Self-Management with Behaviorally Disordered Students in School Settings: A Promise Unfulfilled?

Abstract

Self-management procedures have been promoted in the professional literature as effective in producing, maintaining, and generalizing behavior changes in behaviorally disordered students. Additional purported advantages are increased student involvement in the behavior change process with a concurrent decrease in teacher involvement. The present review was conducted to evaluate studies of self-management procedures (i.e., self-evaluation, self-instruction, self-monitoring, and self-reinforcement) used with behaviorally disordered students in school settings. While general support for these techniques was found, many procedural concerns must be addressed in future research before educators can use them with confidence and efficiency.