There is a critical aspect of teacher education that is overlooked. Teacher training is not preparing teachers for the increasing mental health issues arising daily in their classrooms.
Usually, a student teacher is someone who has enjoyed their own time in school and who may not readily connect with young people who are having a different experience of school. Indeed, they may have very little understanding of people who think differently to them.
A simple module which incorporates insights into adolescent brain development should be a prerequisite.
Increasingly there are reports that students are finding the environment at school stressful or irrelevant. There are no exact numbers of the growing school refusal in Ireland but on any given day in 2023 there was reportedly 60,000 students not at school. The Chair of the Irish Forum for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Jane O’Keefe has said it is the tip of the iceberg and numbers are escalating ( *Apr 2023 ). In light of the huge gap in mental health supports that remain, the duty of care mainly lies with the teacher.
Recent advances in the fields of adolescent neuroscience and psychology could be embraced to equip teachers to meet students where they are developmentally.
There are huge structural and functional differences between teenage and adult brains which bring new possibilities and opportunities for learning. An example is the amygdala, a region associated with emotion processing, tends to mature earlier than the prefrontal cortex. This imbalance leads to heightened emotional responses and difficulties in accurately reading and interpreting emotions.
Previous ideas that puberty was dominated only by hormonal changes have been eclipsed by the knowledge that this is a critical stage of brain development, only second to the toddler stage. It takes years for the pre frontal cortex to fully develop and at the beginning of puberty emotions such as anger and fear are heightened along with still under development skills such as decision making, thinking ahead, balancing risks and controlling impulses.
Our students have changes in schools, bodies, social relationships, thoughts, emotions all happening simultaneously when they arrive in 1st year.
Mental health challenges unsurprisingly often first emerge during this period of change. Could we use our understanding of these huge shifts in mental states and period of intense growth in the brain to better understand mental health challenges?
Teachers need to understand the diverse cognitive processes of teenage boys and girls, adapting teaching methods to nurture their strengths, address their unique challenges and meet them where they are developmentally. I mention boys and girls because there is a general difference in patterns of behaviour. Walk into most classes and the boys dominate and the girls stay quiet.
As girls approach adolescence, societal expectations and biological changes contribute to risk aversion and perfectionism. Oestrogen, flooding their brains during this period, heightens emotional intelligence but also fosters caution and aversion to risk. Girls may avoid failure to maintain an image of perfection, stopping their willingness to take healthy risks and build confidence. There is a biological reason for this and even naming this to both sexes builds empathy. On the other hand in many boys, the area of the brain that controls risk-taking and self-control is in full developmental swing and that influences many of their emotional responses and can be misunderstood as misbehaviour. But again just naming it can help self-awareness and encourage students to work on their development.
When I tell students in 1st or 2nd year about their fascinating brain development, they find it helpful and reassuring. They feel they are not alone in having these complex emotions. Even more importantly they realise that change is possible and any negative state will not stay as it is. Scientists know how malleable and capable of change young brains are at this stage and understanding this science can free learners from negative labels.
Most of us think risk taking in teens is bad but positive risk taking like joining a lunchtime club, running for student council, or trying a new sport should all be encouraged.
Creating an atmosphere where mistakes are embraced rather than criticised can diminish the fear of failure, facilitating a more risk-friendly learning environment.
By equipping teachers with the knowledge to understand the human in front of them, as works in progress, and collaborating with the students to build understanding about the changes and challenges they face, teachers could help students avoid some of the anxiety in schools. Being a teenager is hard.
Our young people are sensitive and understandably so. They are sensitive to criticism, social judgement, feelings of belonging and acceptance. Teachers learning about the science of the teenage brain could have healthier outcomes for some students.
Typically during the teacher training process, a new student teacher will shadow an experienced teacher but maybe it is time to prioritise a process where we start with observing the learner first.
An understanding of brain development will not help with curriculum design or teaching pedagogies but it would help understand what motivates a young mind to learn during this fascinating stage full of promise and opportunity.
Reading sources : The Teacher and the Teenage Brain by John Coleman and The Confidence Code for Girls by Kay, Shipman