Students With EBD Need Approaches

¶ … Students with EBD need approaches that provide both the teacher and the student with more options for development than are presently available. Cognitive behavior modification (CBM) is an option that should be utilized more frequently to assist students suffering with EBD. Within the discipline of special education, many of the theoretical pillars of CBM will find resonance with practitioners, and will provide a new tool to produce better results for students with EDB challenges. CBM is a viable option for implementation in the field of special education.

Mayer, Lochman, & Van Acker (2005) make a riveting and robust case for the inclusion of CBM techniques based on four important realities. Firstly, students with EBD do not have very encouraging long-term learning results, as many drop out of school before they are finished with their programs. Secondly, many of the reasons for this failure are linked to emotive challenges, which can be successfully managed with CBM. The third reason is that many therapeutic programs presently use components of CBM; the wider expansion should therefore not be a major hurdle. Finally, teachers need to have information about CBM so that they can design personal programs that integrate CBM principles into the classroom experience.

The literature relating to CBM traces the development of CBM techniques to B.F. Skinner and provides a critical assessment of his contribution to the development of the discipline. The authors take the reader through an elaborate historical development engaging the reader in developments in cognitive psychology. The attention is then turned to the exploration of the mechanisms of self-control and self-regulation from the perspective of CBM again a brief historical review is followed with descriptions of the salient elements of each concept. Several critical components of CBM are explored, along with a presentation of some of the issues surrounding the implementation of CBM techniques. The article additionally does an excellent job at suggesting useful approaches to the integration of CBM within the teaching arena.

This particular article presented many useful and important contributions to the discipline. The language employed did not obfuscate the points the authors were making and generally assisted in ensuring that their argument was lucid and efficient. This is an important feature because very often writers will produce work where the reader is sentenced to time reading the work, not in this case. More substantively, however the thesis was well supported by the argument presented. While, I concur with most of the positions advanced there are some elements that seem discordant and required further elaboration by the authors. In particular, the section on the limitation of CBM was not thoroughly balanced. It appeared as though the authors were attempting to place limited scrutiny on the weaknesses rather than give the complete picture.

An additional concern is the actual transition from clinical practice by a trained professional to the use of the techniques by those who are uninitiated in the specific discipline. The authors were not convincing in their argument as to the veracity and simplicity of this transition process. It is possible that the process is more convoluted and fraught with both methodological and practical challenges than they are envisioning or to which the reader is alerted. The absence of CBM use could not simply be the result of an "oversight."