Peers as teachers of anger management to high school students with behavioral disorders

We investigated the use of a peer-delivered social skills instructional pac kage to teach four high school students with behavioral disorders to expres s anger appropriately. In contrast to previous studies, instruction was pre sented individually to the students by their general education peers. The i nstructional package, which combined peer instruction, self-instruction, an d a traditional anger control program, was effective in improving the way t hese adolescents expressed anger in role-play situations with general educa tion peers. In addition, generalization data indicated that some of the stu dents decreased the rate at which they responded inappropriately to natural ly occurring anger-provoking situations at school outside the instructional setting. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.