How would you rate your ability to see the world from your pupils’ perspective? Are you able to “tune in” to their viewpoint, to consider their wants and needs, and interact with them in a way that takes their position into account?

It is a big ask, particularly for teachers with hundreds of different people passing through their classroom each week.

In a family context, though, this is often far more achievable. And, according to research, the extent to which parents practise so-called “mind-mindedness” with their children can have a huge impact on how they perform in school. Yet, despite the evidence, mind-mindedness is not a phrase that is commonly understood. So what exactly is it, and what do teachers need to know?

“Mind-mindedness is your spontaneous tendency to try to work out what is driving someone’s behaviour in terms of their underlying cognitions, emotions and internal states,” explains Elizabeth Meins, a professor in the psychology department at the University of York who has been at the forefront of research into the concept for nearly three decades.

“So it is basically a tendency to tune in to what someone might be thinking,” she adds, “and to use that information and intuition about what is going on inside their heads to try to understand them more and understand how they behave.”

Meins gives the example of a baby gesturing towards a particular toy, and the father associating this with a desire to play with the toy; or a mother interpreting a child’s obsession with a particular item as fascination. “They are going one step beyond just the baby’s behaviour to say, ‘What is the internal state that governs it?’,” she explains.

It might seem like common sense for parents to instinctively try to view an interaction from their child’s point of view, particularly before that child is able to communicate verbally. But this is not always the case - and if this does not happen, the knock-on effects when the child starts school can be a cause for concern.

“Some parents seem to get it wrong,” Meins says. “They might have their own agenda about what they want the baby to do, and they might impose that on them. One obvious example might be that the baby is really into playing with a mirror, but the mum really wants the baby to play with the stacking rings, so she takes the mirror away from the baby and says, ‘Oh, you don’t want that any more, you are bored of that.’ ”

This might seem innocuous, but a pattern of getting the approach “wrong”, as Meins terms it, could lead to poorer outcomes at school - particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In one study looking at mothers’ interactions (“dads are much less willing or able to come in and do research studies,” says Meins), the presence of early mind-mindedness predicted educational attainment in children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“We followed the children up at various time points, and assessed things like early language ability using standardised scales,” Meins explains. “We also got mothers to report on their children’s behaviour both in terms of social withdrawal and anxiety-type problems, but also whether or not they have any problems with inattention or acting out.”

Meins collected the same data from the children’s first-year teachers to see how they behaved at school, and applied to the government’s National Pupil Database for their Sats results at ages 7 and 11.

For these disadvantaged families specifically, a mother’s ability to comment in an appropriate way on what their babies might be thinking or feeling was found to be an accurate predictor of children’s reading attainment and Sats performance.

“I was as surprised as anybody else at this - that what mothers are saying to their babies at eight months of age is actually directly affecting their reading performance when they are 11, even controlling for things like their early verbal IQ, behavioural difficulties, and other stuff you think might be important in shaping how well kids do in Sats,” Meins says.

“But yes, there are pretty robust findings that suggest, for children who might be growing up in slightly more challenging circumstances, maybe your mum’s ability to actually take your perspective and talk about what you might be thinking or feeling ... might be important in scaffolding in terms of learning and academic performance.”

‘It’s never too late’

You might think that, if mind-mindedness can have such clear knock-on effects at the age of eight months, by the time children enter primary school (let alone secondary), the opportunity to implement it has already gone. So is it really worth teachers’ while to experiment with the approach?

“The good thing is we know that mind-mindedness is really amenable to change, so it is not like this is set in stone and I would never say it is too late to do it. Trying to take a child’s perspective at any age is a positive thing,” Meins says.

“There are quite a few people recently who have got in touch and said it would be really interesting to look at mind-mindedness in relation to teachers and pupils, and there is no reason to say that it wouldn’t be useful for teachers to try to take that perspective - of trying to understand what might be underlying and driving children’s behaviour rather than just seeing the behaviour in isolation.”

Meins acknowledges, however, that it would be “a big ask” for teachers to do this with all their pupils. She continues: “A colleague did some stuff where, last year, she got kids to write down how they might describe themselves, what things were interesting about themselves, and there were some really quite poignant things. She then showed the kids’ teachers how they had described themselves. Several of the teachers found this really enlightening, and it helped them to understand the kids much better and why they might be a certain way in class.”

Ultimately, while teachers might feel they “are social workers and have to do things that go way beyond actually teaching”, there are likely to be benefits from “just trying to work out what makes kids tick”.

“We have no data at the moment on mind-mindedness and teachers, so I will preface what I say with that,” Meins explains. “But we know that certainly parents being mind-minded and being able to tune into what their children are thinking or feeling helps kids do the kind of things that are going to improve their early school performance.

“We know they are more likely to attend school and be able to pay attention; they are less likely to be perceived as being socially withdrawn. Certainly having schools working in concert with parents is a really important thing … since teachers are very, very conscious of the positive impact that parents and parenting can have on children’s ability to learn.”

Meins’ work concerning the long-term impact of mind-mindedness on children is continuing, and she has just secured a grant to follow the children in her longitudinal study through to key stage 4 and beyond.

“We will be following up the older students when they are 18, looking at their later educational attainment in terms of GCSEs and A levels, but also things like career aspirations, romantic relationships as young adults and their risk-taking behaviour,” she says. “It will be fascinating to have this data on people from eight months to 18 years.”

Chris Parr is a freelance writer

Meet the academic

Elizabeth Meins is professor in the psychology department at the University of York. Her main area of research focuses on caregivers’ “mind-mindedness” and its role in predicting children’s development.

Further reading

Bernier, A, McMahon, C, and Perrier, R (2016) “Maternal mind-mindedness and children’s school readiness: a longitudinal study of developmental processes”, Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1037/dev0000225

Meins, E, Centifanti, L C M, Fernyhough, C et al (2013) “Maternal mind-mindedness and children’s behavioral difficulties: mitigating the impact of low socioeconomic status”, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 41/4: 543-53

Meins, E, Fernyhough, C, and Centifanti, L C M (2018) “Mothers’ early mind‐mindedness predicts educational attainment in socially and economically disadvantaged British children”, Child Development, DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13028

Fishburn, S, Meins, E, and Greenhow, S et al (2017) “Mind-mindedness in parents of looked-after children”, Developmental Psychology, DOI: 10.1037/dev0000304