As educational psychologists, we are often invited into situations in schools where behaviour has become the focus. A young person is described as being withdrawn, angry, avoidant, dysregulated, or disengaged from learning.
Often, the measures that the school behaviour policy dictates have been exhausted and ineffective, and staff are at a loss for what to do. Conversations usually start from a desperate point of, “How do we change their behaviour (now!)?!” rather than, “What might be going on for this young person and how can we help them?”.
In my consultations, I have frequently used visuals from different psychological theories (e.g., Choice Theory (Glasser, 1998), Building Blocks of Self-Esteem (Borba, 2001), Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000)) to help school staff and parents to think differently about what the unmet needs of the young person might be and what function the behaviour might be having for them in meeting some of those needs.
This has always led to productive and supportive conversations. However, often the most important voice, that of the young person themselves, is missing from these discussions. We might have concluded that perhaps the young person does not feel a sense of belonging in school, which might be driving disengagement, but how do we really know if that’s how they feel, and could they articulate that if it was?
The Understanding Me Cards
This led to the development of the ‘Understanding Me’ cards, a card-sorting tool for school staff and educational professionals for use with children and young people aged 8-16, to try to understand their unmet needs in school from their perspective and ensure that their thoughts and feelings are at the heart of these discussions. They are a set of 56 colour-coded cards with statements relating to 7 psychology-informed areas of need:
- Autonomy and Independence
- Learning and Confidence
- Self-esteem and Identity
- Relationships and Belonging
- Sensory Needs
- Body and Heath
- Safety and Regulation
Each category of need has eight statements to sort into ‘True About Me’ or ‘Not True About Me’, with the colour-coding allowing the facilitator to quickly and easily see emerging patterns in need, linking to effective, compassionate strategies that drive connection and collaboration. The Understanding Me cards are a formulation tool, to be used with openness and curiosity, to enable children and young people to flourish in the school environment.
How they were developed
The cards were developed through consideration of the psychological literature in this area in combination with my experiences of working in education over the last 20 years. The categories are derived from psychological theories including Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011), Attachment Theory (Bowlby, 1969), Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), and Expectancy-Value Theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002), as well as considerations of the impact of sensory processing differences, speech and language needs, executive functioning challenges, child and adolescent development, and trauma. The statements themselves reflect the experiences and feelings that I have observed many times in my work as an Educational Psychologist.
In the development of the cards I wrangled with many difficult decisions around the phrasing of the cards. I aimed to ensure they use language that is trauma-informed, neuro-affirming, avoids a deficit narrative, and is accessible for an 8-year-old whilst using concepts that are relatable throughout adolescence. It was crucial to maintain the statements’ integrity to the psychological constructs.
The greatest inner conflict for me was whether the statements should have positive phrasing (e.g., “I usually feel safe in school”, to which disagreement signals the unmet need), or needs-based phrasing (e.g., “I sometimes don’t feel safe in school” to which agreement signals need). As someone whose work often draws on positive psychology, I felt a huge pull towards the more strength-based, positively-framed statements, but in many instances, this meant that the power of the cards to identify unmet needs became diluted and vague.
It meant glossing over and minimising needs (e.g., “usually feeling safe”) just to make the activity feel more palatable and comfortable. But unmet needs are not palatable and comfortable for the young person experiencing them. As a result, the cards are phrased as needs that children and young people can hear and immediately relate to, clearly but without judgement or blame.
For example:
I need to have a choice about how I do my work
I sometimes feel like I’d like more friends at school
I avoid busy or crowded places
Why does this matter?
We know that children and young people need autonomy. They need to feel included, understood, cared about, and like they can make a difference to their world. They need to feel that they have some power and control, and that their thoughts and feelings are respected. It is often these very needs that they are communicating through the behaviour that school staff observe. Therefore, it is vital that their voices are heard in conversations around their school experience and needs, without adults imposing their own lenses and making assumptions that may unwittingly make children feel even more disempowered and invalidated.
However, this is not always an easy task. As adults, we know that, even for us, it can be difficult to understand and articulate how we are feeling in the moment. Consider the immense challenge this becomes for a child or young person who has speech and language needs, or hasn’t developed a full emotional vocabulary to describe the complex feelings that they are having, or doesn’t feel that adults at school care about them.
Some young people might want to tell someone how they are feeling, but no one has asked them. Card-sorting tasks can be a powerful way to put labels on the feelings and experiences of children and young people, so they can immediately feel seen and understood, sometimes without having to say anything at all.
I’d like to leave you with some reflections that I have considered many times in the development of these cards:
What would you have liked school staff to have understood about you when you were at school?
How would it have felt if school staff had taken the time to understand how you felt and what you needed?
What difference would this have made to you?
References
Borba, M. (2001).Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues that Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. London: Hogarth Press.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000).The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behaviour. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2002). Motivational beliefs, values, and goals. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 109–132.
Glasser, W. (1998).Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom. New York: HarperCollins.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York: Norton.
