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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.
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Of all the aspects of self-regulation that capture the attention of educators, the development of empathy understandably draws a good deal of focus. In order to help our learners understand why it's important to behave well, and to respect the views and learning of others, teachers often reach for empathy as a way to explain the thinking. How do you imagine it made them feel when you did that? is a question we ask when we're trying to get young people to consider the real life effects of their behaviours on other people. When I ask teachers about which self-regulation skills they feel that children and young people are currently missing, empathy always comes close to the top of the list (along with resilience). Clearly it is something that deserves and requires our focus in the classroom, but empathy can be a rather nebulous idea to grasp hold of and to figure out how to develop.
There is a very complex relationship between how the mind and body interact when we experience what we refer to as 'feelings' or 'emotions'. Feelings are essentially an embodied response to an external stimulus, which we learn to read through a process called interoception. Interoception is sometimes described as our 'eighth' sense: it is the way in which we become aware of and interrogate the information sent to our brains by our bodies. The vagus nerve, or tenth cranial nerve, helps us translate our body's reactions to the external stimuli we experience in the form of 'feelings'. We might experience our stomach clenching and our heart beating faster in response to something scary, and describe this as 'feeling nervous'. The same physiological processes also allow us to understand whether we are hot, cold, tired, hungry, in pain, and so on. Essentially, we learn to interrogate our bodies by looking 'inside ourselves' to see what is going on physically. Babies and young children start to learn how to self-regulate through their interactions with their environment, and with the people who care for them, gradually building up a picture of how their world works in their brains. At the very earliest stage, babies are very obviously egocentric, placing themselves at the centre of their world. They do not yet have the skills or the language to imaginatively reposition themselves in the place of someone else. Through their interactions with caregivers, and through the synchrony or matching of behaviours and expressions that their parents or carers demonstrate, babies begin to learn that their behaviours elicit a response in others. Through the process of interoception, they come to understand what different emotions feel like in their bodies: how it feels to be happy and laugh, what love looks and feels like, how sometimes they might feel frustrated or upset. Empathy requires an additional step beyond this initial recognition of our own feelings, because it asks us to reposition ourselves in the minds of somebody else and think about how they might experience the world. A very interesting experiment into a concept called Theory of Mind shows how this process works. The researchers (Frith and Frith, 2005) describe how Maxi eats half a chocolate bar, puts it back unfinished in the cupboard and then goes out to play. His mum finds the half eaten chocolate bar and puts it into the fridge. Then they ask: where will Maxi look for the chocolate when he comes in from playing? If you understand that he will look in the cupboard, because he has the 'false belief' that this is where it still is, then you have what is referred to as 'Theory of Mind'. You understand that other people might have different views of or beliefs about the world to you, that these beliefs will affect their behaviours, and that sometimes they will hold mistaken or wrong beliefs. Researchers have identified that Theory of Mind develops between around 3 to 5 years of age, although we see some signs of empathetic responses in babies, where they will cry when they hear another baby cry. There is some evidence that this process of developing Theory of Mind might happen later in children who are autistic. One of the ways in which we learn to 'read' other people's inner thoughts and feelings is through the gradually developing skill of interpreting verbal and non-verbal aspects of behaviour, such as facial expressions and vocal tone. When it comes to understanding language, we need to learn to 'read' the intent behind people's words, to know when they might be being sarcastic or ironic. Difficulties around reading body language, and around spotting the subtle cues that tell us when someone is not being literal, may also contribute to difficulties in the development of empathy for children and young people who have autism. For this reason, it is important for teachers to be as explicit and literal as possible, particularly when supporting learners who have special needs. We should aim to avoid using the kinds of idiomatic expressions that pepper our language (like that one!) because not