The Teacher and the Teenage Brain

The Teacher and the Teenage Brain is essential reading for all teachers and students of education. This book offers a fascinating introduction to teenage brain development and shows how this knowledge has changed the way we understand young people. It provides a critical insight into strategies for improving relationships in the classroom and helping both adults and teenagers cope better with this stage of life.

Dr John Coleman shows how teachers and students can contribute to healthy brain development. The book includes information about memory and learning, as well as guidance on motivation and the management of stress. Underpinned by his extensive work with schools, Dr Coleman offers advice on key topics including the importance of sleep, the social brain, moodiness, risk and risk-taking and the role of hormones. This book is extensively illustrated with examples from classrooms and interviews with teachers. It explicitly links research and practice to create a comprehensive, accessible guide to new knowledge about teenage brain development and its importance for education.

Accompanied by a website providing resources for running workshops with teachers and parents, as well as an outline of a lesson plan for students, The Teacher and the Teenage Brain offers an innovative approach to the understanding of the teenage brain. This book represents an important contribution to teacher training and to the enhancement of learning in the classroom.

Dr John Coleman trained as a clinical psychologist and was formerly a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is the Founder of a research centre studying adolescents and their families, and during his career he has also run a special school for troubled teenagers and worked as a policy advisor for government. In addition to running workshops for parents of teenagers, he has created two series for TV, and written books and developed videos on the adolescent years. John’s pioneering work has been widely recognised, and in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2001 he was awarded an OBE for services to young people.