Interacting up

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WORKING WITH EMOTIONS

edited by Peter Gray

ROUTLEDGE FALMER (2001) ISBN 0415237696  £17.99  224PP

This book addresses the importance of understanding and dealing with teacher, pupil and parent emotions with relation to challenging behaviour. It contains chapters from a variety of contributors who have been vocal in this field for some time, and its main themes are: 

• how the emotions of those both giving and receiving support can be addressed
• the need for teachers to implement collaborative and problem solving approaches to problems
• recent thinking regarding the emotional aspects of challenging behaviour.

Gerda Hanko has continuously advocated the need to identify and support teachers' emotional needs in order to provide effective support for the young people who they work with. In this book she re-iterates her view that teachers need to increase their understanding of teaching as 'an interactive emotional experience in all its complexity' and the need for teachers to address the needs underlying the challenging behaviour. Her chapter urges increased understanding of attachment theory and the need for teachers to increase their emotional awareness.

Jey Monsen and Beverley Graham's chapter is an important plea for teachers to challenge 'within child' approaches and, like Hanko, they urge teachers to consider collaborative problem-solving approaches to managing difficulties. As they say, 'the ways in which teachers perceive and interpret challenging behaviour is crucial to the success or failure of both problem analysis and the planning and delivery of intervention. The types of attributions teachers make about pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties needs to be challenged.'

Gervase Leyden, in his chapter entitled 'Myths, fears and realities regarding pupil violence to teachers', stresses the importance of concentrating on the 'health' of the whole school organisation and creating safe and stress-free cultures that nurture well-being and thus minimises the risk of unruly behaviour. Rob Long proposes that children need a differentiated emotional and behavioural curriculum and Adrian Faupel argues that  contradictory messages between academic standards and social inclusion must be acknowledged. Other chapters deal with the importance of recognising the emotional needs of parents.

Much of what is discussed in this book seems very relevant if education is going to be proactive and support vulnerable young people in their development. The main drawbacks are that the book fails to be more explicit about how to develop emotional intelligence through the curriculum and little reference is made to the connection between challenging behaviour, the emotions and mental health. However, it is a valuable addition to support the growing move towards more humane, dynamic and emotionally literate responses to difficult behaviour in schools.

JEANNI BARLOW

Jeanni Barlow is a teacher and consultant in special educational needs