UNIT 10 LEARNERS WITH EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIOURAL DISORDERS (EBD)
Key Unit Competence: Explain the characteristics and Special Educational
Needs of learners with Emotional and Behavioural
Disorders (EBD) and use appropriate teaching/
learning approaches
INTRODUCTORY ACTIVITY
MUTETE is a young girl of seven years old, she has 3 siblings. She was
born in Rubavu district but at 4 years of age she become an orphan of both
parents due to an accident. After the death of her parents she was taken to
start school out her uncle’s home. But as the time goes by it was not easy
for MUTETE to study and stay in class like other learners because she had
fear of unexpected things and often cried in class, failed to obey teacher’s
instructions, and feeling distressed apparently. During the end of year
exams, MUTETE shouted and run out of the examination room. The Head
teacher and her elder brother decided to take her to the psychologist for
assessment. The assessment was well done and she was diagnosed with EBD.
With the advice from the psychologist, the family made a plan in order to
help MUTETE improve her situation slowly. MUTETE now attends a regular
school and succeeds in class and attends regularly as other learners.
Questions:
In your groups:
1. According to the case study, what was the source of MUTETE’s
problems
2. Discuss MUTETE’s problem in this case study?3. What intervention plan was made for MUTETE?
10.1. Definition and causes of EBD
ACTIVITY 10.1
Using your resources:
1. How can you explain Emotional and Behavioural Disorder (EBD)?
Definition of EBD
Emotional and Behavioural disorder (EBD) is a disability that is characterized
by behavioural or emotional responses in school programmes different from
appropriate age, culture, or ethnic norms that affect education performance,
including academic, social, vocational and personal skills.
EBD is a broad term used commonly in educational settings, to group a range
of more specific difficulties experienced by learners and adolescents.
Both the general definitions and the concrete diagnosis of EBD may be
controversial, as the observed behaviour may depend on many factors.
Behavioural disorders, also known as conduct disorders, are one of the most
common forms of psychopathology among learners and young adults, and
are the most frequently cited reason for referral to mental health services. In
Rwanda, these services are available.
The people with Emotional and Behavioural Disorder (EBD) are described
using different terms including but not limited to: emotionally disturbed,
behaviourally disordered, emotionally conflicted, socially handicapped,
personally impaired, socially impaired, and many others.
There are four dimensions of EBD which are common to each of the Emotion
and Behaviour disorders:
• The frequency at which the behaviour occurs
• The frequency of the behaviours
• The duration of the behaviours
• Age-appropriateness of the behaviours.
Causes of Emotional and Behavioural Disorders
Even though there no known and exact causes of Emotional and Behavioural
Disorders. Researchers believe that biological, developmental and
environmental factors with some preventive measures are considered as
leading factors of EBD in young children.
Biological causes
Chemical imbalances in the brain and body can make managing emotions a
challenge. Here are some examples of biological condition that may lead to EBD:
• Prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol
• A physical illness or disability
• An undernourished or malnourished lifestyle
• Brain damage
• Hereditary factors
Environmental factors
This is the conditions a person’s daily life in the community. There are so many
element that have been correlated to emotional disturbance including family
income below the poverty level, stress in the family unit because of divorce
or some other emotional upset; inconsistent rules or expectations as well as
inconsistent and unhealthy discipline, parents have a lack of interest or concern
for the teen, which leads to a lack of supervision or neglect; family members
are poor role models, perhaps violent, perhaps getting in trouble with the law;
parents or siblings physically abuse the teen; there is an overall low rate of
positive interactions and high rate of negative interactions in the family; the
family has a poor attitude toward school or education.
Developmental factors
Development refers to the lifelong process of changing and maturing. Every
stage of life has its tasks that must be completed successfully for mental health
and life satisfaction. When a child’s development is disrupted and problematic,
there can be negative consequences for mental health and cognitive growth.
There is no single known factor that may cause Emotional Behavioural disorder
Here are some examples of developmental causes:
• Attachment problem: it may be either lack of positive attachment to
the primary caregiver or over attachment leading to clinginess and
difficulties separating from the caregiver
• A failure to develop trust during infancy and early toddlerhood,
resulting in fear and mistrust
• Inability to experience some autonomy and instead internalize a sense
of shame for exploring
• Opposed attempts to show initiative and instead made to feel guilty for
wanting to try new things
• Failure to experience a sense of competence, which leads to feelings ofinferiority, during the elementary years.
SELF-ASSESSMENT 10.1
1. Explain what is by EBD?
2. What is the most known disorder of EBD?
3. Explain environmental factors of EBD?
4. What do you understand by developmental factors of EBD?
10.2. Classifications and characteristics of learners with
EBD
ACTIVITY 10.2
Using your resources:
1. Hearing the meaning of Emotional and Behavioural Disorder, it is
a broad term, what do you think about it?
2. Describe some criteria that may help to confirm EBD?
Emotional Behavioural Disorder is classified into three groups:
• Conduct disorders
• Emotional disorders
• Personality disorders
Conduct disorder
The diagnosis of conduct disorder is based on antisocial behaviour, and it
says little about the child’s inner life motives, and disabilities. The disorder
is classified by: aggressive and overt versus convert.
Examples of undesirable behaviours exhibited are anger, attention seeking and
boisterousness bossiness, disobedience, impatience, irresponsibility, jealousy
and temper tantrums.
