Identifying Source of Dysfunctional Behaviour

In the last newsletters we discussed stress and how the student’s dysfunctional behaviour is a result of their inability to protect themselves.  What we must never forget is that their dysfunctional behaviour produces a stress response for all other members of the classroom, it sets off a chain reaction if you like and that includes the teachers.  To be an effective teacher in a class that contains one or more of these student you need to be able to protect yourself from such outbursts and stay in control of your emotions.  A key to maintaining control is to understand the intention of their behaviours.  In the next Newsletter I will discuss practical techniques for erecting effective boundaries and one of the initial steps is to identify what is really happening. In this Newsletter we will describe how dysfunctional students behave in ways to confront teachers who have stressed them.

Remember all behaviours are designed to have the individual return to homeostatic equilibrium, that is to regain a sense of calm.  It is the stress of being in disequilibrium that is the driving force of behaviour and stress is a result of our inability to maintain our homeostatic equilibrium in the presenting environment.  We behave to protect ourselves from the subsequent painful feelings and when we learn a behaviour that is successful we will repeat it when confronted by similar conditions. Eventually this becomes our habitual response to any perceived attack. The illustration below shows this drive as behaving to protect ourselves, from painful feelings and/or rejection. 

As the illustration above indicates, if we get a behaviour that removes the pain then we will always go back to that behaviour, this is the driving force of all addictions.   There are three types of addiction:

Substance Addiction – this is considered the classic addiction, we have all seen those disturbing images of some emaciated teenager, homeless on the streets.  These exist and are a tragedy, but substance addiction includes all forms of consumptions be they prescribed medication, food, caffeine or the deadly anorexia, the refusal to eat.

Activities Addiction – This is when we have discovered that while we are working, following a football team, making toy soldiers, getting involved with the latest craze - whatever you do that distracts you from the cause of the stress.  Of course none of these behaviours are a problem, they bring colour to our lives, it is a problem when the activity is used to avoid confronting the problem. 

People Addiction – most causes of stress in a group setting is through the challenging interaction between members, it is the behaviour of an ‘other’, or ‘others’ that create the disequilibrium.  The resulting stress is the main driver for the dysfunctional behaviours’ teachers are confronted with while managing their classroom.  The illustration below describes People Addiction and the types of behaviours associated with each style of protection.

When you are being stressed by another person’s behaviour you can either take action and try to control them, make them change their behaviour or in some way resist their impact on you by ignoring them.

This illustration provides a rough sketch of how these three strategies appear to the person being manipulated.  The style they adopt depends on how they think their personal position of power compares to their victim.  For children this belief of superiority or inferiority can be influenced by their family and depends on their position in the family, that is if they are the older sibling they are more likely to be overtly controlling while subsequent children learn they are at a physical and developmental disadvantage and find a covert approach more successful.

Children learn through modelling and if they watch their parents or relatives assume a position of superiority, an upper-class posture over others in the community they will do the same. 

Finally, gender has an influence with males being more likely to take an aggressive stance while females tend to use covert tactics.  The overt type of control is easiest to observe but is not necessarily the most effective and a student may adopt different positions depending on who they are dealing with.  A more detailed description is given below.

• Overt Control – as can be seen in the illustration the behaviours are designed to intimidate the other person.  Their belief is if you stress me I will stress you more until you stop.  This is an addictive behaviour and as with all addictions as the effectiveness of this tactic declines, the intensity of the behaviour has to increase.  And like all behaviours the more you push people away the less opportunity you have to make connections.  These children are being trapped behind these protective walls of behaviour.

• Covert Control – this is basically an inverse of the overt position.  In this case the student has the belief that they will be so nice the other will not stress them.  They forgo their needs by acting in a way that doesn’t upset the other person.  These kids become the puppets of other students and the more they employ this tactic the more they will have to give up on themselves.  I have seen students take the blame for behaviour others have done.  For the teacher, covert control is a behaviour that is not easily recognised and these children suffer in silence when trying to get their needs met.

• Resistance – these students do not engage in any activity thus avoiding any contact with any potential confrontation.  They refuse to participate in class activities and in group work they are very passive.  They will take any opportunity to absent themselves from class, late back from recess and lunch, asking to go to the toilet or just not attending. 

Remember, this model of behaviour describes the walls discussed in the previous Newsletter (Newsletter 195 - Dysfunctional Boundaries 29 March 2022).  The problem with using this approach is that although these tactics do work in the short term albeit they most often require increased intensity to remain effective, these behaviours do not allow the individual to get their own needs met.

This approach to protecting ourselves does not disappear when we become adult.  In any large organisation such as a school you can witness the same tactics being used by the staff members.  The illustration below is a modified version of the one applied to students.

In the children’s case their inability to get their needs met in an appropriate manner impacted on their development.  When a teacher uses the same protective approach in the classroom, that is when they are stressed by their workload, student behaviour, or relational problems their behaviour not only locks them behind these walls of protection their inappropriate interaction with the students will have a knock-on effect:

• Overt Control Teacher – using the aggressive attacks on the student is probably the most observed dysfunctional approach used by teachers to protect themselves.  This is not surprising as this is the preferred behaviour for controlling those to whom they think are superior.  By being critical, shaming, yelling etc. you can stop the child from stressing you but that child will no longer be ready to learn.  They are being abused and will be busy protecting themselves.

• Covert Control Teacher – instead of dealing with the stressors that occur in any classroom these teachers will behave in a way that avoids confrontation.  These teachers are ‘nice’, let the kids ‘express’ themselves.  The problem is these teachers do not impose boundaries around their pupils, they do not teach responsibility.  They turn a blind-eye to inappropriate behaviour instead of imposing consequences.  If a student is late in submitting their homework there is no consequence.  The student in this class are not being equipped for the real world and the teacher is denying themselves from becoming an effective teacher.

• Resistive Teacher – most schools will have one or more of these teachers.  When the day-to-day stresses become too much they ‘drop-out’ of any meaningful participation.  They are often absent from school.  When forced to engage in staff activities say reviewing some school policy they do not participate and if forced they will speak against any need to change.  In fact, I had a classic resistor on my last school staff and when we had a meeting in the library he could always be seen ‘looking’ through some book he picked off the shelf.  Because these teachers rebel against the school their students are denied full access to the efforts of the whole school to assist in their learning.  While they might feel they are protecting themselves these teachers deny themselves the joy of being fully involved in their classroom.

This model provides a broad summary of the types of behaviours they see in their classroom but more importantly the driving force behind these behaviours.  When confronted with student’s dysfunctional behaviours that disturb the quality of your teaching and the other students learning you have a choice as shown below:

This Newsletter has focused on identifying those behaviours that are designed to protect yourself.  These will work in the short term and as noted these tactics keep you in your comfort zone.  The levels of stress remain tied to that particular situation and continual use of the same tactic becomes addictive.

Alternatively you can learn to deal with these disturbing behaviours in a manner that not only deals with the presenting situation the solutions will provide a response that, if confronted again by the same situation you will not be disturbed, you will know how to deal with it and get your needs met. 

At the heart of the acting to learn approach is the development of healthy boundaries that protect you while allowing you to get your needs met in your environment.

Dysfunctional Boundaries

I’ve chosen the title Dysfunctional Boundaries because it is the disorganized quality of some individual’s boundaries that leads to their inability to authentically engage with their community.  This is at the heart of our students and our own dysfunctional behaviour.   It is no surprise that the formation of protective boundaries occurs in early childhood when we are ‘taught’ to protect our ‘self’.  The functionality of a student’s boundaries reflects the environment in which they were formed.  Of course, we can put into place physical boundaries where necessary but it is how the dysfunctional boundaries affect teachers in the classroom that is the focus of this Newsletter. 

