Publication Date

2025

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Sarah Bonis, Timothy Hanchon, Jessica Dirsmith, Carl Myers

Degree Program

Department of Psychology

Degree Type

Specialist in Education

Abstract

Emotional Disturbance (ED) is arguably one of the most challenging special education categories for school psychologists. There are approximately 360,000 students under the classification of ED and there is still a large percentage that are unidentified. Due to the vagueness of the federal definition, differences in criteria/definitions across states, and lack of guidance there are inconsistencies in practice. The results of these inconsistencies negatively affect students because they are not receiving the services they need. Research studying the perceptions of school psychologists on identifying students with emotional disturbance exists, however, no research currently exists that examines the practices of school psychology trainees. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of school psychology graduate students’ perceptions on identifying students with emotional disturbance. Eight-six participants completed a survey regarding identification of emotional disturbance. Overall, participants concluded that the federal definition is unclear and many struggle with comfortability in making an eligibility decision based on the federal definition as well. An encouraging finding demonstrated that the majority of the participants reported they would include five critical sources (e.g., classroom observation, teacher interview, parent interview, student interview, and normative data derived from rating scales collected from a minimum of two different informants) in terms of initial emotional disturbance evaluations. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Disciplines

Child Psychology | Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Psychology | School Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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