Prof. Dejana Bouillet. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

Children with behavioural problems should not be pulled out of class to be taught special skills but tackled through the class teachers, according to a pedagogy expert.

An EU-funded project, being carried out in several elementary schools in Croatia, is promoting early education interventions, among them empowering teachers with full responsibility of children with learning difficulties, lack of assertive behaviour, rude attitudes and other problems.

Dejana Bouillet, an expert in inclusive and social pedagogy at the University of Zagreb, explained the project in detail while lecturing at the University of Malta yesterday.

“We are driven by our genes to satisfy the basic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun,” Prof. Bouillet said.

The project, therefore, motivates teachers to use “caring habits” like respect, support and encouragement as opposed to “deadly sins” such as blaming, criticising and bribing.

“The main problem is that children with behavioural problems have learnt not to trust anyone, so the role of the teacher is to help them to trust again,” said Prof. Bouillet. Once that is achieved, the teacher can then get the pupils to explore how they could act differently.

The project also ropes in the parents, with workshops and individual counselling being organised regularly.

Associate professor at the Faculty of Education in Malta, Prof. Mary Darmanin said: “This system is to be lauded as in Malta children with behavioural problems tend to be pulled out of the classroom to be taught psychological skills and self-esteem, and then they go back to the classroom and because they would have missed so much, the child would feel disrupted and it would exacerbate the problem.”

In Malta, children with behavioural problems in government schools are made to attend ‘nurture groups’ for parts of the day, or to spend time with the complimentary teacher for special lessons.

“It would be more fruitful if activity and learning takes place during normal school life, preferably involving all the other classmates too,” Prof. Darmanin said.