Our sense of belonging and acceptance is necessary for us to feel secure in our social group and this starts to be formed from the moment of birth.  How our family of origin treats us dictates the nature of any protection offered by our boundaries.  Children raised in functional caring families, at the appropriate age learn the practical, consequential behaviours in response to dealing with a threat or the denial of something desired.  Eventually these allow them to:

• Think well of themselves
• Trust others
• Regulate their emotions
• Maintain positive expectations
• Utilize their intellect
• Have a sense of autonomy

However, the majority of children in our classrooms who present as disruptive are rarely raised in such families (see Newsletter 189 - The Early Years and Dysfunctional Behaviour -   14  February, 2022).  These students have been reared experiencing three types of parenting, neglect, poor modelling of behaviour and abuse.  Of these three, poor modelling and neglect are not as vulnerable to environmental factors.  This is not to discount the cognitive damage but this impairment is less significant at the boundary but more in the impaired belief systems that drive their behaviour.  Abuse creates the stress reactions at the boundary.  The strength of the stress experienced at the time of the presenting violating event replicates the characteristics of the initial abuse.  Teachers need to understand that what they may feel is a gross over-reaction by a student to a classroom situation is most likely a reflection of their formative response in similar situations.

Children who are abused not only suffer a range of types of abuse but also the consistency, or not of that abuse.  By examining the constancy of the type of abuse will describe the extremes of the reactions to abuse in regards to the form of boundary protection they develop.  The extremes are a child who is repeatedly abused the same way in familiar circumstances contrasted with the child who is subjected to abuse in different forms at unpredictable times.

Children who are systematically abused in the same manner learn levels of protection to survive the attack.  Take a couple of examples, as a football coach I have seen, predominantly fathers expect their child to place themselves in physical danger say by tackling a bigger, stronger opponent.  When the child ‘misses’ a tackle the father heaps verbal abuse on them and then rejects them after the game; this is abuse.  In these instances the child who has no desire to play this game will soon learn that the physical risk is less damaging than the rejection.  They learn to behave in a way that ‘protects’ them from abuse.

Another more dramatic form of self-protection during assaults is when a child is subjected to sexual abuse from a father, uncle or other type of powerful adult.  The abuse is most often followed by a threat, the threat is the child will be punished if they tell anyone.  The child is made to believe they were responsible for the abuse, that they caused the defilement, they experience profound shame and because they fear rejection they conceal the desecration.  In these cases the ‘protection’ is to dissociate and so when the perpetrator revisits the victim the child will protect themselves by dissociating.  This works in a short-term dysfunctional manner.

In the case of consistent abuse the child learns a behaviour that is solely designed to ‘deny’ the abuse by presenting as not being ‘hurt’ by the abuse.  I will describe this as building walls to keep the abuse out.  These walls can be presenting as funny, angry, disinterested, the list of avoidance behaviours goes on.   The thing is these actions never reflect their true stressful feelings.

The unfortunate consequence of locking off the outside world is that the child cuts off any chance to get their own needs met.  The illustration below described these walls.

The other type of abuse is the inconsistent, unpredictable type.  In the family of origin  most often this type of abuse occurs when the caregivers are either addicts or suffer some psychotic illness.  In both cases the abuse will be related to the psychological state of the abuser and that is erratic.  Unlike the children who are consistently abused these children have no way of anticipating when and how the abuse will materialise and so they can’t establish any defence and become erratic themselves.  They are vulnerable to abuse from any source as illustrated below.

The following illustration shows the difference between those children with no learned ‘protection’, those with an exposed core and those who have developed ‘walls’ of behaviour to protect themselves.  The differences are explained in reference to five qualities of self-esteem.

Those with no protection are the children it is so easy to identify as being damaged.  They see themselves as not only being out of control but also not worth caring about.  They are vulnerable, bad and rebellious, dependent on others and of course unable to behave appropriately.  Conversely, those who have learned to hide their real feelings believe they must appear to be totally in control, they are good students, invulnerable and independent.  These students have learned to hide their real feelings from their immediate families so concealing them in the classroom is no challenge.

It is the second group that I worry about the most as they are difficult to identify and are more often female.  I recall a family I dealt with when principal of a school for Conduct Disordered and Oppositional Defiant students.  This family came to the school from Cambodia where they had suffered during the reign of Pol Pot.  The boy was clearly acting out, reflecting the characteristics of the exposed core.  I had reason to meet with the boy’s father and because he could not speak English he brought his daughter to translate.  She appeared to be a ‘straight A’ student, polite, well-spoken and articulate the very model of a pupil with a strong wall of protection.  I checked with the school and they agreed with my assessment, she was a ‘star’ student.  I have no real evidence that I’m right but that girl suffered at least as much trauma as her brother and I suspect, like all females probably more.  There is no way she will get any special care from the school, all their support resources are focused on the acting out behaviours.  Yet like all those kids living behind walls help should have been provided.

As I have outlined before, there is a growing number of teaching tuitions on dealing with trauma usually described as Trauma Informed Practice.  Our opinion on these is best explained in our previous Newsletter 193 (Dealing with the Impact of Early Childhood PTSD, 13 March 2022).  To recap teachers are not mental health professionals nor do they have the time to address these students’ considerable disabilities while teaching in a classroom.  This is exactly why we take the approach we do and that is endeavoring to control the amount of stress provoking incidents in the classroom.  This is why the calm, safe, predictable and consistent environment managed by a teacher with a genuine warmth towards the children is the best we can do for both the out-of-controlled student and those hiding their pain.

Understanding the damage suffered by these kids and the difficulty of dealing with their protective behaviours in a classroom presents a huge challenge which is not acknowledged by the bureaucracy nor the academic world.  But it is a real problem faced by teachers every day.  Despite the difficulty these kids present the teacher must not:

• Give up because the repetitive dysfunctional behaviours continue without apparent change, these kids are never a ‘quick fix’
• Become discouraged because students will block approaches.  For them to trust others is too risky therefore they avoid relationships.  The trick is to hang in longer than they expect you to.

We often hear the characteristic of empathy being a prerequisite for being a ‘good teacher’.  I understand the intention behind this belief but I prefer the quality of compassion.  Empathy infers you ‘know how they feel’ but it is impossible for anyone to know how it feels to be abused as a child.  Even if you have had that experience you can’t know how another feels but you must know it is an horrific form of abuse put on a child when they are unable to defend themselves.   These kids are not bad they are injured so never give up on them even if it means they need to be referred to a more suitable environment.

Boundaries - The Point of Contact

In the previous Newsletters we discussed the impact stress has on our ability to ‘control’ our behaviour.  As explained, stress occurs when the conditions of the outside world threaten our survival either from attack or the denial of needed resources; the level of threat determines the level of stress!  This ‘point of contact’ occurs in the cerebellum where the perceptions of the environment, arriving via the purkinje cells are compared to learned effects assembled in our memory and communicated by the granular cells (see The Importance of Stress - Tuesday, March 1, 2022 for more details).  This is the biology of our boundaries, the space between our physical and psychological sense and the outside world.  Our boundaries define where we begin in relation to all others.

