1st November 2009

Why are some students so disruptive ?

From what I’ve gleaned from the first few chapters I’ve read from Michael Gurian’s book ‘Boys and Girls learn Differently’  males  unlike females have higher testosterone levels , secrete less serotonin and process strong emotions (such as being low in the pecking-order, family problems, emotionally strong scenes in a book. Film, video game etc.) which in turn increases their cortisol (stress-hormone levels) by channeling them to the brain stem where fight or flight responses are triggered  (unlike the female brain which processes strong emotions by sending them to the top of the brain where they can release and relive themselves of this emotion, letting off steam if you like, by using the top part of the brain particularly the left-hemisphere which is statistically more developed than boys’ brains where they can verbalise their emotions).

As a result, Guria concludes that all of these factors ( combined with the fact that boys tend to repress their emotions to appear tough) shut down boys’ brains from interaction  and academic learning causing them to be distracted (which is exacerbated by the fact that their attention span is shorter than girls’ brains) disorderly and fidgety and thus disruptive.

Some boys may react to these biological factors by being withdrawn or aggressive expressed through speaking loudly, talking over the teacher to seek attention and being disruptive which is also an attention-seeking strategy. p,37

Gurian suggests that one way of helping boys secrete more serotonin and thus become more relaxed and less fidgety and of reducing cortisol (the stress-hormone) and releasing testosterone is to make lessons more kinesthetic which involves physically-demanding learning exercises which are also playful. This is all the more important as “boys are testosterone-driven and brain-directed to spatial  expressions of stress…p,62”

Would teaching in such a way be disadvantageous to girls ?

From what I’ve understood from Gurian’s findings is that female brains have more  linguistic intelligence than boys because the left hemisphere of the female brain is more developed than their boys’ counterparts. 

In addition, Gurian observes that they secrete more serotonin than boys reducing thus their biological need to move to stimulate their brains and relieve impulsive behavior.

What’s more, Gurain goes on to say that they have more estrogen than males which lowers their aggression, competition but also self-assertion and self-reliance. Furthermore, due to their more advanced left-hemisphere they can process strong emotions verbally rather than physically as their boys counterparts tend to do. These factors coupled with the fact that girls are more ‘sedentary’, quieter and passive than boys they are much more capable than boys to sit behind a desk and listen, read, write and speak.

It would appear then that physically-active lessons would not be appropriate for girls all the more so because girls ten to choose interactive social activities that allow increased verbalization whereas boys tend to choose interactive social activities that decrease verbals and increase  spatials.

Having said that physically active activities stimulate not only the right-hemisphere of the brain which is more developed in adolescent boys’ brains than their girls’ counterparts as it sometimes demands spatial intelligence like the stepping-stone game or the bingo dictation race but also helps the girls toward physical movement (stimulating these girls who may have bridge brains or have emotionally processing deficiency or have higher than average testosterone levels) stimulating their cortisol development in spatial intelligence and thus increasing right-hemisphere development.

At the same time, the left-hemisphere of the brain is stimulated and developed because the language-based activities such as the stepping stone activity or the bingo dictation race require verbal skills resulting therefore in whole-brain development.

As my lessons try to cater for the biological make-up of all my middle school  students why are there still some students (be they girls or boys) who continue to talk over me and can’t focus ?

Before we address macro level problems there are many other micro level obstacles we have to draw our attention to.

In addition to Gurian’s observations of people’s biological needs for example teachers should also take into consideration the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarachy of five needs that all people have particularly the last four “the safety needs” “the belonging needs” “The esteem needs” and the “self actualization needs”.

 

By providing students with security, structure and order in school and in class teachers will satisfy the students need to feel safe and secure.

 

If the teacher or staff of a school show an inability to control badly behaving students for example then a feeling of insecurity might arise in the other students which might hinder their learning.

 

Likewise if a teacher’s method isn’t organized or structured, students will feel insecure because the teacher who also doubles as their positive role model doesn’t meet their expectations.

 

Teachers efforts to bond with their students to be not only their teacher but their friend will satisfy the student’s needs for love, affection and belongingness.

 

With regard to esteem needs teachers can satisfy their students’ needs for respect of others by congratulating them regularly on their achievements in school which can be expressed in the form of awards, publication of their work in the school magazine, displays of their work etc. This in turn will also satisfy their need for a feeling of self-respect, confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.

 

With regard to “self-actualisation” needs this means helping students fulfill their potentials and becoming autonomous. Teachers can achieve this by not only satisfying their aforementioned needs which is of utmost importance to enable students to satisfy their needs for self-actualisation but also by embodying the “self-actualised” person serving as a mode of sorts for the students to emulate.

To help us understand what exactly is a ‘Self-actualised” person Dr C. George Boeree showed in his essay on [1]Abraham Maslow what Maslow considered to be self-actualised people. They included “Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William James, Albert Schweitzer, Benedict Spinoza, and Alduous Huxley, plus 12 unnamed people who were alive at the time Maslow did his research.”

He defined these figures’ characteristics which distinguished them as self actualisers. He observed for example that they were “reality centered” which means they were lucid enough to distinguish between truth and dishonesty, the fake and the genuine.

“Problem centered” meaning they considered life’s difficulties as mere problems that could be solved rather than unsurmountable obstacles.

They were comfortable in solitude and satisfied with only having a small group of close friends rather than shallow relationships with many.

What’s more, they were autonomous and “resisted enculturaltion” meaning they didn’t feel the need to “fit in” comfortable being nonconformist if you like.

Their sense of humour was “unhostile” and they accepted people for what they were and were always themselves never being pretentious or artificial.

They were also self-aware and “sponataneous” meaning they constantly questioned themselves to be a better person and spontaneously and accordingly changed ironing out any negative flaws in their character.

Their character was also marked by a humility and respect of others, human kinship or compassion, social interest and humanity, strong ethics and a “freshness of perception” which means that they saw even the most mundane and ordinary things with wonder. With this they were creative, inventive and original.

We as teachers can imbue our students with these characteristics by simply behaving like the self-actualised person.

If this is impossible then we can study self-actualised role models in our classes.

In drama for example, plays which show the benefits of these characteristics could be performed by the students.

In teaching English as a foreign language for example a lesson could be done on the personality of “self-actualised” famous people enriching students’ lexis with words like compassionate, respectful, self-aware etc.) and also with the knowledge of successful people who had these characteristics which in turn may inspire the students to self-reflect and maybe change themselves for the btter if need be.

In his essay on Abraham Maslow DR C. George Boeree goes on to enumerate what he considered to be the needs of self-actualisers to be self-actualised. Here’s the list in full:

“[2]Truth, rather than dishonesty.
Goodness, rather than evil.
Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity.
Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of opposites, not arbitrariness or forced choices.
Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life.
Uniqueness, not bland uniformity.
Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness, inconsistency, or accident.
Completion, rather than incompleteness.
Justice and order, not injustice and lawlessness.
Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity.
Richness, not environmental impoverishment.
Effortlessness, not strain.
Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery.
Self-sufficiency, not dependency.
Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness. “

We as teachers have to strive in and out of class and in and out of school to provide our students with these needs in the hope of enabling our students to satisfy the fifth and last of Maslow’s needs the need for “self-actualisation”.

Meeting these four needs of Maslow's five needs and catering for the students' biological needs as observed by Gurian will no doubt help make teaching and learning rewarding for both the teacher and the students and should go a long way to diminish disruptive behaviour.

[1] http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html.

 

[2] Ibid

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