Impulsive Behaviour: A Case for Helping Children Think’ about Change

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Abstract
Summary The following paper describes a thinking skills project which was carried out in a special school catering for the needs of children aged 5‐11 years experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties and in a mainstream primary school. Two educational psychologists taught eight 9 and 10 year olds the first ten lessons of De Bono's CoRT Thinking Programme in the special school and this author taught a class of Year 6 pupils the same programme in the mainstream school. The project utilised the Bristol Social Adjustment Guides — Child in School (looking specifically at inconsequential behaviour) pre‐ and post teaching, and a contingency management reinforcement schedule based on a rating scale and completed by a non‐participant observer. The results suggest that teaching thinking skills to the special school children significantly reduced their inconsequential and general over‐reactive behaviour. The same teaching intervention proved successful in reducing the inconsequential behaviour of seven referred pupils from a Year 6 primary school class. This leads to the suggestion that teaching ‘thinking’ in schools could have applications for all pupils if such skills could be applied to new and unfamiliar situations across national curriculum core and foundation subjects.

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