We have determined in the previous Newsletter that as the level of stress increases your ability to control your actions decreases.  Therefore, it stands to reason that the way to control your behaviour is to control the stress which is generated in the cerebellum.  In regard to classroom management the level of stress experienced by the students will determine the level of cognitive control, the potential learning that is available to all members of the class.  This is the biological explanation of why calm classrooms have always been recognised as being the most effective.

From the above, it becomes clear that boundaries are the place teachers should concentrate to control their own levels of stress and to limit the opportunities for students to violate each other’s boundaries.  Within the classroom boundaries are the point of contact between everyone.  When any of these ‘relationships’ become threatening there will be an increase in the levels of stress, boundaries are being violated. 

So just what are boundary violations?  These can be both physical, external and psychological, internal described below.

External Boundary Violations

These are the assaults on our physical sense of safety and include:

• Standing too close, or any type of touching without permission.  This includes being hit, sexually violated or even tickled against your will.
• Others violating your rights to privacy.  For example, someone going through your bags or wallets, eavesdropping on your conversations, looking at the data on your smart phone
• Others exposing you to risk (i.e. Exposing you to their illness, they smoke in a no smoking area, not isolating when infectious, driving too fast for your comfort)

Internal Boundary Violations

These are the attacks on our psychological wellbeing.  Examples of these include:

• Being yelled or screamed at
• Someone lying to you or breaking a commitment they made
• Calling you names
• Patronising or telling you what you should do without being asked
• Being sarcastic
• Shaming you or your community
• Rejection from the group

Any interaction that creates stress is a boundary violation.

What is important to the strength of any boundary violation is the closeness of the relationship.  In the illustration below you can see how this operates.

There is a gradient of potential stress from a high propensity to be aroused through the interaction with intimate others.  That is the closer the relationship the more potential for elevated levels of stress and the more need for honest communication. 

The most important yet the most difficult is the relationship you have with your ‘self’, Level 1 on the diagram.  This is critical for teachers to ‘get right’ when they question their own practices.

In a later essay we will deal with the need for honest reflection on your own behaviour in any stressful situation.  The reason self-evaluation is difficult is because your sense of self is really an amalgamation of your beliefs, in a sense you are trying to evaluate your performance using the same set of personal values that led to the behaviour.  Also, we can only interpret the behaviour of others when we reach the stage of development identified as acquiring a ‘theory of mind’, that is when children become aware that others are separate form ourselves.  But, just as we have difficulty in evaluating our own behaviour our evaluation of others is created by projecting those values on the ‘other’ and using these as the ‘reference point’ for our decision.

Another important fact is that we are hard wired to evaluate the external environment, this is how we predict the potential action of others in our group.  As Louis Cozolino in his excellent book ‘The Social Neuroscience of Education (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2013) points out, if we put a person in a brain scanner and ask them to analyse the behaviour of others, all sorts of neural networks become activated.  However, if we ask that same person in the same scanner to analyse their own behaviour there is much less activity.  Analysing others is most often reflexive and automatic while self-awareness requires concentration, effort and runs the risk of triggering anxiety.

We progress through the descending threats to our boundaries with Level 2 being the most important relationship.  For a child this begins with the primary caregiver exclusively up until birth and most likely from then on.  In the early years any boundary violation of an infant is most probably involving the parent and this contributes to the destructive nature of the early abuse.  As we get older we expand our circle of relationships increasing the potential to have our boundaries violated but reducing the intensity of a lot of these violations.  For example if your very best friend criticises say your hair that would be more stressful than if a stranger said something about your hair.  In the first instance you would be really hurt but the same comments from a stranger might just mildly annoy you.

In the classroom the relationship between the teacher and the students should be, and most usually is very strong particularly relative to the stage being taught.  Most parents have experienced that time when their five-year-old corrects you because their primary source of information, the truth is their teacher!  By the end of their schooling the relationship is still important but not nearly as powerful.  This is why teachers must present themselves and the classroom as being non-abusive but rather safe, calm, consistent and predictable and where they are all highly esteemed.

Unfortunately, too many children come to school with highly damaged boundaries or no ability to construct a boundary, this is the subject of our next Newsletter.  Providing the environment that supports the development of healthy boundaries can be achieved is one way we can assist those damaged children to get some sense of their ability to control their own behaviours and that is all any of us can do!

Dealing with the Impact of Early Childhood PTSD

In the previous Newsletters we discussed stress and early childhood trauma, in this essay we will link these issues to help teachers cope with these students in class.  To do this it is important to appreciate that teachers have to deal with the results of the disabilities generate in their classroom.  Even if only one student is suffering from the effects of early childhood Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) the potential impact their behaviour can generate on the other students is significant. 

Over the years there have been a succession of intervention programs that have been designed to help teachers deal with the dysfunctional behaviours experienced when these damaged students attend the classroom.  All of these have some value and experienced teachers learn to take a pragmatic approach when applying the tactics described.  The latest of these types of approaches come under a methodology described as ‘trauma informed’.  The Department of Education, NSW has an excellent publication called ‘Trauma-informed practice in schools: An explainer’ which provides a thorough description of both the causes and approaches teachers can take to deal with the resulting disordered behaviours.  However, and this is where our approach differs significantly from other programs, the cognitive damage that drives these dysfunctional behaviours resides within the student’s brain, ingrained in their cerebral belief systems.  To change these structures requires a significant intervention over a substantial period of time by a highly trained mental health worker.  This is not practical nor ethically acceptable for teachers who have to deal with these students for relatively short periods of time in a setting that has to cater for the needs of up to twenty-nine other students.   

[A Note:  Our approach is to help teachers control what they can, the external environment of the classroom in a way that minimises the impact of excessive stress on the behaviour of students and the teacher.  This philosophy will lie behind all our future work.]

Add to this is the geographical disproportionate rates of lost learning this disability afflicts on our society.  It is generally estimated that between 1% and 11% of the population will suffer PTSD resulting from childhood trauma and in some low socio-economic areas, the proportion can be up to 26%.  This means that in a class of thirty students a teacher may have between zero students with these behaviour problems or up to eight who are suffering from PTSD.  Not only will these disabled students’ behaviour impede their classmates’ learning but they will also have a cumulative effect on each other.  This distribution becomes more concentrated when you consider the number of students who attend private schools that do not enrol students with disrupting behaviours so the ratios would be higher than those estimated above in certain areas.

Another issue is predominantly these behaviours are carried out by boys, approximately 80% of referrals to special settings and suspension data along with proportion of adults in incarceration supports this tendency; males act out and females internalise.  

There is a real difference of expression between the genders which appears when the students begin to be emotionally aroused.  The boys resist the threatening characteristics of the environment while the girls become compliant.  The simple answer to conclude that these behaviours are cultural and historical, females have learned to stay quiet about how they feel and suffer in silence while the boys fight back.  However, there is an alternative explanation of these disproportionate numbers.  This is based on the work of the anthropologist Louis Leakey who concluded that once humans became the apex species the main threat to survival was attacks from another tribe.  In the event of such battles, males had a greater chance of survival if they act-out, fought the invaders or ran to safety; that is they took action.  Such a response was not as effective for females and children.  They were more likely to survive if they surrendered or dissociated; they would be taken as trophies, it was a preferred action to survive (for a more detailed discussion about Dissociation see Newsletter 67 – Dissociation - 29 October 2018).

The graph below illustrates the impact that increased levels of stress has on the behaviour of students.