only can they be difficult for learners with SEND to 'get', but they are also tricky for young people who have English as an additional language. When you think about it, being able to empathise requires a pretty amazing imaginative leap - we must mentally reposition ourselves inside someone else's mind. Clearly, this is a process that develops over a long period of time and, to be blunt, we can see that it is very poorly developed in some adults. Those people who have grown up in an environment where emotions are constantly dismissed, or where care giving is patchy or poor, can carry this lack of empathy with them into adulthood. When we talk about how some adults lack 'emotional intelligence', we are essentially saying that they lack the motivation, awareness and skills to interpret the emotions of others, and to understand and manage their emotions for themselves. A key way in which educators can support the development of empathy is through the use of stories, and of drama-based approaches, because these both require us to 'step into' someone else's shoes. When reading stories, and talking about how did it feel? for a character or what do you think they might do next? we are essentially encouraging our learners to achieve that imaginative repositioning into someone else's mind. Drama activities such as the 'conscience alley' ask children to imagine what someone else might be thinking, and to articulate it. Approaches that require children and young people to 'care for' something or someone else can be very powerful for the development of empathy as well. This might take the form of activities where two age groups work together - for instance, Year 10 students supporting Year 7 students as mentors. It might involve caring for a school dog, or taking part in charity and community activities that help our learners understand why it is important to think of others. You can find out more about practical approaches to developing empathy in my latest book, The Ultimate Guide to Self-Regulation in the Classroom. References: Frith and Frith (2005) - Theory of Mind One of the key factors in the development of self-regulation skills is the way in which we build our sense of self. In order to learn how to self-regulate, we need to believe that we can determine our own pathways through life, take responsibility for our own choices and decisions, set our own goals and work to achieve them, even when that is hard. We need to believe that it is worth us putting in the effort to do these things because it will improve our experiences of our lives. This gradually developing sense of ourselves as active agents supports us in being motivated to control our impulses, manage our reactions and to handle the challenges we face. Central to the notion of 'self' is the understanding that we have autonomy - that we are active participants in our own lives, working towards goals that we can set for ourselves. When we learn how the choices we make impact on our experiences of our world, we become more motivated to control our behaviours and our emotions.
As children develop, there is an important balance to be achieved between enough agency, and too much. Adults need to manage the levels of risk, creating suitable environments, in which children can experience challenges, aim to achieve goals, and learn how to cope when things do not go to plan. It can be very tempting for adults to over help children - to hover over them, saying 'just let me do that for you' or 'let me show you how that's done' or 'be careful, don't do that!'. (What I tend to call 'helicopter' parenting or teaching.) But where we over protect and over help, children do not learn to believe in themselves, nor do they learn how to cope with challenge and failure, because they do not experience it often enough. What children need is a gradual move from co-regulation with trusted adults, to self-regulation by and for themselves. Too much scaffolding can lead to a sense of learned helplessness, where the idea that adults will take over and solve everything for you means that you take on less responsibility for yourself. Too much protection can mean that, when we do fail, we struggle to cope with the emotional fallout by ourselves. For agency and self-regulation to develop, children need opportunities to be responsible, to take managed risks and to work towards goals of their own choosing. We need to be willing to do that hardest of things - to sometimes allow our children to fail and to learn by making their own mistakes for themselves. In an educational context, this can be complex to do, because our role as teachers or practitioners is to support learning, and there is often a sense that we need to be 'seen' to be doing something. Standing back or standing aside can feel like a leap of faith when 'just tell them' is the commonly heard cry. Of course, when we consider the development of self-regulation skills in the context of school, questions about agency and autonomy are tricky to manage. In a class of thirty students, it is not going to be possible for everyone to have agency simultaneously; in a class preparing for an important