Responding to the “unstable” or “rejected” student

• Unstable/ambivalent students: invest relational attention, provide predictable routines and opportunities to show competence. They often seek attention — give structured attention before disruptive attention‑seeking arises (e.g., a short check-in, assigning a valued responsibility).
• Rejected/withdrawn students: gentle, consistent firmness combined with warm, predictable support helps. Start with low‑demand tasks that can succeed, scaffold social interactions, and pair them with empathetic peers.
• For both types: be patient — relationship work takes time but yields large returns in motivation and learning.

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Teacher pupil interaction

The importance of home for school behavior

In the study, the students who were judged by the teachers to perform poorly had received less acceptance and love than the well-adjusted students.

The research concluded that disruptive behavior comes mainly from those students who feel that their home education is contradictory. Another conclusion is that good interaction at home motivates the child to perform well at school.

So what are the children like at school who, according to the previous definition, were grouped according to their home background into 3 different categories

• Safe
• Erratic
• Repressed

When the students were asked about interaction in the same way as about home relationships, the distribution of the three categories is almost the same as according to home relationships. The number of rejected ones has slightly increased and the number of safe ones has slightly decreased. An unstable then group of students would seem to dominate the class.

If the child has a secure relationship with his parents, then he can move from difficulties to a new and strange school environment, because the memories of the interaction with the mother influence the child to dare to approach other adults and believe that they, like the mother, will meet his needs. At school, such a child is confident and has a positive attitude towards both his teachers and his peers. He is responsible and curiously interested in new things. Often such a child comes from a family where the parents have prepared him to start school.

Pattern: Teacher-Student-Interaction

So what kind of students are unstable children? An unstable relationship with one’s own mother causes restlessness and nervousness in the child, because he does not get enough attention for his part. It’s not about the length of the interaction, it’s about its quality. The interaction does not meet the child’s needs. For this reason, the child is unable to learn meaningful interaction strategies.

An unstable interaction relationship activates the student’s seeking or attention-seeking behavior. The student is also unsure of his teacher and would like him to pay more attention to him than he has done so far. The student is therefore not internally motivated in matters of study, but is worried about his social relationships. They should be made better. The student can try different ways that he thinks the teacher will appreciate. At worst, being noticed can lead to activities that even disrupt the learning or teaching process itself. The study describes an unstable student as even aggressive, which is just a sign that the student is internally unhappy . He is incapable of behaving in such a way as to get the feedback he wants. He may even hope to be controlled by the teacher.

Disruptors of teaching are usually found in this student category . So the student seeks the teacher’s attention and approval by means that often lead to the teacher punishing the student in question.

Final short checklist for your lesson planning

• Did I check students’ prior knowledge and anchor new learning?
• Did I plan a relational starter (name routine, quick check‑in)?
• Are tasks socially structured so peers scaffold each other (roles, clear instructions)?
• Will the task create small wins to build subject‑specific self‑esteem?
• Is feedback formative, timely and growth‑oriented?
• Did I avoid promising extrinsic rewards for tasks where intrinsic motivation matters?
• Have I considered subject options and tasks that might engage different identities (hands‑on, real‑world tasks)?

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Quick reading & ideas to explore (from the course context)

• Yli‑Luoma’s interaction theory (teacher–student interaction: rejected / unstable / safe)
• Vygotsky — social origins of learning; zone of proximal development
• Lickona — forming social communities: knowing each other, helping care, shared values
• Kolb — experiential learning and the cycle: experience → reflect → conceptualize → test
• Maslow — physiological & safety needs as prerequisites for learning activation

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