In these unprecedented
times, we are all learning to get used to a new normal. Parents are reporting
that (unsurprisingly) transposing
modes of learning at school to families grappling with the realities of social
distancing is adding stress to an already difficult situation. As such, I
thought it might be useful to post a blog with some brief psychological insights
that might help a little.
First and foremost,
families should focus on safeguarding their health and well-being over this
period; schools need to recognise that this is a priority and ensure that they
do not send out demanding or critical communications to parents, children and/or
staff. By all means ask members of staff to provide useful exercises for
families to access, and to be available on email or a virtual learning interface
at some points of the day to answer questions; but the core focus should always
be what the school can do for their community, rather than what members of their
community should be doing for the school. Myriad issues may impact on children’s
ability to complete schoolwork or upon staff availability, from the serious
illness of a family member to a poor internet connection. It is extremely
important for the fact that stress
has a weakening impact upon the immune system to become general knowledge at
this time, and for senior managers to filter communications to parents,
children and staff accordingly.
Children under seven
The first point to make
here, with respect to Reception and Key Stage one is that the vast majority of
the world’s children do not start formal education until they are six, and some
do not start until they are seven. So, parents should not worry about young children ‘falling behind’; they have many years of education ahead of them.
The ways in which children of this age group most effectively learn is through play-based
learning which is relatively easy to provide at home, particularly if you
have access to both outdoor and indoor areas. There are a growing number of
sites offering free ideas for activities, see for example EYFS Home.com
Barbara
Rogoff, who carried out much of her research in non-industrial societies developed
the concept of ‘guided participation’, in which parents provide ongoing
instruction and narrative whilst they carry out everyday tasks such as baking
and gardening as joint activities with their child. Some further explanation,
including video examples form part of this free
Open University resource.
Children aged seven to twelve
Children in this age
group can also benefit from guided participation in rather more sophisticated
tasks around the house and garden. There is an old proverb which proposes that ‘to
teach is to learn twice over’, so if there are younger children in the house, reading
to them and helping them with counting or construction tasks can also be useful
for this age group, and possibly also remove some stress from parents. In terms
of online tasks, there are
many education resource providers across the world currently making online content
available free of charge, some offering free
access to books and maths
activities online. No doubt schools will also be sending activities for
children to complete. The key point is to find activities that the child enjoys
(or at least does not find too boring/ difficult) and to allow children to take
‘short bites’ at them, ensuring that there is plenty of time for physical
activity and play.
Teenagers
Teenagers are beginning
to emerge as the most difficult group to manage in a social distancing situation,
given that a core feature of this developmental stage is an inherent urge to socialise
with the peer group. Recent
advances in developmental neurobiology have pinpointed adolescence as second
only to the first three years of life as a period of rapid neuronal development
and even in normal times, it has been argued that teenagers’
particular developmental vulnerability is not widely recognised, or taken
into account in national education and services planning. While some manifestations
of teenage development may seem challenging, particularly in the current
situation, Blakemore and Mills make the very useful point that ‘what
is sometimes seen as the problem with adolescents… is actually reflective of
brain changes that provide an excellent opportunity for education and social
development’. Again, trying to encourage enjoyable activities that the
young person does not find too boring/ difficult, and allowing plenty of time
for physical activity and talking to friends (preferably on interfaces like
FaceTime or Zoom, rather
than spending long periods of time on social media) will avoid unnecessary tension.
In my opinion, the government have missed a trick in not
initiating a national campaign to request the support of teenagers during the
Corona Virus emergency, for example taking responsibility for tasks in the
house and garden, particularly in families where parents are ‘Key Workers’.
They can also entertain and educate younger siblings and possibly run (safe)
errands for older people; for example via the use of an app that would direct
them to pick up items of shopping to deposit on local doorsteps. One overwhelming
urge in the teenage brain is the desire for peer approval, therefore many
teenagers would be likely to respond to campaigns fronted by admired
celebrities (for example, Stormzy) explaining
ways in which they could become ‘local heroes’, and supporting them to safely
post pictures of their activities to a ‘local hero’ website.
The main motivation for families at this time should be above
all to avoid the creation of additional stress in the home. Children of all
developmental stages have a vast capacity to make up for lost time when it
comes to intellectual development-given a supportive environment, which will
inevitably become an important imperative for post Corona Virus education
leaders. In the meantime, smoothing the path for families suddenly pitched into
a situation in which they are isolated together for long periods of time must
involve minimising the rise in stress that is inevitably going to occur within such
environments, rather than ramping it up by the imposition of impossible demands
upon their current emotional capacity.
References
Blakemore, S., and Mills, K. (2014). Is
Adolescence a Sensitive Period for Sociocultural Processing? Annual review
of Psychology 65: 187-207.