exam, autonomy may need to be put to one side. In the early years, when many of these key self-regulation skills are starting to develop, and before children begin their compulsory education, there is a strong focus on agency. The high ratios, the focus in the curriculum on developing and caring for the 'whole child', and the use of play as a key part of pedagogy all support the notion of choice, autonomy and personal goal setting. As the more formal school years begin, and there is an academic curriculum to 'get through' and statutory tests to take, allowing children to have agency can feel risky and too time consuming to manage. There is sometimes an underlying concern that, given the choice, children and young people would choose to take the easy path, or to do nothing. In reality, though, agency is at the heart of intrinsic motivation and is a key aspect in helping children and young people become lifelong learners. All the research into motivation shows that, where we conceptualise learning to be intrinsically valuable to us, we are more likely to engage in it of our own accord. But when the pressure is on teachers to 'get results', allowing young people to learn how to be intrinsically motivated can feel risky or even potentially damaging. Extrinsic motivators can become a very tempting 'go to' alternative. In a fascinating study, researchers looked at how babies begin to act with purpose (Sloan et al, 2023). They looked at how babies reacted when their feet was tied to a mobile, meaning that they could consciously move it with their feet. A positive feedback loop very quickly developed, whereby the more the mobile moved, the more the baby was incentivised to move, thus producing more movement in the mobile itself. The babies appeared to already understand that there was a cause and effect between themselves and what happened with the mobile. They had effectively set themselves a goal and made it happen. The researchers described the 'aha!' moment that they observed, when the babies realised that it was they themselves who were causing the effect, and rapidly sped up their movements. Even at this very earliest age, human beings are driven to take decisions which allow them to have a direct influence on their experience of their lives. As I note in my new book, while there is plenty of research into teacher agency, there is relatively little research into children's agency in educational contexts. It is interesting to consider why this is, and to look at different models of education where young people might experience increased levels of agency, for instance in some self-directed learning and home-based education contexts. Agency has been described as the "power to originate action" and is often also described using the term "self-efficacy". Where our aim is for our learners to develop self-regulation, particularly around goal setting and resilience, we should not under estimate the importance of agency and autonomy in building self-efficacy skills. One simple way to incorporate agency into your classroom is to offer some simple choices. These can often usefully be incorporated during more routine parts of the day. For instance, when self-registering in the mornings, we ask our children to choose whether they would prefer milk or water at snack time, and to put their names on the relevant part of the board. These simple choices can help children feel like they do have an element of agency and influence, within their classroom setting. Similarly, saying to a child who is hesitant to start writing, "would you prefer to start by doing this, or by doing that?", offers a straightforward way to add an element of agency to learning in class. Reference: Sloan, Jones and Scott Kelso, Meaning from Movement and Stillness: signatures of coordination dynamics reveal infant agency, 2023 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) Find out more about my new book, or purchase a copy by clicking on the image below. I also offer online and in-person CPD/training sessions on Supporting the Development of Self-Regulation. Please email me for more details. When thinking about how self-regulation develops, it's helpful to think about the changes that happen during early childhood in evolutionary terms. What we think of as important 'executive functions' for living in modern society have developed over time to help us cope and thrive in an increasingly busy and stressful world, where society puts specific requirements on us around our behaviours. For instance, in a classroom situation, it can feel problematic when children become distracted: by a wasp, by a worker digging up the road outside your room, or by a sudden flurry of snow. But, in reality, the very act of turning towards 'a distraction' is an evolutionary adaptation designed to keep us safe. When the 'loud noise' could have been a wild animal, prowling outside the cave where you are sheltering, it is very important to be drawn towards that noise. Children only gradually learn to inhibit these kinds of instinctive responses, in conjunction with the modelling and support of adults, and learning alongside their peers.
