Case Study 11A
Implementing the PATHS Program in Birmingham, UK
Anna Bateman, Satpal Boyes, Jennie Hine, Cheryl Hopkins, Bridget Kerrigan, Tony Lacey, Nick Axford, and Minna Lehtonen
It’s just about getting our kids confident and talking and then empathizing. Isn’t that such a key thing that kids just don’t do? And now it permeates throughout the whole school. Staff who use it don’t want to lose it, and staff who don’t use it can see the benefits.
—Tony Lacey, principal of Arden Primary School in Birmingham, UK, on the impact of PATHS in his school
How PATHS Came to Birmingham
Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK, with a population of just over one million, including 230,000 children (birth to fifteen years). Residents are from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds and include 20 percent who are Asian (mostly Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian).
In 2007, Birmingham City Council’s director of children’s services initiated a strategy development and service design process using the Common Language method of the Social Research Unit (SRU), Dartington. This used data from large-scale surveys of a cross section of the city’s children and families. Over five thousand children and five hundred parents were consulted using well-tested methods. These surveys identified aspects of children’s well-being that needed to be improved. Working with SRU staff, the city’s service directors identified several evidence-based programs that would address the issues raised by the surveys (Birmingham City Council, 2007). The Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PATHS) program was chosen to help improve children’s social and emotional learning (SEL) and behavior.
Cheryl Hopkins, Birmingham’s director for strategy and commissioning, explains the decision: “The survey results showed that although the early development of children in Birmingham appears strong, a significant proportion have difficulties with relationships and doing things that help others. And as the City’s children grow older, their behavior lags behind that in the rest of UK. So we put PATHS in place because we had a serious concern about behavior and social literacy, particularly amongst vulnerable groups of children, and because we knew from databases of evidence-based programs like Blueprints that it is effective in addressing such problems.”
PATHS was implemented in twenty-nine primary [elementary] schools as part of a randomized controlled trial, which also included twenty-seven control schools on a two-year waiting list. The schools taking part in the program are from across the city and include a range of sizes as well as some that are ethnically diverse and others that are relatively homogenous. Several of the schools are located in areas of high poverty and deprivation.
The trial started in fall 2009. In the first year, PATHS was implemented in reception (preschool) and year 1 (kindergarten, four- to six-year-olds). In the second year, it was extended to include implementation in year 2 (first grade, i.e., six- and seven-year-olds). Each participating school received lesson materials, teacher training, backfill (so that teachers implementing PATHS could attend training), and regular support from one of three PATHS coach consultants (all of whom are experienced teachers). Consultants’ support was provided to ensure that the program was implemented with both quality and fidelity.
One of the schools to implement PATHS was Arden, a large primary school serving an inner-city area of Birmingham. There are over five hundred students at Arden, and soon there will be over seven hundred as part of a planned expansion. All students are from minority ethnic backgrounds, and most speak English as an additional language (EAL) (many are at the early stages of speaking English). The proportion of students entitled to free school meals is much higher than the national average, as is the proportion with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. Student mobility is high.
Tony Lacey, principal of Arden, explains why his school signed up to implement PATHS:
I am usually wary of new initiatives because you have to convince your staff first. We were at a principals’ meeting, and our arms were bent to convince us to do the program. I was half hoping we would be a control school because I was quite skeptical. It was an American program, so it might be less relevant here, and it’s very prescriptive.
The reason we did it was less to do with behavior, which is a major issue in some schools but in our kids is very good, and more to do with social and emotional skills. It came from reading ninety children’s reports, where 80 percent were saying things like “Sits, doesn’t contribute,” or “Can’t hear them speak, lacks confidence,” or “Lacks self-esteem.” These kids are never going to be able to read, write, or articulate things if they haven’t got the confidence.
Other principals signed their schools up for reasons much more to do with students’ behavior problems. They needed something to help children control their impulses and thereby foster a calmer environment. The message that SEL programs like PATHS can support academic achievement—for example, through enhanced confidence, attention, and literacy—also helped convince principals to buy into the pilot.
Teaching PATHS in Birmingham
PATHS lessons are designed to develop children’s self-esteem, problem-solving skills, and ability to recognize and control their emotions. For younger children, the lessons are based around four characters, represented by puppets. The accompanying stories and dialogues work through scenarios in which characters learn to recognize and deal with strong feelings and solve problems in a prosocial way.
PATHS lessons teach children the full spectrum of a feelings vocabulary, extending beyond “happy” and “sad” to include more complex feelings such as “generous” or “worried.” This is designed to enable them to express accurately how they feel as well as to recognize how others feel. When children encounter a new feeling, they are given a “feeling face card,” which they personalize and put on a ring. These cards give children a visual tool for expressing how they feel, particularly when they find verbalizing feelings difficult.
PATHS creates a positive learning environment where each child in the class is valued and made to feel special. This is done through the daily ritual of the “PATHS Child of the Day.” This child is chosen each day through a random selection process and wears something like a colorful hat, badge, or waistcoat. They have a special role helping the teacher—for example, with the register—and get to be first in line and receive compliments from teachers and fellow students. According to Tony Lacey, this is very popular and effective in Arden.
Children are also taught how to deal with uncomfortable emotions through a calming down technique: the children stop, take a deep breath, and then say what the problem is and how they feel. They are encouraged to try different solutions to the problem and to evaluate them to see what works. To help embed this approach, the four- to six-year-olds learn to “Do Turtle”—holding themselves to represent the puppet character Twiggle the turtle going into his shell—while the six- to seven-year-olds use “control signals” (symbolized as traffic lights and represented on posters). In this way, PATHS gives children the skills to become independent problem solvers who are able to make positive choices about behavior.
