended goal.
Voigt-Zabinski uses various literature sources connected to her research focusing mainly on these four areas. Her motivation for this work is connected with her purpose as a special educator to assist EBD students in having meaningful relationships with their peers and teachers. Established relationships will contribute to these students building their confidence, morale, and self-esteem and propel their academic gains (Zimmerman et al., 2019). She cites various authors who have extensively researched this area, showing a clear interlink between students with EBD and poor academic and social excellence. Teaching behaviorally and emotionally challenged students can prove hard to teachers who lack any form of training as far as this issue is concerned.
Findings from peer-learning, positive reinforcement, and choice-making-related studies have found that researchers have concentrated more on student behavioral changes, especially in their reading modes rather than academic achievement. Regardless, more combined reading interventions strategies have proved to be more effective in enhancing the academic performances of students with EBD when regularly done. However, some major weaknesses embody these modes of intervention. There was much reliance on visual observation to evaluate participants’ social, behavioral changes (Whitley, 2020). Moreover, it is easily noticeable that appropriate generalization measures were lacking, especially in peer-learning findings. Self-monitoring appears easy to handle compared to peer learning and provides more comprehension to the special students (Whitley, 2020). In all four techniques, the most visible strengths are related to the comprehension framework. Such that when implemented in multiple settings, it bore both positive academic and social-behavioral outcomes. The only major undoing for studies related to self-monitoring, positive reinforcement, and choice-making was the fact that much focus was pinned on-task behavior of students, which does not always translate to academic excellence (Whitley, 2020). Additionally, the on-tasks were prone to several manipulations arising from other third parties such as the paraprofessionals or the student’s self-motivation.
Finally, a major critique of Voigt-Zabinski’s work would be the fact that it only focused on four approaches for special education interventions. This approach forms the main bias to her work since she is also a special educator and can not fully explore other educational stakeholders’ perspectives. Her article could have also explored the advantages that come with exploiting the use of multi-sensory instructions, cooperative learning, and direct instructions on students with EBD (Zimmerman et al., 2019). Her studies and literature reviews are limited only to the task and behavioral analysis aspects, which can not comprehensively give a broader view of the subject at hand. Nevertheless, her vast knowledge of more than six years on this subject matter is undoubtful having been directly involved with special students. Towards the end, her article also incorporates several recommendations which could assist further studies related to this area so that defining solutions are actualized, and all parties emerge victoriously.
References
Voigt-Zabinski, Virginia J., (2017). “Evidence-Based Interventions for Elementary Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders”. Culminating Projects in Special Education. 47. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/sped_etds/47
Whitley, J. (2020). Evidence-Based Practices for Teaching Learners with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Zimmerman, K. N., Ledford, J. R., Gagnon, K. L., & Martin, J. L. (2019). Social stories and visual supports interventions for students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Behavioral Disorders, 45(4), 207-223. https://doi.org/10.1177/0198742919874050
