The Responsible Inclusion of Students Receiving Special Education Services for Emotional Disturbance: Unraveling the Practice to Research Gap.

McKenna et al. (2019) hunted for solid studies on teaching students with emotional disturbance inside general-ed classes.

They screened every article they could find. Only studies that tested reading, math, or writing lessons counted.

The team wanted experiments that clearly separated kids with ED and showed their scores alone.

They came back almost empty-handed. Only a handful of studies met the rules, and none were strong enough to trust.

In short, teachers have no clear research base for teaching academics to students with ED in inclusive rooms.

May (2019) gives a spark of hope. That study showed letting students pick their own reading or math task, plus quick teacher praise, lifted on-task time in a regular class.

Laposa et al. (2017) went further. They trained typical peers to form social circles around high-schoolers with severe disabilities and proved it worked in a randomized trial.

The gap: those two studies looked at choice plus praise or peer social networks, not core academic skills. William et al. still find zero rigorous trials on teaching math or reading itself to students with ED in inclusive settings.

Deshais et al. (2019) and Groves et al. (2019) show classroom-wide tools like group contingencies and the Good Behavior Game can calm rooms, but again they did not test academic gains for the ED group alone.

If you write IEP goals for reading or math in inclusive rooms, you are flying blind. Use what we do have: pair student choice with fast praise, add peer networks, and keep groups small. Track data weekly so your class adds to the tiny evidence pile we still need.