Working closely with the PATHS coach consultants, teachers in Birmingham have customized elements of the program to develop creative and innovative solutions to classroom problems. For example, some schools have found the use of the feelings cards difficult to organize because of time constraints or a lack of space to keep the cards easily accessible. One solution has been to create paper “feeling flowers” for each of the feelings covered. Each child has their own petals with their names on them that they can place on the relevant feeling flower to show how they are feeling.
Many schools in Birmingham have children with EAL, or children with specific needs. Teachers, with PATHS coach consultants, have been keen to develop ideas that support these needs. For example, feeling faces cards might be written in children’s home language as well as English, and children in some schools are given opportunities to have tutoring before and after PATHS lessons to help them understand key vocabulary and concepts (supported with visual clues).
Some schools have developed a child-led PATHS zone in the classroom, complete with puppets, music, art, and literacy activities centered around the current theme. Some teachers have sought to embed PATHS in literacy lessons and through other cross-curricular work; for instance, stories are used to look at how particular characters feel at different points in the story, with children creating “freeze frames” to illustrate this.
PATHS is not designed to be restricted to the classroom; it should also change the ethos of a school and even affect a child’s home life. The Birmingham PATHS coach consultants have therefore encouraged schools to use PATHS so that it impacts the whole school community, providing a common language and structure for understanding social emotional learning and behavior. They have trained teachers in higher grades, teaching assistants, learning mentors, and lunchtime supervisors in the program’s main principles and techniques. Lunchtime supervisors have had the opportunity to be the PATHS “Person of the Day” and receive compliments, and they are encouraged to remember to affirm the PATHS Child of the Day at lunchtime.
The coach consultants have also held dedicated sessions for parents. These cover key PATHS principles, for instance that all feelings are “okay,” but sometimes the behavior choices resulting from strong feelings may not be okay and that we can learn to control how we respond to those feelings. Parents learn about compliments, “calming down,” and problem-solving techniques. They receive a pack of materials containing posters and bookmarks (to serve as a reminder of these key elements), as well as a set of feeling faces that parents and children can personalize and use together at home.
How Has It Gone?
Most teachers are positive about PATHS, some extremely so: “The best thing I’ve ever done,” said one. They like the resources, and they are noticing the benefits, particularly in children’s reading, comprehension, speaking, and listening. For example, a child might now say they are “frustrated,” whereas before they would have expressed the same feeling as “sad.” The challenge for teachers is finding time to teach lessons amid multiple other pressing demands on curriculum time.
At Arden, “Teachers’ initial reaction was ‘How are we going to squeeze it into the curriculum?’” says Tony Lacey,
but they agreed there was a need to do the program—they could see there was a problem. So there was resistance to start with, but teachers actually liked the prescription to start with because it was new, and then kids responded to it.
Then they found they could slightly adapt it for the group. For example, they were reading the stories, but they were using the learning in other contexts. Or when they found that some of the lessons were perhaps a bit long, they cut them in half and did something practical in between.
Now we find that key stage 2 staff [ages seven to eleven] want to do PATHS because they have seen the massive impact it has actually had, particularly on the way that these children are reading and writing.
Indeed, the effect on students at Arden has been striking, according to Tony Lacey, both in terms of behavior and academic achievement.
Our English scores last year were way up, particularly on reading, and the key change has been the shared learning and cooperation. When I walk into a reception or year 1 classroom, I see a massive difference in the way they work together.
Also they are getting more confident, which has its drawbacks really, because they all want to tell you everything! This is in contrast to the past, where students would say, “I’ll wait my turn”—particularly the girls, because they were not encouraged to participate.
According to the coach consultants, who speak regularly with teachers and also observe many PATHS lessons, students love PATHS, so much so that they often tell teachers if something gets missed, such as compliments or selection of the PATHS Child of the Day: they help maintain fidelity! Parents have also been enthusiastic. Those attending workshops value support with helping their children to express emotions more appropriately and want to try activities with their children at home.
The PATHS coach consultants share the excitement about how well PATHS has started. As a “critical friend,” they always encourage staff to see the progress that children are making. But they are mindful of the challenges and how to solve them.
First, because the timetable is packed, a cross-curricular approach is vital. The coach consultants have therefore mapped out how PATHS relates to central government curricular requirements so that teachers can see how PATHS lessons tick several boxes at once. Second, there is also a need to make sure that PATHS gets embedded in schools so that the vocabulary, concepts, and routines extend beyond designated lesson time. Third, there is the need to keep PATHS alive for teachers who teach the same year group each year; as ever, this requires balancing fidelity and adaptation! Fourth, and unsurprisingly, PATHS is implemented best in schools where there is strong leadership. It is particularly helpful when PATHS is made integral to formal plans for improving school performance, as this translates into targets for individual teachers and the school as a whole. For instance, as part of their performance management objectives, a teacher or senior school leader might be expected to develop a PATHS fact sheet for visitors new to the school. Or a school might focus on embedding PATHS by developing a common language and a PATHS-based approach to behavior and classroom management. All of this strengthens accountability.
Closing Thoughts
As the two-year trial in Birmingham comes to an end, twenty-six of twenty-nine program schools want to continue implementing PATHS, and others want to join in. This is a sign of the program’s popularity. The next step is scaling up: moving from a model in which schools received funding from the local authority to one owned by schools and self-funded, and getting the program implemented in additional year groups and schools.
This case study ends with some advice, based on the Birmingham experience, to others who might be considering implementing an SEL program like PATHS:
Reference
Birmingham City Council. (2007). Brighter futures: A strategy for children’s services in Birmingham. Birmingham, UK: Birmingham City Council.