A review of the article, A Corrective Teaching Approach to Replace Undesired Behaviors in Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

            This article discusses students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) that exhibit problem behaviors, both internal and external, which impede learning. These behaviors contribute to a lack of motivation and, without intervention, may lead to poor or failing grades and serious consequences outside of school. Many school districts are working to create appropriate instruction and interventions to address these students and support their learning. Additionally, there are systematic programs and models already in place to help influence positive changes in students with emotional and behavioral disorders.

            Corrective teaching is an approach that involves corrective teaching to address inappropriate social behaviors and replace them with more appropriate alternatives. There are a wide variety of definitions for corrective teaching, but in this case study corrective teaching is implemented through the Boys Town Education Model (BTEM) as an eight-step model.

            Many students who have emotional and behavioral disorders do not know how to properly behave or react to things, and the eight-step corrective teaching model helps them to learn more appropriate behaviors. The first step is for the teacher to offer initial praise or empathy. Next, describe the inappropriate behavior so that the student has an awareness of what he or she is doing. Third, provide a negative consequence, followed by a corrective statement. The fourth step is to describe an appropriate replacement skill. Next, give a reason why this skill or behavior should be used instead. Have the student practice the new skill or behavior, just as one should practice applying a new academic skill to reinforce the learning. Give the student feedback and a positive consequence and, finally, offer general praise to end the interaction.

            Basically, these corrective teaching procedures were implemented in a classroom and consistently reinforced. Undesirable behaviors were significantly reduced when compared to the beginning of the study, by replacing them with more appropriate skills or behaviors. Although this study displayed success, further investigation and study is required to determine the true impact of this intervention.

            I found this article interesting because most of my students are referred to our school because of emotional and behavioral issues. They may or may not be diagnosed with EBD, but they tend to be referred for reasons that extend from these types of behaviors. They may not understand how to use proper behaviors in daily routines or how to react to people in appropriate ways, which has led them into trouble and a referral to our school, which is an alternative setting. The article also mentioned that they might react internally by becoming withdrawn, rather than lashing out. Internal and external behaviors can lead to poor grades, which is another referral reason we get with incoming students. Our demographic tends to be at-risk for dropping out, and many of our students have been in trouble with the law. I found this informative, considering the students I work with each day. I think that a lot of these points are useful, outside of a special education setting because many of my students do respond positively to a similar path of intervention. I agree with this article, as well as what we learned this week, that trigger recognition and early intervention is important to preventing and limiting further problem behaviors.

Cortez, E. G., & Malian, I. M. (2013). A corrective teaching approach to replace undesired behaviors in students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Beyond Behavior, 22(3), 54-59.