Assessing the Behavioral Expectations and Demands of Less Restrictive Settings

This paper describes the development of two scales designed to assess teacher tolerance levels, expectations, and standards for children's social behavior associated with handicapping conditions. The SBS Inventory of Teacher Social Behavior Standards and Expectations is a 107-item instrument in which teachers indicate how critical they consider certain appropriate or inappropriate behaviors to be in their classroom. The SBS Checklist of Correlates of Child Handicapping Conditions is a 24-item instrument on which the teacher checks items that would cause her or him to resist placement of a child manifesting that condition (e.g. enuresis, deficiency in self-help skills, mobility problems). Four studies are discussed which document the reliability, factor structure, and concurrent validity of these scales.