This particular graph is based on the work of Bruce Perry well known psychiatrist who has been at the forefront of research into the impact of abuse on the cognitive development of children.  It can be seen that as the level of stress increases (the ‘X’ axis) the mental state (the ‘Y’ axis) ‘escalates’ from being able to think in an abstract manner, the style of engagement we want in our classroom up until the boys are ‘out of control’ and the girls are suffering a mini psychotic episode, a condition where nothing is learned.

If you examine this graph you can see how the stress controls the area of the brain we access to survive.  This represents a fear response, the fight/flight/freeze explains the protective behaviours likely to be observed.  There is a similar impact on behaviour when students’ stress levels are elevated because they can’t get their needs met.  Of course, this model reflects the propensity of genders, there are plenty of students who will react contrary to this portrayal, the girls will act out and the boys internalise.

In the illustration below it can be seen that at any given level the teacher believes they are ‘engaging’, that is they are influencing their level of arousal, the student reaction will vary.  This is another version of the importance of the inverted ‘U’ curve discussed in a previous Newsletter (The Importance of Stress - Tuesday March 1 2022).  The difference is that in what appears to be an unacceptable level of classroom arousal will terrify Student 1 while hardly disturbing Student 3 who finds the chaotic lesson reflects their childhood environment.  In a sense they are happier when things appear to be out of control.

Another extremely important consideration is the impact increased stress has on decision making.  Many of the behaviour management programs offered to schools are based on the use of some type of cognitive intervention.  The classic is the once popular ‘Stop -Think – Do’ program created by Lindy Petersen an Australian clinical psychologist specialising in behaviour management of students.  The approach is to teach the students to stop before they react to a situation and then think about the consequences of their automatic behaviour and compare this to a more functioning response and then do what is best!   This makes sense to everyone and when it is discussed in the school counsellor’s office the projected long-term outcomes will be appear to be excellent.  But, back in the classroom, when the student is confronted and they become highly aroused this idea of delaying any attempt to protect themselves is ineffectual.  The table below illustrates the impact stress has on our cognitive functions including our consideration of long-term outcomes.

It can be seen that as the level of threat increases the reference to future consequences becomes increasingly less considered.

It is obvious that the levels of stress initiate descending levels of our cognitive functions and in the case of the students with extreme disordered behaviours we work with, any elevated stressful environmental conditions will access entrenched belief systems that drive their reactions.  The most effective and attractive approach would be to change these belief systems however this process is extraordinarily difficult for a practicing mental health worker dealing with the student in a one-to-one environment over an extended period of time.  Such an approach is not available to a teacher who is not a trained mental health worker, does not have the luxury of dealing with the student individually over a period of time.  Our only chance to improve the learning outcomes of all our students is to focus on the other side of the ‘equation’ and that is to control the level of stress in the classroom.

Early Childhood Trauma

In the last Newsletter we discussed the features of stress which results from an imbalance between our needs and the availability of conditions within our environment to get those needs satisfied.  This is the mission of all biological creatures, to live in a safe and secure environment, we are no different.  However, if we experience a life-threatening situation and we are unable to defend ourselves the extreme levels of stress generated are not launched, the body is captured in a fight/flight readiness with the accompanying physiological changes.  This inability to discharge these energies to act means we remain in a state of ‘readiness’.  This is the embodiment of trauma.

In its pure state the essence of trauma can be summarized as follows:

• The stability of life based on a steady expectation of what will happen has been shattered
• The victim has come face to face with their own vulnerability in the natural world; they can die or become extremely injured
• The victim has come face to face with the capacity for evil in human nature, their trust in the goodness of others is shattered

Childhood trauma, usually understood to be from birth to age six has a distinct set of features that have a profound impact on a child.  In these years the child has not developed the behaviours to protect themselves by fighting, hardly an option or fleeing and so they are much more vulnerable (they can freeze, that is, dissociate which will be discussed later).  The importance of their carer becomes another factor in the severity of childhood trauma. 

In one instance it may be that the parent whose own survival is threatened becomes unavailable to protect the child and so they feel abandoned.  For example a child witnessing an assault on say their mother will become extremely traumatised as she is their connection to survival.  Contrary to this tragic experience is when the malevolent acts of abuse unloaded onto the child by that caregiver or authority figure.  The very person they rely on to survive is trying to ‘kill’ them.  It is unwise to compare any psychological experiences but we can’t help thinking this latter practice is the most-evil form of abuse!

The results of prolonged stress are most tragic if the threats are present under the following conditions:

• Caused by human actions directed at the child
• Continually repeated, the abuse never seems to cease
• Unpredictable, there is no warning the attack is coming
• Multifaceted, the same technique of delivering the threat is not repeated
• Sadistic, there is a sense of real cruelty

 And to re-emphasise the final and perhaps the most menacing feature of a child’s trauma is when their primary caretaker is responsible for it. 

Another feature of childhood trauma is that it takes place at a time when the development of both the physiology of the brain and the belief systems are at their most emergent.  The significance of this has been detailed in a previous Newsletter (The Early Years and Dysfunctional Behaviour - Monday, February 14, 2022).  At this time we outlined the physical damage persistent and chronic stress does to the brain but because these are so profound they will be reproduced below.

•    The Amygdala, which is sensitive to fear is increased in size which makes the child very anxious.

•    The hippocampus is reported to have a 12% reduction in size which impacts on their ability to comprehend incoming stimulus and the formation of memories.

•    Prefrontal lobes are 20% smaller and have lesions on the surface.  It is in this area of the brain, often referred to as ‘the executive’ where complex decisions are made.

•    Cerebellum which is the area of the brain that evaluates the potential of danger or opportunity in the environment in relation to needs is reduced in size becoming more inefficient.

•    Reduced efficacy of the corpus callosum, that is the coordination between the brain’s hemispheres is compromised. 

It needs to be remembered that this is real physical damage to a child’s brain that results more often than not from the actions of a malevolent adult at a time when they are incapable of any defence against such abuse!

In the classroom you don’t get to see this damage but you will have to deal with the behaviours that are underpinned by it.  The major responses to all trauma, including children are as follows:

• Intrusion:
  • Vivid flashbacks of events
  • False memories
  • Nightmares
• Avoidance
  • Conscious or subconscious avoidance of situations that produce associated stress
• Hyperarousal
  • Enduring vigilance for, and sensitivity to, environmental ‘threats’

A more detailed description of the behavioural consequences of these responses are dealt with in detail in Chapter 3 of our book ‘Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids’ which is reproduced in the Resource Section of our Web Page Frew Consultants Group. 

The responses described above are broad descriptions of the impact early childhood trauma has on a victim.  How these characteristics are expressed is very individualised but the table below provides a useful summary of the expressions of early childhood PTSD.

Source:  The Centre for Child Trauma Assessment, Services and Interventions

                  Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences

                  Northwestern University - Chicago

In the next Newsletter we will discuss early childhood trauma and how it effects the child’s sense of self, how they come to the class in a sense already failing and following this will be the implications for the teacher.

However, more than anything the teacher will have to overcome some personal difficulties when dealing with these children.  It is important that the teacher: 

• Does not become critical and/or controlling

• Understands the difficulty the student is experiencing.
• Is not to be drawn into the role – ‘playing the part’ of who the student wants them to be.
• Remain involved, listening and persist with the child.

Students with early childhood trauma have rarely had positive experiences in forming healthy relationships.  Addressing this is the key to dealing with these kids but it is only one part of our approach which requires structure and expectations to support these relationships.