Emotional disturbances
It is a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over
a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s
educational performance:
• Inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory or
health factors;
• Inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships
with peers and teachers
• Inappropriate types of behaviour or feelings under normal
circumstances
• A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression
• A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with
personal or school problems.Characteristics of Emotionally Disturbed Child
Personality disorders
Personality disorder refers to a disorder enduring pattern of inner experience
and behaviour that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s
culture, that is pervasive and flexible, has an onset in adolescent or early
adulthood, is stable over time and lead to distress of impairment.
Characteristic of learner with EBD
Learners with emotional or behavioural disorders are characterized primary
by behaviour that falls significantly beyond the norms of their cultural and age
group on two dimensions:
• Externalization and
• Internalizing.
Both patterns of abnormal behaviors have adverse effects on children’s
academic achievement and social relationship.
Externalizing behaviors are as under-controlled disorders which
are characterized by aggressiveness, temper tantrums, acting out and
noncompliant behaviors.
Internalizing behaviors sometimes referred to as “over controlled
disorders “which are characterized by social withdrawal, depression
and anxiety. Learners with internalization are unlikely to be identified
by the teachers and families because they do not create the chaos that
are commonly associated with learners with externalizing behaviors.
Learners with EBD portray:
• Impulsivity and, hyperactivity, or “out of control” behaviours
• Episodes of extreme irritability, anger and outbursts.
• Moods that change quickly and seemingly without reason
• Poor grades at school due to lack of work completion and behavioural
problems
• Sadness, withdrawal, decreased energy level.
• Inflexibility and low tolerance for frustration.
• Loneliness
• Low attention span
• Inability to concentrate
SELF-ASSESSMENT 10.2
1. Discuss the classification of Emotional and Behavioural disorder
2. Differentiate conduct disorder from Personality disorders and
emotional disorders.
10.3. Teaching approaches for learners with Emotional
and Behavioural Disorders
ACTIVITY 10.3
1. After having some information about EBD, how can you
educationally help learners who have Emotional and Behavioural
disorder?
The following interventional measures have been known to manage EBD
learners:
• Implementation of behaviour modification strategies
• Effective behaviour management procedures put in place,
• Appropriate routines for classroom procedures
• Effective instructional delivery and a variety of relevant instructional
activities.
• Clear hierarchical reprimand or consequence system. For example,
non-verbal warning, verbal warning, parent conference, suspension
and referral.
The management of learners with EBD require a good and flexible teacher.
There are some measures that help teachers to manage learners with EBD.
Those measures are classified into three categories:
a. Physical environment interventions: Positive behavioural support
include providing effective academic content and instructional to students
with emotional disorders.
Researchers show that student EBD can benefit from certain teaching strategies.
Five of them include effective instructional cycles, teaching mnemonics,
self-monitoring strategies, curriculum-based measurement, and contentenhancements,The components of effective instructional cycle include:
• Beginning each lesson with a statement of goals, with a review of
previous, prerequisite learning
• Presenting new material in small steps, with students practice following
each step
• Providing active and sufficient practice for all students.
• Asking questions, checking frequently for student understanding and
obtaining responses from all students.
• Providing systematic feedback and corrections to students.
• Providing explicit instructions and practice for seatwork activities and
actively monitoring students during those activities.
• Continuing to provide practice until students are independent and
confident.
b. Academic and instructional interventions
In this strategies PBS (Positive Behavioural Support) is the most used and very
crucial. Positive behavioural support is the application of positive behaviour
interventions and systems to achieve socially important behaviour changes.
It can be used in preschool setting. Working with parents to provide positive
support at home can directly foster school readiness and behavioural health in
young children.
These strategies can be used:
School wide positive behaviour support: it can be used in inclusive
school to manage the children with disabilities’ behaviours. The
school wide positive behaviour has three components:
• Universal support,
• Group support
• Individual support
Class wide strategy promote social competence in order to create
a positive classroom climate there are some strategies to be adapted
in inclusive and special education.
• Use close supervision and monitoring of all children at all times
by scanning, moving frequently, initiating
• Establish and teach classroom rules, which detail expected
behaviours at the beginning of the year, and systematically
teach the rules to children throughout the year.
• Provide opportunities for children to respond by questioning,
providing visual and verbs prompts.
• Increase use of contingent and specific praise by frequently
acknowledging the children’s appropriate behaviour in a
descriptive way
• Provide feedback and help children learn the correct responses
in a timely fashion.
c. Behavioural and cognitive-behavioural interventions
It begins with assessment of child’s behaviour. Functional Behavioural
assessment (FBA) is the process that determines why a child engages a specific
behaviour and how the child’s behaviour relates to his or her environment. It
gathers data from multiple sources to identify the antecedent and consequence
event that predict and maintain problem behaviours.
Functional Behavioural assessment (FBA)
• Analysis of a child’s behaviour
• The condition that might contribute to the child’s behaviours
• Forming the hypothesis regarding the reason for behaviours
• Identifying consequences that might contribute to the prevention, orreoccurrence of, the behaviour in future.
SELF-ASSESSMENT 10.3
1. What is the role of Functional Behavioral Assessment?
2. Discuss the school wide positive behavior
SKILLS LAB
1. Visit a secondary school and identify a student who is suspected
to have an emotional behavioral disorder. Spend two hours with
the student. Write down all the characteristics of the child and
suggest strategies to be used to help the child improve her/ his
studies and provide some recommendations (in schools and
teacher, parents).
END OF UNIT ASSESSMENT
1. Explain the classification of EBD
2. Discuss the characteristic of learners with EBD
3. What are three interventional approaches for a learner withEBD?