Cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to students with emotional and behavioural difficulties: a model of decision-making

Teachers' perceptions and thoughts on educational matters reflect on their teaching decisions and actions to their students in general, and their students with emotional and behavioural difficulties, in particular. A study based on the theoretical assumptions of Weiner's model of attributional theory of motivation, Ajzen & Fishbein's planned behaviour theory and Bandura's social cognitive theory aimed to construct a portrayal of teachers' causal attributions, emotional, cognitive and behavioural responses to students with emotional and behavioural difficulties. The distribution of an Attribution Inventory to 391 elementary teachers revealed that teachers' causal attributions predicted their emotional and cognitive responses, which in turn predicted their intentional behaviour. Intentional behaviour in conjunction with perceptions of effective coping strategies finally predicted their actual behaviour. This study contributes to our understanding of teachers' perceptions of and decisions about emotional and behavioural difficulties, with relevance to teacher trainers and policy-makers.