How do we best help students who struggle with everything from ADHD to learning disabilities?

Danish children and young people are increasingly struggling with mental disorders such as ADHD, autism or learning difficulties.

When looking at psychiatric diagnoses among children and young people between the ages of 0 and 17 alone, the number increased by 39 percent in the period from 2013 to 2023 to just over 73,000. This is shown by figures from the Ministry of the Interior and Health.

Common to all types of mental disorders is that they generally lead to lower grades and ultimately a lower salary income in adulthood. So those affected may end up having to live a life plagued by inequality.

A new research project will now investigate whether we as a society can do more for these children in school, where they spend a large part of their time.

»What we ultimately want to do as a society is to mitigate the negative consequences in the form of poor education and career life. Therefore, in the project we will focus on the role of teachers and schools. There is a large amount of economic literature that has shown the great importance of teachers for pupils' results, for example grades. We believe that teachers and schools are especially important for students with mental disorders because many disorders appear for the first time at school age. Therefore, it is likely that teachers or schools will set a precedent for how these disorders are handled,« explains Franziska Valder, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, who will lead the research.

Looking at the teachers' personalities

The research will make use of methods from the world of economics that are already used today to link school students' grades to individual teachers. That is, what contributions the individual teachers have made in relation to the students' performance. An economist would refer to it as the teachers' added value.

The project will try to transfer these models to students with mental disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders, such as ADHD, or behavioural disorders.

Previous research on teachers' contributions to school students has been based on various and easily accessible facts. For example, how long a teacher has been trained, where the teacher has worked and his or her professional background. But in this project, the researchers want to dig a little deeper.

»We will look at what other components may drive a teacher's added value. It could be personality traits of teachers, their social behaviour or qualities such as patience, warmth or empathy. Anything that can be particularly important for students with these disorders,« says Franziska Valder.

One of the ways to gain this insight is through questionnaires, and the hope is that a large proportion of teachers in Danish schools will answer the questions.

There will be a special focus on teachers who teach Danish and mathematics. Partly because there is easy access to test results within these subjects, and partly because Danish teachers often act as class teachers and spend extra time in the company of the students.

However, school principals and relevant educators will also be consulted. In addition, in-depth interviews will be conducted with the help of artificial intelligence to get even more in-depth and obtain as much data as possible. Simply because the economic methods require a large amount of data.

The research will also include a wide range of register data, such as grades and health data, as well as well-being surveys.

Perhaps the education of teachers should be adjusted

In the five-year project, Franziska Valder will work closely with Dr. Michaela Paffenholz from the Ifo Institute, which is part of the University of Munich, and will spend a research stay in Toronto as part of the project. In addition, Anna Bugge, Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen, provides knowledge about teacher’s education.

»I hope that many of the insights we generate will be interesting for how we actually educate our teachers. What can we expect from them with their current education? Are there things that we might want to shift our focus to? Because the majority of teachers in Denmark are not trained to deal with students with mental and behavioural disorders. So how can we train our teachers better? How can we organise our schools? What tools and methods work well for students with these disorders?,« says Franziska Valder and concludes:

»We hope that we will gain insight into what works well for students with these disorders, what aspects we want to include in the teaching, and how to do it without harming the other students.«