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What Do Teachers Know About ADHD?
Parents are often frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of knowledge and understanding of ADHD that is displayed by their child's teacher. A study that was published in the April 1998 issue of the Journal of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics (pages 94-100) presents some interesting pilot data about what the knowledge base among teachers may be.
The results of this study can not be generalized because only 44 teachers from a single school participated. Nonetheless, it is interesting to compare what was learned here with what the situation may be in your area.
The authors report that prior to providing teachers with an in-service workshop on ADHD, 41% believe that ADHD could be caused by poor parenting, and an equal percentage believed that sugar or food additives caused ADHD. (Note that the prevailing view in the mental health profession is that ADHD is NOT caused by poor parenting and that reactions to sugar/food additives account for only a very small percentage of cases.) Almost 2/3s of teachers believed that medication should be used only as a last resort. (There is more disagreement about this issue within the profession but many practitioners do certainly not regard medication as the treatment of last resort.)
An especially concerning finding was that over 60% of the teachers had never had any contact whatsoever with the physician who was prescribing medication to their student(s). This means, of course, that the doctor was receiving no direct feedback from the teacher about how the medication was effecting the child, what symptoms were and were not being helped, and what the effect of different doses seemed to be. In the absence of getting systematic feedback from the teacher, the likelihood of the child obtaining the maximum, possible benefit from medication is substantially reduced and it is really a shame that there continues to be so little effective monitoring of children's response to medication.
What was encouraging about this study was how effective providing teachers with appropriate information about ADHD could be in changing some of their erroneous beliefs. In this study, teachers were presented with a curriculum on ADHD that was developed by ChADD , the national support group for children and adults with attention deficit disorder. At the conclusion of this curriculum, only 7% of teachers continued to believe that ADHD was caused by poor parenting, 5% still believed that food additives were the primary culprit, and 34% still felt that medication should only be used as a last resort. It is also interesting to note that teachers who participated in the educational meetings reported that they experienced significantly less stress from their students with ADHD after learning more about ADHD and effective ways to help students with this condition.
I think this study provides good initial evidence for how knowledge about ADHD among teachers may continue to be very suspect, which is quite unfortunate as it can make things much more difficult for children and parents. The absence of cooperation between teachers and physicians is also concerning. On the positive side, the results also suggest that many teachers are open to changing their beliefs when provided with new information. Perhaps working to organize an in-service workshop for teachers at your child's school could be a helpful and important thing to do.
Note: This article originally appeared in Attention Research Update, an online newsletter written by Dr. David Rabiner, a Duke University psychologist and former member of CHADD's Professional Advisory Board. You can learn more about Attention Research Update and sign up for a free subscription at www.helpforadd.com.