It takes more than understanding learning philosophy to manage a classroom. Before considering the interventions that a teacher might use to help children manage their relationships with other children, it is important to understand some basic information about who attends early childhood programs, and how they are regulated. The U.S. Department of Education notes that 65% of children between the ages of 3 and 5 are enrolled in a preprimary program, which includes full- and part-day preschools and kindergartens and are designed to provide educational experiences.19 When discussing the behavior of children who are in preschool (53%), it is helpful to define the population as children who are 3 and 4 years old, and who have had time to adapt to classroom environments. That is because the behavior expectations for other children in the environment—children who are between 2 and 3, or between 5 or 6—change as children move between developmental stages.
About two thirds of all schools are public.19 Over the past two generations, public education, including preschool education, has been monitored by the federal government under the auspices of federal programs like:
- the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965
- its 2002 revision the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act
- and its 2015 revision, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
Each iteration has evaluated the state of the system, provided funds to support changes, and focused on defining (primarily) the instructional methods for attaining equal opportunity for all children.10, 21 Although only public preschools fall under the ESEA, private preschools may elect to follow the guidelines or to rely on independent research. There is additional legislation created to serve the youngest of students in public programs. This includes:
- The Project Head Start Act of 1965
- The Head Start Performance Standards of 1995
- it’s expansion to address the needs of full-day programs in 1998, the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007
- and a research-based revision of performance standards in 2016
Before introducing the school readiness element, Head Start legislation primarily focused on protecting children’s social, emotional, health, nutritional, and psychological needs.11 All early childhood programs, including private preschools, must meet additional state licensing standards for instructional, health, and safety needs.18
Policy on Suspension and Expulsion
It was only in 2015 that legislators seriously considered the role of discipline in preschool, under ESSA and an additional policy statement in 2016.7 In particular, the policy is aimed at raising awareness about practices that exclude children from early learning environments, and helping educators to avoid bias in discipline. This is especially true for boys, and for children of African American and Hispanic descent. Removing children from classrooms limits opportunity to develop the social interaction skills that will serve them in the classroom and beyond. It also decreases the chances that disabilities and behavioral health issues will be diagnosed. And because preschool environments are not required for all children, very young children are at greater risk than their older peers for being excluded from school because of undiagnosed conduct disorders. This fact buried under a tangle of legislation, psychological theory, educational theory, and neuroscience is an important reason that negative behavior can persist and become more ingrained in a child’s way of thinking.
The NeuroPacific Classroom™
Researchers have started to identify the neural basis of empathetic responses between people. They are also beginning to understand the neural responses that inhibit empathy. Eventually, we may be able to depend less on empirical evidence about what supports empathy in classrooms and rely more on experimental data about how to intervene appropriately when addressing difficult behavior. Because the neural responses appear to derive from rewards and punishment processing, it may turn out that learning philosophies that are based on rewards and punishment—or self-construction—may be more influential than is currently understood. To reduce violent behavior in the classroom, and to encourage empathy between children of all abilities, educators must:
- recognize the neural basis for both peaceful and pugnacious behaviors
- consider the cyclical and reciprocal relationship between biology and the classroom environment
Educators at all stages of professional development (and the parents of the children in their care) can work to research and understand these relationships and then work across the disciplines to strategize and support the biological process of empathy. At present, only about 20% of educators receive specific professional development about how to foster social and emotional growth in children.7 As parents are not required to participate in any formal parenting education, the percentage of parents who have access to the same information is likely much lower. Such education includes learning how to recognize developmentally appropriate (or inappropriate) misbehavior, and what science says about how to foster empathy. Because the field is emergent, it is helpful to access to information that is evidence-based and translated in ways that are easy to understand.
