Children are being taught 'emotional literacy' through studying infant behaviour as part of a pilot scheme launched for eight and nine-year-olds in Scotland
It is late morning at New Stevenston primary school in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, and in a room off the main hall, 16 children sit in a circle watching a baby who has been set down in their midst on a bright green blanket.
Chloe Quigley, aged 14 weeks, balances on her mother's knee and blinks at her audience. Over her dress she wears a white T-shirt that reads 'Teacher'.
"What do you think she's thinking?" asks Mary Gordon, a Canadian educator and founder of Roots of Empathy, a programme designed to foster emotional literacy in children.
"Who are all these people?" says a small boy in a brown jumper.
Over the course of the next half an hour, the children, all aged between eight and nine, will learn to read Chloe's expressions and the noises she makes, identify her emotions and watch her interactions with her mother. The session, designed to help children better understand their own feelings and the feelings of others, is part of a year-long project launched in Scotland by the children's charity Action for Children, North Lanarkshire council and the Scottish government. Chloe will return to the school for eight more sessions in the coming year, and the children will be able to see how she grows and develops and how her interactions with them and her mother change over time.
Roots of Empathy started in Toronto in 1996 and is now used by schools in the US, New Zealand and now the UK – a similar programme was launched last week in Northern Ireland. Research suggests that the programme has a significant impact in reducing levels of aggression among children and making them more aware and responsive to the feelings of their peers and other people.
The scheme has run in the Isle of Man for a number of years, and a study by the University of British Columbia and King's College, London found that children who had undergone the sessions with the infants displayed improved social and emotional competence and positive social behaviours. It has also caught the attention of work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, who has described it as a key means of reversing family breakdown.
Mary Gordon, who travelled to Scotland for the first UK mainland launch, said such early intervention was crucial in helping children develop emotional resilience and intelligence.
"A school's function is to help children navigate the world but if we don't help them with their social and emotional literacy we have only half developed them," she said. "The turnkey to a happy and productive life is learning how to relate and we can do that. We teach from the attachment and attitude of the mother and baby how we are the same and how we are different. It really changes how the children see one another."
Scotland's community safety minister, Fergus Ewing, said the project had an "impressive record" of reducing aggression and bullying among young people in the classroom, and the government would be watching the pilot with great interest.
The North Lanarkshire programme will be run by Action for Children and the charity has recruited local parents and their babies – aged between two and four months – to take part.
Paul Buntine, father of 16-week-old Zack, another of the 'tiny teachers' as the infants are called, said taking part was a small commitment for a much greater good. "When they said it could help reduce bullying and name-calling, it seemed like such a great idea," he said. "We wanted to get involved."