by Iwona Zak
MSci Psychology, UCL
Over the past decade, the number of pupils attending school in the UK has increased by one million, with a total of nearly 10 million students in 2023. This means 10 million children and adolescents are in an optimal environment for learning, forming friendships and developing their social and emotional identities, or so is seems.
Child and adolescent development tends to be defined through academic progress, based on grades and curriculum achievements – especially in the later years. As rewarding as good grades are, they reveal little about a child’s social, emotional, mental or physical development.
Over the last 20 years, mental health problems in children and adolescents in England have been progressively increasing. Alongside this, the national behaviour reports have shown student misbehaviour has substantially grown, and many children have stated they do not feel safe at schools. It appears that the recent COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have catalysed these increases, with Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) reporting child social skills, misbehaviour rates and anxiety levels have suffered the most.
When children and adolescents experience mental health problems a domino effect begins. They are more likely to have lower academic achievements, engage in health risk behaviours, self-harm and even attempt suicide.
Children are not the only ones being affected. The school work force is just short of one million members, including teachers and teaching assistants. School staff have also reported the growing negative impacts of the school environment, describing loss of time due to misbehaviour and personal decreases in wellbeing. Combining the increasing numbers of students and the deteriorating effects of the pandemic, there is little surprise to why school staff are also in distress.
So, both school staff and students are suffering, with child and adolescent mental health problems on the rise. Realistically, can anything be done to help? The traditional school system has been around for as long as we know, but is there any way we could make the members of schools more… resilient?
Resilience is the ability to regain and/or maintain well-being when faced with hardship and adversity – often having a better response when met with stress whether emotional, personal, social or biological.
Rather than directly reducing something stressful, increasing resilience can increase the possibility of a positive outcome when met with something stressful – because let’s face it, it is impossible to discard things such as bad grades, misbehaviours/misbehaving students or even a whole pandemic. Stressful events in life will continue, and possibly increase as we know. Worries are not easily going to disappear, and stressors will persist. Therefore, if we cannot get rid of them, we can try to alter our responses to them in a positive way.
Benefits of high levels of resilience have been shown to guard against physical and mental distress. This means those students at risk of mental health problems could potentially be protected from the detrimental effects.
Theoretically, in the school environment a student with good resilience would be impacted less by negative stressors, which would influence both their mental and physical responses. Mentally, the student would be prepared to experience something stressful and deal with it in a healthier way. Similarly, physically the student would be less likely to react disruptively, as they have processed the stressor using more resilient methods.
For example, let’s imagine a student receiving an unexpected bad grade. At first the student may panic internally, with raised stress, fear and sadness levels. This panic can impact their mental states further, raising thoughts of failure or not being good enough. Their emotions can also influence their direct actions, for example not wanting to partake in the subject lessons anymore and causing class disruptions.
Now let’s imagine the student having developed good resilience. The negative beliefs may still initially persist, however this time the student may have further thoughts of possibly asking for help or having a second opportunity to improve. Here, we can see that the student had a more resilient reaction to the stressful bad grade, altering their future emotions and behaviours positively.
In summary, high levels of resilience would help children and adolescents deal with stress and protect against mental and physical distress. Resilience can be improved via intervention, but how can we implement this into school settings? There is little time in the already packed student curriculum to provide extra lessons, therefore targeting an already existing factor in the school system can be more efficient, for example, teaching methods.
We can all probably remember a disruptive student in our primary- or high-school classes. They would essentially cause some chaos, maybe get their name on the board, get a detention and in the worst cases be removed from the class, occasionally sent to the headteacher. This could further develop into losing their break times, or even after school times, being put on a behaviour report card and a general loss of student privileges.
Although this ‘deals’ with the supposed problem of classroom disruption, the problem is only contained – not solved. Not only will the student continue to misbehave, but also deteriorate academically, as they are not following the lesson plans and have limited contact with their direct subject teachers. Socially and emotionally, the child may also suffer from being isolated from classmates and friends during lessons and breaks, limiting their development.
Punitive teaching methods of detentions, report cards, extra work and exclusions do not only not solve the problem, but they also potentially worsen it by putting more pressure on the pupil. Combining this with the growing rates of children and adolescents' mental health problems, the traditional teaching methods may not be fit to use anymore. Which brings the question, is it time for a new approach in teaching?
Instead of teaching methods causing more stress, they can be altered to help deal with stress, or in other words a resilience-based teaching approach can be implemented. It’s easy to say that change needs to happen, but what exactly can we alter within teaching methods?
An important aspect of education is the student-teacher interaction and mutual understanding. It is common for students to move around classrooms multiple times a day, seeing multiple teachers. The teachers not only provide academic knowledge, but also indirectly help build personal skills. Therefore, this key interaction should be enhanced where possible, which can help build resilience.
One thing that could be implemented is a move towards emotionally friendly communication with students. This would involve phrases that can support recovery and repair, offering guidance, for example: “I know it’s frustrating playing football sometimes. It’s a shame Sam got hurt isn’t it. How could we help him to feel better? Yes, a cold compress would help. Sometimes it helps when we say sorry.” Or help problem solve: “Help me to think of a good way to move this forward …” Here, instead of a teacher using verbal warnings and punishments, they offer a new alternative, which enables a learning opportunity.
The punishments that are detrimental to the student have been removed and the pupil is also less likely to repeat a disruptive behaviour again as well as exhibit a more positive response. For meaningful change to occur, acknowledging a student's behaviour is bad is not enough, the behaviour should be understood and processed. Providing children and adolescents with personal resources of dealing with negative experiences through the use of understanding and supportive language will help them in the future.
This resilience-based approach has been implemented in several schools already and teachers identified the benefits of improved resilience in students in: improved attendance, higher personal responsibility, better emotional control and greater feelings of belonging. It may be too early to tell; however, these children may now have greater resistance to developing future mental health problems and complications due to their improved resilience.
On top of the student benefits, teachers themselves have reported personal gains. These included, improved interactions with students, new methods of responding to class disruptions and increased confidence. This suggests as well as improving student resilience, staff may also see resilience approach benefits within themselves.
Conclusion
Currently in a school environment both children and teachers are stressed, and this is not good for anyone’s wellbeing. What could help, is an increased level of resilience, which can be achieved through a change to the education system, specifically teaching approaches. If we move away from punitive teaching approaches, and towards student-centred resilience approaches, long-term benefits can be achieved within education and personal student futures.
Key references:
Resilience-based school approach:
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