The Importance of Stress

Every teacher who works in difficult areas has had the experience of a student losing control of their behaviour for no apparent reason.  The catalyst might be something as simple as raising your voice at a boy who arrives late for class and interrupts the lesson; an all too familiar episode.  The child starts off by answering back and quickly escalates into swearing at the teacher and in some cases violently throwing chairs.  This intensification of dysfunctional behaviours corresponds to an increasing level of stress experienced by the student.  The thing is, the intensity of the outburst is not related to the incident.  This disproportionate reaction to a relatively minor indiscretion by students with a history of abuse and neglect is driven by their damaged fear response, linked to a previously stressful experience.  The understanding of stress is critical for coming to terms with the human condition and understanding this process will clarify our approach to dealing with these damaged children and similar situations in the classroom.

Stress is the fuel for all brain activity and it is the brain that drives behaviour.  It must be recognised that the brain’s only capacity is to initiate movement by engaging muscles to move body parts or activate chemicals to generate changes to our biology; things like the infusion of cortisol or adrenaline.  There is a strong acceptance of what stress is, it is an electro/chemical response to a person’s environment that fuels a bodily response. 

Much has been written about the importance of stress, after all we would not move if it was not there to drive our behaviour.  Moderate, predictable stress prepares us to cope with the general world.  Sports coaches and teachers are familiar with the following diagram.  This illustrates how we need an optimal level of stress to perform at our best.

If our level of arousal is too low we underperform, too high and we get the same result.  For a teacher the trick is to hit the goldilocks-spot, get the arousal just right.  The difficulty is that for thirty students there are thirty different curves.  What will optimise on one student might barely engage another or terrify a third.  It is obvious that for children who have been severely neglected or abused it is their inability to control their level of arousal in the wake of the teacher’s efforts to engage them in the lesson that creates the dysfunctional behaviour.  They are most likely to be on either end of the arousal scale and their learning will be minimal.

Almost exclusively the stress phenomena has been studied when something in the environment threatens survival. This is the ‘flight/fight/freeze response to get the body into a state of readiness to protect itself from harm.  In these cases the body produces chemicals including cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine.  For our work, helping teachers deal with students with severe dysfunctions, this focus on protection is pertinent.  However, understanding the process that initiates stress helps with a better understanding of why we advocate our approach to behaviour management, the manipulation of the classroom environment.

We accept that, like all biological species we are driven to survive and reproduce in the environment in which we inhabit.  We have needs that must be satisfied from our environment to maintain our existence and it is this balance between what we need and its availability that regulates our level of stress.  This balance is referred to as our point of homeostatic equilibrium, that is all our needs are being satisfied.  Of course, we can never remain in this state for long.  Our demands from the environment are constantly being renewed.  Take the example of our need for oxygen, when we breathe in we are satisfied but if you stop breathing you soon fall into a state of disequilibrium and you experience stress at increasing levels.  If conversely, the environment you are in, say underwater and you can’t readily breathe you experience the same stress response.

This life-threatening comparison between our need and the external world is stark.  However, as a species we have learned to control much of our environment most of the time.  Unlike many other species who are born with their behaviour requirements intact, a critical feature of human infants is that they have to learn much of the behaviours required.  It is the early childhood environment and the lessons taught that will significantly influence subsequent levels of stress and driven behaviours.  This comparison between observed conditions takes place in the cerebellum.   The cerebellum is often referred to as ‘the little brain’ because it looks like the whole brain with two hemispheres that sit each side of a central line, located above the brain stem and behind the midbrain.  Although it only occupies 10% of the brain’s volume it contains half the brain’s neurons. 

The schematic model presented below explains how the cerebellum makes this comparison between observed and expected conditions. 

External perceptions come into the cerebellum in a general sense via the thalamus, these are observations of the environment through our senses, touch, smell, sight, etc. These inputs enter via attached climbing fibres that inform the purkinje cells, large neurons with many branching extensions that is found in the cortex of the cerebellum.  Of all the thousands of perceptions there are of the environment we ‘attend’ to those that suggest conditions that represent an opportunity or threat.  How this comparison is made is from previous experiences, as I mentioned above, the brain can only initiate movement however, the brain’s genius is its ability to predict, to predict what will happen when threats or opportunities occur in the environment.  These predictions are founded in our memory, internal schemas of what happened before. 

The process is as follows, through our senses we observe the environment.  When we perceive a threat or opportunity this is referenced back into our memory.  These memories come into the cerebellum via the mossy fibres and on to the granular cells. It is this interaction between the granular cells and purkinje cells that determines the level of stress.  If we have a history of easily dealing with the environment there will be negligible stress.  However, if we have either no memory of a condition or it is a situation that we have never been able to successfully resolve then the stress levels will be elevated.  It is this last set of conditions that sheds light on why early, systematic childhood abuse leads to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  This will be discussed in detail in a later Newsletter but for now it is the creation of the memory that is significant.

It is the cerebellum that identifies the discrepancy but it is the amygdala that initiates the fight/flight/freeze response by the production of the neurochemicals mentioned above.  This response produces feelings ranging from anxiety through to terror.  If a child experiences high levels or prolonged fear their amygdala becomes more ‘efficient’ at recognising potential conditions of which to be fearful.  As mentioned in a previous Newsletter the amygdala of children subjected to abuse and/or neglect is significantly increased in size.

The result is that the neural pathways become so fine-tuned anxiety and fear become the normal conditions and the potential for positive pathways are excluded.  Of all the debilitating consequences of this physical injury the one that most frustrates those trying to work with these children is that they become unable to respond to nurturing and kindness.

Because of the urgency to deal with situations that generate the fear response the initiation of the amygdala impedes the messages from the cerebellum from reaching the hippocampus and the frontal lobes.  Because this cognitive arrangement of our brain is denied access the child is unable to make a more calculated assessment of the potential of maltreatment (the diagram below is a modification of the work of Joseph LeDoux an American neuroscience who specialises in the fear response).  This is why so many of the behaviour management programs employed by schools and mental health professionals fail when the child is stressed, their strategies are cognitively unavailable at that time.

As can be seen in LeDoux’s model when the stimulus comes in and is assessed in the cerebellum it goes to the thalamus, the distribution point for the presenting circumstances.  If it is a high threat it goes to the amygdala, the need for an immediate response is critical.  If, on the other hand conditions are not menacing the incoming message will go both to the amygdala and the hippocampus.  There is a link between these two but this is never effective in the short term.  For example, people who become trained in contact sports such as boxing can be conditioned to suppress the fear response when an opponent is throwing a punch at them.

Although experiences with high emotional content do generate a fear response they also create memories and remembering that the brain is a predictive system we can generate the fear response with our imagination.  If we think some abusive event might happen we become anxious, if we witness something that reminds us of that abusive incident we will re-experience that fear response.  These memories are foundational to anxiety, neurosis and paranoia not to mention PTSD!   

This is the first of a series of Newsletters dealing with stress, its causes and consequences for students.  Our approach to managing students who have been exposed to early childhood trauma is underpinned by this knowledge and why we focus on the control of the classroom environment.

Early Childhood Modelling

In this series of Newsletters we are examining the impact the early childhood environment has on the expression of behaviour in later life.  We do this with an emphasis on those factors that contribute to the development of displayed dysfunctional behaviours.  In the last Newsletter we discussed the impact neglect has on a child’s future disruptive actions.  In this we move on to the second cause of the destructive, dysfunctional conduct that interfere with the teaching and learning in our classrooms – the modelling of behaviour.

Our species has an extraordinary ability to imitate the behaviour of others.  This has allowed us to learn new behaviours just through watching others display particular actions.  This capacity is well known in all areas of teaching and particularly in coaching sport.  Demonstrations enhance the speed in which students or players learn to perform new skills.

