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

Background: 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. Aim: 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. Methods: 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. Results: performed no better than non-mentalizing strategies. Conclusion: 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.