Teachers of Children with Emotional Disturbance: A National Look at Preparation, Teaching Conditions, and Practices

Abstract

Maintaining an adequate supply of qualified special education personnel is a major challenge. In particular, serious shortages of teachers of children with emotional disturbance (ED) jeopardize delivery of appropriate special education and services to this population. This article reports data from the national Study of Personnel Needs in Special Education on the quality of personnel who teach children with ED. Teachers of children with ED are compared with other special education teachers in terms of experience, working conditions, credentials, preservice preparation, instructional skill, and future plans. Teachers of children with ED are less experienced and worked in more restrictive settings than their special education teacher colleagues. They were less credentialed and more likely to have been credentialed via alternate certification programs. Teachers of children with ED judged themselves to be more skilled in assessing and addressing behavior but less skilled in other instructional tasks.