From Reactivity to Reflection - Responding to Student Behaviours - October 2026

Capability Levels: Emerging, Evolving, Established

This workshop explores how psychological flexibility shapes teachers’ responses to student behaviour and professional support. Participants examine how stress, emotional activation, and system pressure narrow attention, increase reactivity, and reduce openness to reflection. This will help you support both the students and teachers.

Drawing on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the workshop introduces psychological flexibility as the ability to remain present, perspective-aware, and values-guided under pressure. Participants explore how inflexibility shows up in school settings as defensiveness, avoidance, over-control, or burnout.

The workshop focuses on consultation and professional reasoning rather than intervention delivery. School counsellors are supported to use ACT-informed approaches to help teachers regain flexibility, strengthen collaboration, and respond to students in more adaptive and sustainable ways.

Core Skills Taught in this Workshop

• Identify behavioural and relational indicators of psychological inflexibility
• Recognise defensiveness, avoidance, and rigidity as stress responses rather than resistance
• Use ACT-informed language to normalise emotional load and reopen choice
• Support values-based reflection in consultation conversations
• Respond to teacher distress in ways that restore flexibility rather than escalate control

Who should attend?

This workshop series may be of interest to Social Worker’s that are at the intermediate and advanced level.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this program, participants will be able to:

• Identify signs of reduced psychological flexibility in teachers responding to ongoing behaviour challenges
• Explain how stress and emotional load contribute to rigid or avoidant responses
• Apply ACT-informed strategies to support psychological flexibility in consultation contexts
• Support teachers to reconnect with values when behaviour feels overwhelming
• Promote more flexible, reflective responses to student behaviour at a systems level

Event Structure:

Introduction (15 mins)

Learning Session 1: Understanding Psychological Inflexibility in Schools (40 mins)

Learning Activity: Reflective Application: When Flexibility Is Lost (30 mins)

Learning Session 2: ACT Framework for Restoring Flexibility (40 mins)

Learning Activity: Applying Psychological Flexibility in Consultation (40 mins)

Learning Session 3: Applications (10 mins)

Learning Activity: Practice Integration (20 mins)

Q&A and Conclusion (15 mins)

This Workshop is not recorded, however, you will have access to materials and resources on AASW Online Learning for 4 weeks after the completion of the workshop.

AASW Credentials: Mental Health (FPS); Schools SW

FPS Skills Training will be incorporated in this workshop and falls under e. Skills Training, i. problem solving skills and training; & iv. communication training of Medicare schedule (https://www9.health.gov.au/mbs/fullDisplay.cfm?type=note&q=MN.7.4&qt=noteID&criteria=MN%2E7%2E4)

In the event of an audit, it is the member’s responsibility to clearly demonstrate how this FPS training is relevant to the delivery of FPS in their specific work context.