What is really significant is that there is a considerable amount of imitation that takes place in the early years of development.  The celebrated child psychologist Jean Piaget observed the ability of infants to mimic the behaviours they observed in their caregivers.  This early work has been extended but not disputed by Andy Meltzoff author of ‘How Babies Think: the Science if Childhood’ (published by Weidenfielf & Nicholson – 1999).  He first observed what is a frequently sighted example of this when he described a new-born baby’s ability to poke out their tongue in response to their caregiver poking out their tongue, a demonstration of how infants were able to imitate behaviour only a few hours after their birth.  This is an example of the actions of mirror neurons!

Mirror neurons were first observed at the University of Parma in 1996 when a group of neuroscientists were busily mapping the neural pathways associated with hand movement in Macaque monkeys. The team of Rizzolatta, Gallese, and Fogassi uncovered what is potentially the most significant neurological component in human behaviour for our understanding of learning.

The discovery was made by accident. The breakthrough came when Fogassi returned to the laboratory and casually picked up a raisin from an experimental bowl. A Macaque monkey, who was still wired to electrodes used in the planned experiment was observing Fogassi and as he lifted his hand, the neural activity being tracked in the monkey’s brain displayed the same neural activity as if the monkey itself was reaching for the raisin, yet the monkey had not moved.

After replicating the experiment several times, the researchers realized that something new and significant had accidentally been uncovered. As a result of the series of papers following this discovery, the active neurons became known as mirror neurons. Subsequent research is progressively validating the significance of motor neurons, and they are shown to be present in most primates. In humans, they are particularly abundant and complicated.

More supporting evidence of the significance of mirror neurons emerged when Gallese and Rizzolatte found that when people listen to sentences describing actions, the same motor neurons fire as would have had the subject performed the action themselves or witnessed it being performed. The cells responded to an abstract representation that described a visual or visceral state.  This infers that watching others as well as listening to them influences the creation and the alteration of memories.

The existence of mirror neurons can explain:

• How we learn through mimicry, this is the heart of this essay.
• How we develop empathy, there is an inverse relationship between the display of dysfunctional behaviours of damaged children, particularly those who attract the diagnosis of Conduct Disorder and Oppositional, Defiant Disorder.
• Acquisition of physical skills, as mentioned above in regards to coaching sport.
• Language – the early effort to speak are manifested in the child’s attempts to reproduce the sound of the language prior to any attempt to communicate content.

We have to keep in mind that our brain’s primary purpose is to allow us to predict what will happen when we are confronted with a threatening or potentially supportive situation in the environment.  In early childhood we are building the store of memories that we will refer to later in life; mirror neurons accommodate this predictive requirement. 

In 2005, Iacoboni described two types of motor neurons: ones that respond to observed actions and ones that fire in response to the perceived purpose of that action. Iacoboni had volunteers watch films of people reaching for various objects in a dinner setting (teapot, cup, jug, plate of pastries, napkins) in different contexts. In every instance a basic set of neurons associated with the reaching for the setting fired, but different additional sets of mirror neurons would also fire depending on what expected action was suggested by the setting. For example, neatly set tables prepared for tea versus a setting that looked as though tea had been finished had disparate results. In the first instance, as the observer expected the person to pick up a teacup to drink, one set of neurons fired. However, if the viewer expected the hand to pick up a cup to clean it, another set fired. The interpreted purpose came from the arrangement of the objects, so consequent responses were different.  It has also been recognised that children acquire this ability to predict outcomes by their observations of their caregiver’s actions; this is another benefit of imitating them. 

Studies have revealed that parent-child interactions have shown that parents instinctively reflect their children’s actions, emotions and facial expressions back to them even before they are not yet able to imitate.  This is a type of reinforcement of a connection between actions and the observed outcomes, if the infant smiles that smile will be reflected back.

From the above observations it becomes obvious that the behaviour of a child that sits in your classroom is a reflection of the home in which they were raised.  A child’s parents is the greatest predictor of success or failure.  This is because they:

• Imitate the behaviour of their parents.  If the parent is forbidding, gloomy, threatening then the child will develop these traits.
• When the child displays the behaviour practiced in the home they will be reinforced.

In a sense a child being raised in these conditions learns to behave in ways that are functional in their early childhood, dysfunctional environment, that is the parent’s behaviour is offending to conventional social norms and when the child adopts these behaviours for other situations, such as in the classroom these behaviours will be dysfunctional!

There is a caveat to this model and that is about children raised by parents whose behaviour is chaotic, extremely unpredictable.  In these environments there is no consistent model to imitate and so there is no template for their behaviour.  This is a common problem for children raised by caregivers who are addicted, especially to mind-altering drugs.  These kids are also most likely to display dysfunctional behaviours but for different but connected reasons.  These impediments to the development of successful students will be discussed in a later Newsletter.

In the words of James Baldwin the American author and activist “children have never been good at listening to their elders but they never fail to imitate them”.

The Early Years and Dysfunctional Behaviour

There is no doubt that early childhood, usually defined as the first three years are critical in the development of a child’s self-perception which in turn drives their behaviour.  These years are important for many reasons not the least because up until age three children would not survive without the support of their caregiver.  Of course, very few, if any get to enjoy a perfect childhood but for the vast majority of our students it is more than adequate. 

The human brain does not burst into existence in a finished state it grows and evolves for at least 27 years but most intensely in early childhood.  The two illustrations below demonstrate this progression.

The first illustration shows the emergence of the functionality of the various areas of the brain shown by the changing deep blue and purple colouring.  You can see the frontal lobe doesn’t fully develop until the late teens and into the twenties.  These ‘blue areas’ also represent the activity of thinking which necessitates the use of memory.

The second diagram illustrates this progression up until they graduate from school.  In each period there are what is referred to as ‘windows of opportunity’ times when the brain is prepared to ‘learn’ new skills by providing an abundant supply of myaline used to reinforce the memories that drive the appropriate perception.  An example that is usually given for this phenomena is the acquisition of sight.  Like all memories it is the pairing of a stimulus with an interpretation of that stimulus that creates a memory.  For sight, the eyes project the various wave lengths of light on to the retina which, through the excitement of nerves called rods and cones sends a signal into the visual cortex of the brain for interpretation.  These interpretations become our memories of objects still and in motion.

However, if the child does not receive this stimulation before about eight months old, they will never properly interpret sight.  This is because for efficiency, once this critical time has past the brain flushes away the unused myaline and more tragically removes the inactive neurons.  This phenomena of memory acquisition is similar for all memories and the danger of inaccurate interpretation or lack of stimulation is at the core of dysfunctional behaviours due to early childhood abuse or neglect.  

In broad terms there are three types of parenting that lead to children having dysfunctional behaviours.  These are:

·         Neglect – the absence of appropriate stimulation for the establishment of memories that define a child’s sense of self which in turn drives behaviour.  The unused neurons are removed from the brain in the quest for efficiency, they can’t be re-established.

·         Poor Modelling – a child learns to behave in ways that are functional in dysfunctional environments, that is the parent’s behaviour is offending to conventional social norms and the child adopts these behaviours.

·         Childhood Abuse – this is often seen as the major cause of dysfunctional behaviour and there is every reason to believe this is true.  The severe levels of stress generated in those times of abuse do real, physical and emotional damage to the child.

