What’s in a name?

In this blog our Guest Contributor examines how terms like ‘therapeutic,’ ‘trauma-informed’ and ‘Neurodiversity affirming’ are used in education, and how their meaning can shift in practice. They reflect on the gap between language and lived experience in behaviour-focused school systems and question whether these approaches always prioritise autonomy and wellbeing.

The terms ‘therapeutic’, ‘person centred’, ‘trauma informed’ and even ‘neurodiversity affirming’ are often difficult to define and therefore open to interpretation. Normally, this open interpretation shouldn’t present too many problems, because most of us appreciate that what one person finds supportive, another might not. That said, the rigidity in schools and the way that staff are trained can create cultures where certain practices are seen as therapeutic by virtue of increasing the appearance of compliance or decreased behaviour data entries. For example, if threatening to remove a child’s golden time results in that child not screaming in class, it could appear to some that the intervention was therapeutic because it removed the external sign of distress. We can see this a lot in use of ‘firm boundaries’, sometimes referred to as ‘loving boundaries’, which supposedly support traumatised children from chaotic homes to feel safe and contained, but in reality are often arbitrary and strip them of autonomy. The ends, and particularly the superficial appearance of ends, do not justify the means.

Furthermore, the way these terms are being used goes beyond lack of consensus. Whether knowingly or not, they are not just being applied in accordance with personal interpretation, they are being appropriated. By this I mean that the approach (behaviourism) remains the same, but the names ‘therapeutic’, ‘trauma-informed’ etc, are actively taken, or rather appropriated, which has the effect of disguising the method. This term slippage can be seen in the way that ‘behaviour support plans’ are increasingly being called ‘therapeutic support plans’ (or similar). My son’s ‘therapeutic support plan’ had ‘planned ignoring’ written into it without my knowledge. When questioned, the school agreed to change the wording to ‘planned minimal attention to low level behaviours’, however the actual strategy they used remained the same. The names become unanchored and meaningless.

Whenever I speak to education professionals, it is clear that they are not trying to harm children, they genuinely feel that behaviourism is what is best for them.

There is an enduring belief that behaviourism builds the skills that children need to engage in classroom learning, that it reduces certain behaviours, and that compliance is in the long term best interests of both the individual child and collective harmony.

There is a reason behind these beliefs: not only does it sometimes appear that distress is reduced (for example the screaming in class scenario given above), but also there is a need and desire for children to ‘fit in’ with the way classrooms are run so that the majority can progress at pace through planned curriculums. There is an element of ‘the greater good’ style of thinking in many schools. Similarly, there is a certain lack of creativity about other approaches: behaviourism and Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) are so omnipresent in education that it is – certainly in my experience - relatively rare that schools branch outside of these systems.

It is almost like behaviourism is considered The One True Path for children to achieve and to prepare them for their futures. So strong is this belief, that some schools include statements in their behaviour policies or ‘behaviour contracts’ that insist by sending your child to the school, parents automatically agree to whatever strategies the school deems best (even if they are not aware of what those interventions could be). This not only shows that some schools are quite firmly of the persuasion that their staff always know best, it also betrays that settings often do not feel the need to gain informed consent from the child or their parents. This should very much be understood in the context that for children with the highest needs, they get almost no real say in the educational establishment they are going to spend 1140 hours a year in.

“All behaviour is communication” is the educator’s mantra, and it’s theoretically a good one. However, it is very clear that what schools measure, and what children (particularly neurodivergent children) value, are completely different. In school behaviour data systems, often only external behaviours which are perceived as “difficult” for other people are tracked and the interventions are planned accordingly. As far as I’m aware, very few are creating behaviour plans / therapeutic plans which track and plan interventions based on, for example, children’s facial expressions which suggest distress, or over-compliant behaviour (which is often a trauma response). In spite of its protestations that it is all about quality of life, behaviourism is so rarely looking for the right things.

Behaviourism does not care if you are unhappy, so long as you cause no trouble or make other people feel uncomfortable.

We can see this in the fact that some mainstream secondary schools give detentions to pupils for forgetting to bring the ‘right’ colour pen, but completely ignore (in fact, reward) the children who can never say “no” to an adult. We need to collectively agree that behaviourism can never be therapeutic, or trauma-informed, or neurodiversity affirming, and therefore should never be called by those terms. The aims of behaviourism and therapeutic approaches are at odds: you cannot be therapeutically controlled.

We need to reclaim these names and protect the autonomy, the rights and the happiness of our children.