Settling to learn

The way we teach our pupils and the way we run our schools is under scrutiny right now. In the midst of all the change going on, we often end up losing sight of the educative tool that is the most important of all – ourselves!

Bombèr and Hughes’ book gives educators permission to engage with pupils relationally. They provide alternative ways to the kinds of behaviourist models, fear-based approaches and increased levels of power, authority and control still exercised in many schools at present, but which disturb already troubled pupils and further prevent them from accessing school.

Bomber and Hughes have seen pupil attainment increase through their work in supporting school staff by switching their initial focus to the troubled pupil’s attachment system, before engaging the pupil’s exploratory (learning) system. The authors also challenge the educational myths that somehow relationships are secondary to learning, rather than essential to enabling troubled children’s brains to be freed to work at their full capacity. Every child still does matter.

(From Worth Publishing website. http://www.worthpublishing.com/. Accessed 28th September 2013)