Babies are not born able to self-regulate - in fact, it would be problematic if they were, because self-regulation develops in partnership with language and the stages we go through in learning to self-regulate are crucial in terms of our development. Babies need to cry, in order to communicate to us that there is some kind of problem - perhaps they are tired, hungry, stressed, in pain. Babies need to be what we might call 'distractible' - they are drawn to explore the world around them, turning or reaching towards whatever draws their attention, and this again is how they learn and develop. It's also useful to understand that, when babies are born, their senses are not fully developed, particularly their eyesight. They can only very gradually start to 'make sense' of the fuzzy world around them, through interacting with it and physically experiencing it. Gradually, as babies and young children learn how to use language to express themselves and ask questions, they start to learn how to 'think through' their actions, inhibit some responses, and develop social behaviours and social communication. It is no coincidence that difficulty with self-regulation is often seen alongside under-developed language skills. The experiences that we go through in early childhood are a key part of how we develop self-regulation skills, with around 90 percent of brain development taking place in those crucial first five years. There are genetic and epigenetic elements in the development of self-regulation, but nurture, environment and experiences play a critical part. In order for babies to develop self-regulation skills, what they most need is sensitive, loving adult caregivers who interact warmly with them and reliably meet their needs. Adults must use we refer to as 'co-regulation', or working together with the child to support them to learn how to self-regulate. Carers need to show what we call in a classroom context 'unconditional positive regard' - that their care and love is not predicated on the behaviour of the child and will not be withdrawn unexpectedly. This in turn allows young children to feel safe, secure and able to explore and take risks, because even if they get something wrong or struggle, they will still be soothed, comforted and loved, as a person in their own right. Alongside these approaches, carers also use what are referred to as 'serve and return' interactions with the child. This term describes the crucial shared interactions between a parent or carer and their child involving gesture, facial expressions and language, which are so powerful in building language, communication and connections in the child's rapidly developing brain. Not only do all these interactions help build language skills, but crucially they allow babies and young children to feel safe in exploring, giving things a go, making mistakes and learning from the results. The adult caregivers create an environment where it is safe to explore, managing risk on behalf of the young child. Where the child finds things too difficult and becomes distressed, the caregivers comfort the child and demonstrate that it is okay to try and struggle. Interestingly, too much interference from adults can be as problematic as too little - we have to support young children to take managed risks for themselves, at the appropriate moment, in order for them to learn and grow. A great example of this is knowing when to let a child pour their own drink - it is likely at first that they will spill the drink. Where adults over react to this 'mistake', the child might draw back from trying again; where adults over help and never let the child have a go at pouring the drink, similarly they will never learn to do so by themselves. The role of agency - of letting the child 'have a go' at things they are interested in doing, is fundamental to the development of self-regulation. As I often find myself saying, there is a reason why the word 'self' is part of the term. We cannot do it for them, and indeed we should not want to, because our goal is to build independence and self-esteem. Children need to learn to see themselves as active agents, shaping their own experiences of their world, in order to fully develop their self-regulation skills. Another interesting aspect in the development of self-regulation is the reliable availability of resources. Again, thinking about self-regulation in evolutionary terms, this is a key factor in what allowed humans to become social animals and to work in groups. Where resources are scarce, we might see behaviours that we label as 'dysregulated' - snatching, grabbing, stealing. As human beings learned how to regulate, resources could more reliably be shared around a group of people, with social communication being used to decide how this might take place (for instance, through bartering). In a classroom context, if you think about a child who has been brought up with very little access to toys, or perhaps in a situation where there is food poverty, the instinctive reaction might be to grab or snatch from another child, for fear of that scarcity meaning they do not get a look in. When people say that 'behaviour is communication', this is a great example of how an inappropriate behaviour (snatching) can indicate an underlying issue that is about the child's early experiences and development, rather than what some commentators might label 'bad' behaviour. Finally, it is very useful to remember that these skills develop over time, and that they do not all develop simultaneously. Research has shown that empathy is one of the later developing skills. We actually see the early signs of empathy in very young babies - where they will start to cry in response to the sound of another baby in distress. But it is only once they have developed 'theory of mind' that they can start to understand how to fully 'place' themselves in the position of another. I'll return to the fascinating subject of empathy, and share some thoughts about building this skill in a classroom context, in another in this series of blogs. My latest book, which looks at these topics in much greater depth, is The Ultimate Guide to Self-Regulation, published in January 2025. You can order a copy here. Educators have increasingly taken an interest in the topic of self-regulation over recent years. Not only does self-regulation offer us a new way to think about young people's behaviour, but there is plenty of research linking executive function skills to positive educational and wider outcomes. Anecdotally, since the start of the pandemic, more and more schools and settings are reporting increased levels of needs in learners. There is a desire to find solutions which support young people to develop self-control, regulate their emotions and manage their own behaviours. Rather than only focusing on external systems to do the work of managing behaviour in our settings, educators are increasingly looking to find ways to help learners internalise the skills involved in maintaining appropriate behaviours for learning in class.
