Learning disabilities in the junior high school: creating the six-hour emotionally disturbed adolescent?

Special education programs for the learning disabled, junior high school adolescent must ecologically analyze and address the myriad variables which potentially affect self-concept. The present article reviews and coordinates recent literature which has investigated the interaction between learning disabled adolescents' self-concept and academic, peer, family, and community systems. A unique behavioral pattern, the six-hour emotionally disturbed/learning disabled adolescent may result from continuous, negative self-concept experiences. This pattern occurs when learning disabled adolescents develop expectations of constant academic or social failure, choose to avoid these situations, and engage in maladaptive, "emotionally disturbing" behaviors as protective mechanisms. In the family and/or community systems, however, these students can be socially and adaptively successful. Preventive programming for the learning disabled, junior high school adolescent is discussed across the above interdependent systems.