Bridging clinical and educational contexts: mentalization-based techniques in educational settings

Mentalization, the capacity to understand one's own and others' behaviour in terms of underlying mental states such as intentions, feelings, and beliefs, has well-established clinical applications, including Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) and its adapted variants for children and adolescents. Despite growing evidence for its effectiveness in therapeutic settings, little research has examined whether mentalization-based techniques can be systematically applied and evaluated in educational contexts, particularly for children displaying disruptive behaviour and emotional dysregulation.

This study investigates whether mentalization-based techniques are effective in educational settings and analyses the performance of different techniques in resolving disruptive behaviour and incidents of emotional dysregulation.

A mixed-methods design was used. An adapted version of an existing framework codifying 13 MBT-derived techniques was applied to teacher-child classroom interactions. Observations were conducted across two classrooms in an alternative provision school in London. In total, 259 distinct incidents were recorded, comprising 815 individual teacher-child interactions. Quantitative analysis used generalised linear mixed models; qualitative analysis drew on theory-driven thematic coding of interaction transcripts.

Analysis revealed that a mentalization approach outperformed non-mentalizing strategies in resolving classroom incidents. Among the specific techniques, Exploring Mental States in Relationships and Exploring Mental States in Others were most effective, while Clarification and Exploration and Addressing Contradictions performed no better than non-mentalizing strategies.

The findings add to the emerging evidence for mentalization-based approaches as a means of supporting successful educational environments for both teachers and children. While the results cannot be interpreted as causal, they highlight the promise of incorporating mentalization-based programmes in schools. Future research should employ controlled experiments to further establish the effectiveness of mentalization techniques in addressing disruptive behaviour and emotional dysregulation in the classroom.