Evaluating School Connectedness of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

School connectedness is the extent to which a student feels that adults and peers at school care about his or her overall well-being. Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) may experience difficulty with developing high levels of school connectedness, which may lead to engagement in health-risk behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine the levels of school connectedness of students with EBD and compare them with their general education peers. A questionnaire was created for this study with participants attending elementary, middle, and high schools. The results of the analysis indicated that of the four factors of school connectedness (that is, school bonding, school attachment, school engagement, and school climate), the students with EBD reported significantly lower levels of school bonding than did their general education peers. The results indicate that students with EBD experience school differently than their general education peers, particularly in terms of school bonding.

Adolescent Chronic Health Conditions and School Disconnectedness

“…Our findings of significant associations between chronic health conditions and school disconnectedness are consistent with those from a very limited number of previous studies on the topic, most of which were based on the same small convenience sample, grouped all disabling conditions together, used few statistical controls, and did not consider comparison groups of children with no disabilities. 14,[16][17][18] One recent study with a much larger sample (N 5 11,353) did not compare youth with disabilities with those without disabilities, relied exclusively on survey data from youth, and was not racially or nationally representative of any population. 15 The smaller previous literature on links between youth disability and student/teacher relationships also relied on small nonrepresentative samples and no comparisons with youth without disabilities.…”

Remote Learning Strategies for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

“…Although teachers are subject to what their district provides for them, teachers may consider using a very structured, all-in-one platform such as Miro (miro.com), Wakelet (wakelet.com), or Notion (www.notion.so). Marsh et al (2019) found that a large majority of students with EBD in Grades K–12 did not contribute as much to the class and were not considered as much a part of the group as their general education peers were in terms of involvement and inclusion in class activities. This concern is exacerbated when students feel isolated in their homes, with just a computer screen to interact with.…”

The Role of School Connectedness in Supporting the Health and Well-Being of Youth: Recommendations for School Nurses

“…School connectedness, generally signifying the extent to which youth feel accepted, included, and cared for by staff and peers while at school (Marsh et al, 2019), is a critical factor affecting youths’ health and well-being. Recent efforts to measure school connectedness include rating youths’ perceptions of inclusiveness, closeness, happiness, and safety at school (Eugene et al, 2021).…”

“…Examples of factors that influence school connectedness can be found in Box 1. As seen in Box 1, factors that influence school connectedness include individual developmental stages (Marsh et al, 2019) and those that are school related (Thapa et al, 2013), among others.…”