Blended Social Skills Intervention for Students Identified as Emotionally and Behaviorally Disturbed

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a nine-week blended learning social skills intervention for high school students identified as being at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Exploring how social skills interventions improve students' social and emotional deficits aids in the development of an engaging curriculum. This quantitative study utilized a pretest-posttest method. High school students identified as being at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders and their special educators were invited to complete the researcher-designed social skills intervention with a corresponding pre- and post-test. There were no statistically significant differences between the pre- and post-test scores for the students or the special educator. The SEARS' social-emotional domains were all found to be statistically significant predictors of the students' total composite score. Gender was found to be a significant predictor of the student's total composite score. Implications of the study include strategies for developing interventions at the high school level.