The State of Behavior in American Classrooms
National research on schools indicates that problem behavior is well-established in American classrooms. The latest study of The Early Childhood Longitudinal Program (ECLS), which records data about children from birth through the eighth grade (2011-2012), concluded its report in 2016.16 In the same year, the National Council on Education Statistics (NCES) released a report titled Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2016.17 By the end of the study 38% of teachers agreed or strongly agreed that student misbehavior disrupted teaching. The same report indicated that by third grade about 15% of the kindergarten class of 2010-2011 experienced frequent teasing, 22% were the subject of untrue stories, 14% were frequently pushed, shoved, slapped, hit or kicked, and 15% were purposely excluded from play. The academic outcomes for these students were reported as lower than for peers who were infrequently or never victimized. Children living below the poverty threshold (18%) or just above the poverty threshold (19%) reported slightly higher levels of the same incidents than children living well above the poverty threshold (13%).
These numbers for grade-school children are important because they demonstrate that children do not necessarily out-grow anti-social behavior after preschool. In addition to the hindered social and emotional development, negative behavior inhibits the acquisition of cognitive skills. It also matters because the high rate of behavior problems in classrooms is contributing to a teacher attrition crisis—when teachers feel they cannot teach effectively, they tend to leave the profession.3, 5, 24
The 2016 NCES report did not record statistics for preschool students, and the analysis for the longitudinal study that includes that birth cohort (ECLS-B) is not yet publicly available.19 However, going back one longitudinal study, to 2000, the National Research Council critiqued how teachers reported the behavior of first-time kindergartners.20 The metrics also evaluated how well children attended to new ideas, exhibited prosocial behaviors, and exhibited antisocial behaviors. The results strictly followed gender lines, and the authors noted that teachers generally rated minority children (other than Asians) as less able in these categories than white and Asian children. Because the data is based on teacher ratings—the authors acknowledge that there may be bias against male students and students of color. These figures provide insight to the way that prosocial and antisocial behavior was rated in the 2000 study:
Prosocial Behaviors, by Gender
- Girls (77%) were rated as more likely than boys (71%) to accept peer ideas.
- Girls (73%) were rated as more likely than boys (71%) to form friendships.
- Girls (50%) were rated as more likely than boys (44%) to comfort others.
Antisocial Behaviors, by Gender
- Boys (13%) were rated as more likely than girls (8%) to argue with others.
- Boys (11%) were rated as more likely than girls (8%) to fight with others.
- Boys (14%) were rated as more likely than girls (9%) to get angry easily.
The contributors to negative behavior are examined in the sections of the website devoted to educational theory and the neural basis of conduct disorders. But it is important to understand that they can contribute to genetic (and non-genetic) development of callous-unemotional traits. The term is used to define the early behaviors that can predict the formation of antisocial behavior, and perhaps psychotic behavior, in late adolescence and adulthood. 14, 13, 15, 23 6, 27, 2, 26, 15
Influences on Behavior
Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE). Environmental factors, such as childhood trauma, are major contributors to behavior problems in schools, especially for children of lower socioeconomic status and children of color.6, 25 Among children in foster care or juvenile justice, an estimated 90% of the children report trauma such as sexual or emotional abuse.6 The exposure to domestic or neighborhood violence is especially damaging.
Parental Influence. Research is also beginning to document that parental influence can supersede genetic predisposal to antisocial behavior—in positive and negative ways.27 On one hand, callous-unemotional traits are linked to harsh punishment, which in turn affects neural development in the brain.9 The theory is that parental messages about pro-social behavior are lost amid the emotional stress of the punishment, and that negative behavior, in turn, leads to even harsher punishment.27 Conversely, parental warmth can counter the effects of callous-unemotional behavior by supporting empathetic neural development in the brain.
Early Childhood Environments Preschool classrooms are micro-communities and are an extension of the child’s home environment. Because it is possible to counter the effects of callous-unemotional traits with parental warmth, it is important for educators to apply the same theories in the classroom. This is especially true if home-life makes parental warmth challenging.
Choosing the right intervention will require more science, more observation, and more collaboration between differing pedagogical communities. Although teachers may have a role to play in screening for and addressing conduct disorders, their real task going forward is to work across the disciplines with psychologists, neuroscientists, and educational policy makers to explore novel treatment options. In addition to providing environments that are culturally sensitive (because it is important for children to understand that the world is full of whole communities that are distinctly different from their own) researchers are also exploring therapies that include artificial intelligence as methods of understanding and scaffolding interpersonal relationships.1, 4,8, 12,22