Of course, there are other more obscure causes such as one-off traumatic events or illness that can interrupt a child’s ‘normal’ development.  However, too many children get a combination of all three of these destructive ingredients.  A detailed discussion of each will take place in the following Newsletters but in this edition we will examine neglect.

Nothing is straight forward and neglect has a series of impacts on the behavioural development.  Not the least is the impact on the formation of their sense of self resulting from interference with a child’s sense of attachment. As pointed out above, a child needs a caregiver to survive for at least the first three years.  We are hard-wired to form these attachments in early childhood and how this happens will shape the brain.

Children will make an unconscious judgement about the security of that relationship with the caregiver between the seventh and eleventh month.  Security is the key, if the child can rely on the caregiver to always (well nearly always) meet their needs then the child will develop a secure attachment.  The certainty of outcomes allows the child to build a confident, optimistic sense of self, they are confirmed as being important.

In some cases the attention from the parent is inconsistent, sometimes their parents will pay attention other times they will be ignored.  This triggers a fear that they will be abandoned.  This is referred to as anxious attachment and children with this profile are often very needy and become clingy to their parents.

Some parents are not responsive to their child, they are emotionally unavailable.  These parents are dismissive to the needs of the child.  Children raised in this environment learn not to expect a sensitive response to their needs when stressed and so they develop a lack of trust.  This is referred to as avoidant attachment.

The final type is referred to as disorganised attachment because the environment they are raised in is chaotic and unpredictable.  The child craves attention but it steers clear of the parent because they fear what will eventuate.  The secure, predictable home life they crave just doesn’t exist.

The graph above indicates the impact each style of attachment has on a child’s anxiety and how they will avoid relying on adults.  Only children with secure attachment find the creation of relationships with others, especially their teachers, rewarding.  The significance of attachment is important and these descriptions provide only a rudimentary outline of this process.

Early in this work we discussed the windows of opportunity where the brain is primed for new learning but if the required stimulus is not forth-coming the myaline and the neurons are pruned from the brain.  This is particularly important for attachment because, if in the time ‘allocated’ to hard wire the ability to attach securely, the appropriate stimulus was not present it becomes almost impossible to create them later in life.  This has significant implications in forming secure adult relationships.

This pruning will take place for all the required learning in the first three years which is the time a child really develops their sense of self.  The real tragedy is the amount of neural material that can be reformed or removed.  For example:

•      The Amygdala, which is sensitive to fear is increased in size which makes the child very anxious.

•      Hippocampus is reported to have a 12% reduction in size which impacts on their ability to comprehend incoming stimulus and the formation of memories.

•      Prefrontal lobes are 20% smaller and have lesions on the surface.  It is in this area of the brain, often referred to as ‘the executive’ where complex decisions are made.

•      Cerebellum which is the area of the brain that evaluates the potential of danger or opportunity in the environment in relation to needs is reduced in size becoming more inefficient.

•      Reduced efficacy of the corpus callosum, that is the coordination between the brain’s hemispheres is compromised.

It is important to note that neglect is not the only cause of these injuries, extreme levels of stress associated with abuse also significantly contributes to the alterations of the neural landscape.  This situation will be discussed in a later Newsletter and it is frequently the case, abuse and neglect work in tandem for too many of these children.  In any case these injuries result in permanent, intellectual disability. 

An extreme example of the damage to the brain is shown in the now imfamous MRI image of children raised in the hell holes which were the orphanages in Romania under the reign of Nicolae Ceausescu.  Too many children were condemned to lie in their cots without ever being attended to beyond their basic needs.

It can be seen just how much damage has occurred and follow-up studies has shown that this disability continues.  The difference is, the younger the child was when adopted the better chance they had of partially overcoming this permanent damage.

This neglect is not always deliberate as was the Romanian experience.  Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz, in their extraordinary book ‘The Boy who Thought He was a Dog’ (Publish by Basic Books – 2006) describes the child of an intellectually delayed mother who could not cope with the demands of a new born baby would leave it alone in its cot all day while she travelled around the city.  This child lacked any ability to connect with others and became a sociopath, if not a psychopath.  Perry describes the factors that created what became a vicious killer and how this young teen could not comprehend why everyone was upset.  I highly recommend this and any other work done by Bruce Perry, he is a leader in this field.

 These are extreme examples but the damage is on a sliding scale and teachers should be aware that some of the students who you find difficult to engage with are that way because of what happened to them when they were babies.  Its not their fault and it is our responsibility to help them overcome their cognitive injuries.

In our review of the previous Newsletters we have tried to underline how the development of a child with severe behaviours is linked to the environment in which they were raised.  Understanding the cause of their dysfunctional behaviour will inform the approach we take to help teachers manage and in some cases modify that behaviour.  It is important to note that our model does not apply to those children who have genetic disabilities or psychotic illness, as the cause of their behaviour is not developmental.  However, it is my experience that the adoption of the interventions we advocate when dealing with these children will be an effective non-medical intervention.  All our interventions rely on the provision of an environment that is predictable, consistent and persistent and that provides an environment of safety for both the teacher and student.

Our work is underpinned by two fundamental beliefs:

1. Our brain exists to support our life by directing our physical actions in response to threats or opportunities in our environment
2. The choice of that action depends on our memory of what worked before to best satisfy our needs

When you consider the demands on our body to continually support life and the complexity of the brain, these factors seem inadequate.  However, these underlying principles drive a really complex narrative which will be the theme of these latest Newsletters.

In the last Newsletter we examined the brain and how any conditions in the environment could activate activity to drive behaviour.  In this essay we examine the formation of our sense of self that defines our identity and our temperament, this is our consciousness and how we behave in any given situation this will be based on the nature of our ‘self’. 

Just how much of our self is determined by our genetics or how we are fostered is the age-old question, is it nature or nurture.  There is no doubt our genes do play a part in our character, things like temperament but it is generally accepted that the quality of our family of origin is the main predictor of our personality.  In any case, we have little chance to alter our genetic profile (excluding the phenomena of epigenetics) so we need to concentrate on how the quality of their nurturing impacts their future behaviour.  So, the ‘sense of self’ is developed in an environment and the characteristics of that environment will play a significant role in the manner in which each individual behaves when they are confronted with similar environmental features.

Those students with dysfunctional behaviours have evolved their responses to various circumstances as a result of the ‘lessons’ they received from their family of origin.  This is why mental illnesses such as Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiance Disorders are considered developmental, these are learned.  The following describes the process of constructing our sense of self!

The schematic shown below illustrates the process by which memories of behaviours, the basis of our sense of self is acquired.  This occurs in stages:

1. In the first instance we find our self, our sense of self in a situation.  If that situation does not threaten our sense of equilibrium then nothing happens.  However, if the conditions in the environment impacts on our equilibrium than we have to act to alleviate the stress that is a consequence of this imbalance.
2. We have to decide what to do and this will require us to reflect on our memories to decide what we consider the optimal action we should take.  These memories are of previous events that have the same or similar threats or promises.  This process happens instantaneously condemning these children to those behaviours learned in a dysfunctional home.
3. When we act there will be a consequence.  The consequence might be that the actions solved the imbalance and we return to equilibrium.  This outcome is fed back into our memory and the behaviour is reinforced.  If the action does not deal with the problem and the discomfort remains, that outcome is also fed back into our memories and sense of uncertainty changes our memories.  We will try a different action until the situation is resolved or we moved on without a resolution.
4. Every time this sequence is executed our sense of self is changed and we return to the problem in the environment differently.

You will notice that there are two types of memories on the schematic; emotional and cognitive.  There is a significant difference between these which will be addressed later when we examine consciousness in more detail.

