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Attachment In The School Setting

Attachment in the School Setting

Difficult behaviour in the school setting affects both teachers and students. In this paper I draw on attachment theory to construct an alternative explanation for such behaviour. I review attachment theory and link attachment patterns and behaviour in school age children, then outline the implications for educators. I have focused on the primary school setting and although this perspective is relevant to older children, application of attachment theory to adolescents warrants a separate discussion.

Attachment Theory
History.
Attachment theory originates with the work of John Bowlby who, despite psychoanalytical training, disagreed with the focus on the infant's inner world and the argument that infant-mother relationships originate in the infant's physiological (libido and hunger) drives (Howe, 1995). Instead Bowlby concentrated on the infant's actual experience of relationships (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991), arguing that attachment behaviour is "a major component of human behavioural equipment, on a par with eating and sexual behaviour" (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991, p. 336).

When Bowlby began this work institutional child care was not uncommon. During World War II many children were evacuated and placed with strangers. Throughout the 1950s young children were routinely separated from their mothers for weeks at a time when a new baby was born. These practices reflect an assumption that children do not experience loss and grief in the same way as adults. Bowlby challenged this, developing an enduring interest in the impact of separation on children's development.

Mary Ainsworth expanded attachment theory by conducting naturalistic observations of mothers and infants and developing a laboratory procedure, "the Strange Situation", in which mother-infant pairs are observed during a brief sequence of separation and reunion. Attachment research departs from other infant research by emphasising the relationship between...