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What Really Happens when you Raise your Voice to Students?

For your most vulnerable students, harsh discipline could be doing more harm than good, warns Dr Margot Sunderland…

Dr Margot Sunderland
by Dr Margot Sunderland
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Neuroscience research over the last 20 years has shown that how adults interact with children and teenagers can trigger bad or good behaviour – particularly if the young person has a history of trauma or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

ACEs are stressful life events occurring in childhood, such as domestic violence, emotional neglect, parents separating, or living with a parent with mental health issues and/or an alcohol or drug problem.

If a student has experienced four or more ACES, they are 32 times more likely to exhibit challenging behaviour than a child who has not experienced any.

Furthermore, harsh discipline, such as isolation, shaming, shouting, suspensions and exclusions can re-traumatise students who are already traumatised, and lead to mental health issues later in life.

However, the good news is that through protective factors, such as ‘social buffering’, which occurs when a child forms a secure attachment with an emotionally available adult, the trajectory from ACEs to mental health problems and failure to thrive in adult years can be interrupted.

And what better place to interrupt this transition than in school, where teachers have 190 days of contact a year with students?

This is why it’s so important for educators to relate to students in ways that heal rather than harm their brains, and alleviate rather than exacerbate challenging behaviour.

Voice of reason

So what happens, exactly, in teenagers’ brains when they are being disciplined?

Shaming a student, such as by putting their name up on the board for misbehaviour, can trigger the pain centre in a teen’s brain – the sensation they will feel is akin to the discomfort experienced when touching a hot oven.

The student can then begin to associate school itself with pain and fear, and somewhere they want to avoid.

Shame causes inflammation in the body and can have a significant and detrimental impact on a young person’s mental and physical health outcomes.

As humans, our physiological social engagement system impacts on how we respond to situations, especially when we are under stress or pressure, and facial and vocal cues can trigger certain responses for teenagers, particularly those with a history of trauma.

For example, a teacher smiling and using a warm, soothing tone of voice when speaking to a student will trigger natural opioids and oxytocin in the young person’s brain, which help to make them feel safe and calm.

Conversely, if a teacher has a stern, or even neutral expression, and shouts or speaks in a harsh tone, high levels of stress hormones trigger in the student’s brain, instinctively taking them into a defensive mode of fear or anger – either flight, fight or freeze.

This tends to result in either challenging or withdrawn behaviour and shuts down the frontal lobes, which are key for learning and ability to attend to what the teacher is saying. The pupil’s thinking becomes very poor, and their IQ drops significantly.

To avoid such occurrences, senior leads should look at providing training in social engagement (including voice training) for teachers to ensure the link between tone of voice and facial expressions and the production of calming or stress-inducing chemical in students’ brains is better understood and informs teacher-student interactions.

A restorative approach

Another common form of punishment in schools that has a negative psychological impact on a student’s brain is the use of suspensions. In fact, being suspended just once dramatically increases the likelihood that a young person will drop out of school entirely.

It sends a message to the student that school is a place that doesn’t want them, which can lead to feelings of abandonment and neglect, particularly among individuals with a history of trauma or mental ill health.

School should be a place that makes learners feel nurtured, safe and part of a community, as we know this calms physiology and reduces the chances of challenging behaviour dramatically.

The ‘learning’ from punishment is usually that ‘I am a bad kid’ – instead, schools should be focusing on teaching students social and emotional intelligence as well as cognitive intelligence.

One great way to develop such skills is through the use of restorative conversations as a behaviour management tool.

This involves misbehaving students being removed from the classroom, but rather than being placed in isolation (no learning) a teacher trained in restorative practice will ask the young person a series of questions, such as: How are you feeling? What happened? What were you thinking at the time you misbehaved?

The teacher will also help the student to work towards a resolution. Often, through such curiosity teachers will discover an underlying reason for the child’s behaviour – they may have been bullied on the way to school or they may have heard their parents arguing the night before.

There is usually an untold narrative just waiting to be heard. Skills such as empathy and the ability to reflect well are essential in leading an effective restorative conversation with students.

A wealth of research has indicated that restorative conversations lead to a reduction in bad behaviour, detentions and exclusions, as well as help students develop social and emotional intelligence.

Harsh discipline will result in anger or fear, whereas restorative conversation can lead to thoughtfulness and reflection on the part of the student.

Positive policies

It is hugely beneficial for schools to adopt a whole-school approach to behaviour management that incorporates relationship policies (for staff) as well as behaviour policies for pupils.

Such policies take into account the adult-child interactions that are likely to trigger challenging behaviour and those that heal students and result in good behaviour and improved social skills.

Relationship policies also consider the underlying causes of challenging behaviour, such as ACEs and mental ill health. In addition, before writing a behaviour policy, it is essential for schools to understand the neuroscience behind behaviour.

Through the provision of secure attachments with emotionally available adults, which come about through empathy, attunement and treating students with dignity – students can thrive in the school environment.

Secure attachments to teachers have been associated with higher grades, greater emotional regulation, social competence, willingness to take on challenges and overall improved behaviour.

Dr Margot Sunderland is a child psychologist, psychotherapist, neuroscience expert and author. She is also the director of education and training at the Centre for Child Mental Health, a leading provider of mental health and trauma training in schools.

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