Social Skills Training for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders: A Review of Reviews

Abstract

Teaching social skills to students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) has become an accepted practice. Literally hundreds of social skills training (SST) efficacy studies for students with EBD appear in the literature. As a result, many authors have published both narrative and meta-analytic reviews of the literature. Reviews have highlighted various problem areas as targets for future research. Nevertheless, SST has subsequently often resulted in only modest changes in the social competence of students with EBD. The purpose of this article is to review the reviews on SST with students with EBD, discuss issues based on conclusions reached, and present implications for practice.