building attentional control

Every teacher has experienced the frustration of a class that is struggling to pay attention, or of individual learners who have become distracted and unfocused. A wasp buzzing around the room, a flurry of snow outside, or even just last lesson on a Friday - it's hard to teach when your children are struggling to focus on learning. Clearly, we need our learners to develop the ability to pay attention to what is being said or done in the classroom, and to maintain their focus for gradually increasing periods of time. Attending to what a teacher is saying is central to the way in which we learn; focusing fully on a learning task is the best way to succeed at it. When our learners reach the point towards the end of their school careers, where they take their external exams, they are going to need to focus and maintain their attention for hours at a time to achieve their best. By exploring the way in which attentional control develops, we can understand more about how to support this progression over time.

As with other self-regulation skills, our survival as a species has depended on our ability to be ‘distractible’ – to instinctively move our attention to an unusual noise or to a strange scent in the air. In ancient times, the way that our senses notice the unexpected in the environment would have helped to keep us safe – picking up on the noise of an animal prowling outside our cave or on the smell of food that had gone rotten. The modern world is packed full of sensory information, and if our brains paid attention to everything that our senses were perceiving, we would be overwhelmed and unable to cope. Gradually, as children develop, their brains begin to help them filter out what sensory information is not useful and to focus on what is. You can see the issue of sensory overload clearly where children have a sensory processing disorder, often linked to special needs such as autism or ADHD. They can become overwhelmed with ‘too much information’ and this leads them to either shut down or become completely dysregulated.

The development of attentional control forms a key part of children’s gradually developing self-regulation skills. Not only do we need to learn how to filter out superfluous sensory information, but we must also learn how to focus, and how to move our attention from one thing to another, in conjunction with our peers. The teacher explaining something, then pointing to it on the board; a resource that the teacher holds up to demonstrate a concept; a peer answering a question that the teacher has asked. We need to move our focus and attention between these aspects of learning in the classroom, building a skill that is referred to as ‘shared attention’, where we pay attention alongside and in conjunction with others. Attentional control is primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain and it is closely linked to executive functions such as working memory. A baby will struggle to move their attention from something that has ‘captured’ it, but gradually, as our frontal lobes develop, we become more adept at moving our attention around and focusing on a specific goal.

Because of the impact of different sensory inputs within the environment, it is very useful for educators to become aware of the potential for these to distract within their teaching space. This might involve an overload of visuals on the walls; it could be about a buzzing noise from the projector. A very useful idea for identifying sensory inputs is to sit where the learners sit at a time when they are not in the room. We tend to conceptualise our classrooms from our usual teaching position, stood at the front, but the view that your children get will be completely different to yours. Not only will it be from a different angle, but it will also be on a different level, since they will typically be sat down. Similarly, if you are working with babies and very young children, it is very useful to experience the environment from their perspective. For instance, lying down where your changing mat is, to check whether there is a bright light in their eyes, or entering your room at toddler level, to check what they will see and pick up on first.

It is useful to consider how we perceive the act of paying attention. In other words, just because our learners look like they are paying attention, because they are silent, does not mean that they are actively listening. Similarly, demanding that young people look at me when I’m talking to you does not necessarily lead to better attention, even though it might feel to us as though it does. Children with autism may become more distracted rather than less, by a demand to look into your eyes, as they start to ponder the colour or the shape or the patterns of your irises. The act of ‘checking for understanding’ often becomes an act of ‘checking for attention’, with the two overlapping to an extent. Again, though, it is worth remembering that just because a learner can tell you that you said they only have three minutes to complete a task, doesn’t mean that they actually conceptualised the idea of a short time frame. Where you can back up these kinds of inputs with a concrete example – a three minute sand timer, for instance – this will help your children focus on and understand the instruction more fully.

It is very important for us as educators to be realistic about attention and focus, and about the potential for distractions. Where we see the class gradually losing focus, this sends us a signal that perhaps we have gone on too long with our explanation, or kept them static for too long, and that we need to change up our approach or get them moving. In my latest book I explore the tension between this idea that distracted behaviour is communicating information to us about the learners’ state of mind, their impulse control levels, the ability of their brains to pay attention, and the demand that they move their bodies in a specific way (for instance in the 'SLANT' technique). What we need as teacher is authentic information about levels of concentration, rather than the impression of focus taking place.

Although it is not a scientific measure, a useful rule of thumb for concentration spans is ‘their age, plus two’. This categorically does not mean that a five-year-old can only concentrate for seven minutes. What is does mean is that, after around seven minutes (or less), if the children are starting to lose focus it is wise to ‘change up’ your approach from talking to the class, perhaps by doing a quick mini whiteboard activity or getting the children to chat with a talk partner. If you think about how your own concentration levels fade, for instance after a long day of listening to a CPD session, you will see how important it is to adapt the type of sensory inputs as you go along. Be conscious too that impulse control is a limited resource, and that it gets used up. You will have noticed how, the later in the day (or indeed the week) you are teaching, the more active and interactive your approach needs to be (for both you and the children).

Finally, a useful very point to be aware of in the classroom is around your own focus and attention – who receives most of it, and why that might be. We tend to teach to our dominant side – if you are right-handed, your tendency will be to teach to the right side of the room, and vice versa if you are left-handed. Make a conscious effort to turn to the other side, giving the same amount of your focus to the learners on your non-dominant side. Once you become aware of this tendency, it’s surprising to realise how much we subconsciously do it!

You can find lots more on attentional control and focus in my latest book, The Ultimate Guide to Self-Regulation in the Classroom.