Memories begin simply, young children first learn rudimentary behaviours.  When they are hungry they need mum to feed them so they learn to cry and (hopefully) when she does a lesson is learned.  This link between crying and getting fed becomes a fundamental memory which will modify as the child learns more sophisticated behaviours.  The initial memory is not forgotten but becomes much more complex.  There is an attachment that coincides with the provision of those things we need, those who support us through these years when we can’t fend for ourselves.  For now, we will concentrate on the acquisition of behaviours but it is in these early years children form attachments to caregivers and the security of those attachments will be discussed in a later Newsletter.   

These complex memories form a series of schemas across our brain and each will display many of the characteristics of a fractal as seen below.  Unlike a fractal they are not an identical repeat of the first pattern but each a slight modification of that first memory.

Within each schema of behaviours associated with the primary memory there will be a leading behavioural candidate for any situation that threatens our equilibrium.  This preferred behaviour will have achieved dominance because it has been used successfully the most times.  This reflects one of the principles of behaviour development, ‘neurons that fire together wire together’.  This is not to exclude change.  Remember, if the behaviour doesn’t address the disequilibrium then you try different things and your memories change.  Nothing is stable!

Life is extremely complex and there are many schemas across the brain in the form of hubs.  Recent research has identified 180 separate hubs, specialist fractals of memory and each is connected via axonal pathways.  The ability to consider solutions from more than one schema but sampling from other hubs we can create alternate solutions or even unique ones.  This blending of memories becomes most effective when our prefrontal lobes mature.  This is where our working memory is co-ordinated and that ‘co-ordination’ is the analysis of our connectome!

This ability to combine multiple clues associated with the incoming stimulus from the external world, allows us to combine multidimensional stimulus into a single perception.  We then assess the potential effectiveness of any behaviour that we might choose to address that external environment.  This connection, our connectome holds all our memories, it is our ‘self’.

From the information above it is obvious that the greatest predictor of a child’s success is the family characteristics in which they are raised.  Of course, the child had no choice about where and to whom they were born and this makes a mockery of concepts like meritocracy.  And, it must be remembered the concept of guilt becomes much more complicated.  What we do know is that those children we focus on come to school with dysfunctional behaviours that they have acquired and it is our task to help them develop alternate ways of behaving, for their sake and the sake of their classmates.  Their history does not have to be their destiny and we have the privilege of supporting that change!

Time For Revision

Welcome back to our Newsletters for 2022.  It has been a long journey from our first offering in March of 2017 up until the end of last year, December 2021.  In that time we have published 186 free editions.  A lot has changed over these years, some dramatic and sequential such as the impact of COVID and others gradual and progressive like the emergence of the punitive demand for accountability.  The first exacerbation, the pandemic is a problem shared across the community including the unfair increase in teachers’ workload that is a burden placed on a single part of our community; the teachers.  So, we go into a new year with teachers being subjected to even more pressure without any significant increase in assistance.

One major demand on teachers that was there before the pandemic and has been there since the beginning of organised education is the management of classroom behaviour.  Helping teachers address this issue has underpinned all of our work and it will continue to be that way.  I believe it is time we reflected on the work we have done, revisit crucial issues and create, if you like a second edition of many of the significant subjects integrating new material.  In this essay we will examine the benefits of having a calm and safe classroom.

The brain is at the heart of all behaviour, if not the brain than what?  Our approach accepts the thesis proposed by Richard Dawkins in his seminal work the Selfish Gene and that is our fundamental drive in life is to survive and reproduce. To survive requires an optimal set of environmental conditions that support life.  These conditions allow us to maintain our body in a steady state of internal biological, physical, social and intellectual equilibrium a condition referred to as homeostasis.  When the perceived conditions of the external environment will not satisfy our needs we are in a state of disequilibrium.  When we are in this state our cognitive energy focuses on behaving in a way to return to equilibrium. 

We have what is referred to as a triune brain, that is three levels that have developed sequentially over time.  The first is the brain stem and mid brain, often referred to as the reptilian brain.  This is the area that deals with our biological and physical demands.  Things like heart-beat, blood pressure, balance and other body motions (see illustration below).

The next level to emerge is the limbic system; that area of the brain that attends to our social needs and consequentially our emotional status.  The development of this area of our brain occurred when, as a species we appreciated the advantage working in groups provided for each individual.  Much of our work will focus on this social brain but for this particular paper we will explain the impediment for learning outcomes that result from the limbic system being in a state of disequilibrium or homeostatic disequilibrium.

The last stage of our cognitive development occurred when we realised the advantage that could be experienced when we used tools.  This was the start of the development of our intellectual brain or our cerebral cortex including the important prefrontal lobes.  How far we have come as a species is reflected in the types of tools we use today.  We have come from using early stone tools to things like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is the world's largest energy particle collider that measures minute sun-atomic particles.  The fact we have evolved to this level is a tribute to the advances in our thinking and we owe all of this to our ability to educate the next generation. 

The development of this area of the brain has been so significant the additional neural material required increased the volume of the brain to such an extent it no longer fitted in our skull.  This accounts for the cerebral cortex being folded, providing a greater surface area in the confined volume of our head.

It is this part of the brain we are interested in as teachers however, we can only optimise our access to this if the other areas are in homeostasis.  We use all our brain all the time, for instance we require oxygen to breathe and about every 30 seconds or so we need to refresh the supply of air to our lungs.  This requires cognitive energy albeit at the unconscious level.  The thing is that if we want to maximise our access to the student’s intellectual brain we need to minimise the demands from our physical/biological and social brain.  The sum total of all our cognitive energy can be described as a percentage, the more of that percentage is accessible to our cerebral cortex the more efficient our learning will be.  The illustration below explains this circumstance.

It can be seen that only when the physical, biological and social needs are not too demanding then we have a greater access to that part of the brain needed for academic learning.  We have evolved to pay attention to intellectual problems when we feel safe.

There is plenty of evidence that dysfunctional behaviours in the classroom is the greatest impediment to learning.  John Hattie identifies their presence and the environment in the classroom as two of the top three impediments to learning.  There is an obvious close relationship between classroom environment and the presence of these students and combined they would constitute the leading cause of student failure in our system.  This is a condition where the social demands rob the intellectual potential.  We all understand how that disruptive student commands the attention of the teacher and the other students.

In any case, collectively or alone these factors have been identified as more significant than the quality of the teacher yet the focus on learning improvement is completely focused on the latter element.  If you take the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers as an indicator of how the Department accepts these findings, a superficial look at these might suggest that there is a recognition that the child’s physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students are considered.  For example, in Professional Knowledge the Requirements - the following guiding principles are given beginning with the basic level:

• Standard 1.1 ‘Know Students and How They Learn’ you get:

• Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students and how these may affect learning.

But if you examine the Professional Engagement, the top level of knowledge required you get:

• 6.1 Identify and plan professional learning needs:
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the role of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in identifying professional learning needs
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the role of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in identifying professional learning needs

• 7.1 Meet professional ethics and responsibilities:
  • Understand and apply the key principles described in codes of ethics and conduct for the teaching profession.

No where is the issue of managing severely disrupted students even acknowledged as a ‘professional requirement’.  Any beginning teacher and most of their experienced colleagues will cite the issue of behaviour management as one of the major impediments to the maximisation of their teaching and their student’s learning. 

I hope this Newsletter sets the scene for upcoming papers that focus on approaches that will allow students to learn in a calm and secure environment.

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