A guest blog by psychologist Dr John Coleman, professor at the University of Bedfordshire, about his new book on adolescent brain development, and how greater understanding of this stage can make a profound difference to the way adults relate to young people.

Until 20 years ago, it was believed that the brain stopped developing at the end of childhood. Now we know that the brain continues to change and develop through the teenage years and into the early twenties. This knowledge is especially important for any adult who lives or works with young people.

The teenage years are a critical period, with great potential for change. In fact, the brain undergoes more change and maturation during the teenage years than at any other time, apart from the first three years of life. This has profound implications for our understanding of teenage behaviour. Once we recognise the degree of change, then the behaviour of those in this age range becomes so much more explicable.

Not just for teachers

This book has the word teacher in the title, since one obvious location for the introduction of this new knowledge is school. It contains workshops and lesson plans developed in order to make knowledge about the teenage brain more widely available. However, topics covered include risk and reward, the social brain, memory and learning, the management of stress and anxiety, sleep, mental health and emotional wellbeing – meaning it is also relevant to health and social care professionals working with young people – and to students themselves.

One teacher told me: “Anything that improves understanding of the young people we are working with must be a gain. I believe this is a huge step forward. Before I did [the teen brain course] I didn’t really understand how students are changing. Ideas about the changing brain can be very empowering.”

And a secondary school wellbeing co-ordinator said: “As soon as a child is moody, frustrated, angry, fed up with the world, parents automatically look it up online and they go: ‘Oh! My child has got a personality disorder’. It is very difficult to persuade a parent that this is normal. If we could do some sort of session on the teen brain for parents so that they could understand what is normal and what is not that would be brilliant”.