Behaviour Management ......
or Management Behaviour?

A sociological study of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Australian and American secondary schools

Researcher: Dr Brenton Prosser BA (Hons), GDE, PhD, AACE.
A full report on this project can be found on the web:  CLICK HERE

Key Findings:

1.     Participants often described themselves having ‘mild ADHD’. This reveals that while they did not experience ADHD symptoms as severely as media reports would imply, they felt they still needed special assistance in the school environment.

2.      While all participants maintained that ADHD had a biological cause, most asserted that the difficulties they faced were social in nature and experienced primarily in response to the school environment. Difficulties ranged from poor organisation, difficulty making friends and low self-esteem, through to suicidal thoughts, violent outbursts and ongoing depression.

3.      Despite the multi-modal treatment approach being recommended by medical authorities and assurances from governments that this approach was available to all young people with ADHD, all participants used solely medication and expressed surprise to discover treatments other than medication for ADHD.

4.  Participants highlighted large class sizes and rushed curriculum as key factors in learning difficulty and significant barriers to teachers providing adequate support.

5.    Participants expressed concern that while the media was important in raising public awareness about ADHD, most reports were sensationalised and did not represent the experience of the majority of students with ADHD.

6.  Both teachers and participants claimed that traditional educational interventions in classrooms are highly effective with ADHD, but often education structures and pressures on teachers hamper the implementation of these interventions.

7.     Teachers often feel they cannot simultaneously meet both the needs of individual and the whole class in the current educational environment. These feeling are exacerbated by the problems associated with ADHD.

8.      While amphetamine medication was effective for most participants in primary school, the effectiveness of this medication declined throughout adolescence. Increasingly concerns became social and academic in nature which further highlighted the need for the early use of multi-modal interventions.

9.      Participants from lower class schools tended to be diagnosed more for the hyperactivity, while participants from middle to upper middle class schools tended to be diagnosed more for inattention.

10.  The survey of all amphetamine use for ADHD by people under 18 years in Adelaide found that medication use was more likely in areas of low income and employment.

There are no specific policies relating to ADHD in Australian schools, and the most common difficulty expressed by parents, teachers and participants is the significant gap between services theoretically available under other policies and services that are pr

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