In England, the EYFS Statutory Framework includes reference to some key self-regulation skills, grouping them under the heading of "Personal, Social and Emotional Development" (PSED). PSED is one of the 'prime' (or key) areas of early learning. It underpins healthy development and educational progress alongside the two other prime areas of "Communication and Language" and "Physical Development". It is interesting to note the level of expectations in the way that this part of the latest Statutory Framework is phrased. Not only are children expected to develop a positive sense of self, but they must also have confidence in their abilities, persist and wait for what they want, direct their attention "as necessary" and "resolve conflicts peaceably". Observers might note that even adults often struggle with these skills. While they are a key part of development for the 0-5 age range, the idea that they might be fully developed by the end of the early years seems wildly optimistic, particularly at present. A good way to understand self-regulation skills is to think of them as being like an "air traffic control system" for the brain. This metaphor is explained further in this excellent working paper from Harvard's Center for the Developing Child. Essentially, this is a set of skills which help us to manage ourselves within the range of different environments we might find ourselves in - that metaphorically stop us from 'bumping into' each other in social, educational and other contexts. They allow us to guide our own 'flight paths' through our lives, managing our responses, staying on an even emotional keel and coping with the challenges that we face. There are three key areas of executive (or brain) function involved in our ability to regulate ourselves: these are working memory, impulse control and mental flexibility. Working memory is important because it can help us think things through in our minds - thinking about our actions is a key facet of self-regulation. It also helps us remember a series of things we might need to do, ticking them off mentally one by one, for instance when we need to follow instructions. Impulse control allows us to stop ourselves from responding immediately to external stimuli, particularly where it might not be helpful or appropriate. Finally, mental flexibility allows us to face challenges and come up with alternative solutions to try and solve problems. This helps us to avoid the situation where we come up against an issue but repeatedly take the same linear path to attempt (and fail) to resolve it. When thinking about the behaviours which fall under the umbrella term of 'self-regulation', this encompasses a wide-ranging set of skills. While there has been a relatively strong focus in schools on supporting the development of emotional regulation, in fact this area forms only part of the picture. Self-regulation is about becoming aware of, understanding and learning to control our behaviours, including the development of impulse control and deferred gratification. It involves the ability to control our attention, concentrating on what we need to, learning how to manage distractions and move our focus around as needed. It involves becoming aware of our feelings, understanding their source, learning how to handle strong emotions and building the skill of empathy with others. And it also involves goal-oriented behaviours, such as setting ourselves sensible targets, working to achieve these, and coping with both challenge and failure. Underpinning the development of self-regulation is the vital need for agency: it is crucial to focus in on the 'self' part of the descriptor term 'self-regulation'. If we are going to learn how to manage ourselves, we cannot rely only on habituated responses to external stimuli. We need to learn to focus in on ourselves and our personal experiences of the world, building a sense of self and gradually developing the ability to manage our reactions to the range of situations we encounter. This, I think, might be one of the reasons why we are seeing young people and also educators pushing back against those school systems which exert ever greater control in order to 'manage behaviour'. If we want young people to build intrinsic motivation and a sense of self, they need to believe that they have the power to choose their own behaviours for themselves and, in so doing, to change and improve their experience of their world. In the next blog in this series, I will look at the various factors which need to come together to support the development of self-regulation. My latest book, which looks at all these topics in much greater depth, is The Ultimate Guide to Self-Regulation, published in January 2025. You can pre-order a copy here. |
AuthorSue Cowley is a teacher, trainer and the author of more than 30 books for teachers ArchivesCategories |
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