Disruptive behavior disorders through the lens of Educational Therapy: A nosological, functional and intervention framework

Disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) constitute an umbrella term for a variety of childhood and adolescent disorders; inparticular, they are characterized by persistent oppositionality, defiance, aggression, rule violation or dysregulated behavior.However, from the perspective of Educational Therapy, diagnostic classification alone is not a good explanation for whydisruptive behavior occurs in learning environments. This narrative review looks at the nosology of disruptive behaviordisorders from an educational therapist's perspective: from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5-TR) and/or the International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Revision (ICD-I I), to the neuroscience of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS). In particular, the author is interested inbehavioral phenotype and functional mechanisms. The oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) areformal disruptive/dissocial disorders, while ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that may cause disruptive behavior inchildren and adolescents. CDS, formerly called sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT; Barkley et al., 2022; Becker, 2025), is anemerging research-supported syndrome, and is not considered a DSM-5-TR or ICD-11 disorder. In this review, educationaltherapists should conceptualize disruptive behavior by considering executive functioning, academic demands, socialexpectations, and environmental conditions within the application of the Cognition-Conation-Affect-Sensation (CCAS) model.Differentiated educational assessment should then move from observed behavior to antecedents such as functional abilities,learning demands and consequences and be tailored to each student. In this paper, the author has adopted the EducationalTherapy model in which differentiated nosology establishes the clinical context, functional assessment identifies learningprocesses and interventions are made to address the learner's adaptive, academic, behavioral and social skill sets.