A note on AI: I have dysgraphia, so AI has been used solely to help with spelling and grammar. This is my writing, based on over 30 years of my own research. All the content, ideas, questions, research, and structure are my own.
Coercive Behaviour Within Education: Who Gets to Decide?
A year-long investigation across the Netherlands and the UK
The School of Abnormal | Brilliantly Unbalanced
The ASK
Over the next year, I am investigating coercive behaviour within schools and educational institutions across the Netherlands and the UK.
I want to hear from students, parents, teachers, educational professionals, researchers, and others who have experienced, witnessed, questioned, or been involved in decisions that may have caused harm within education.
To understand what this investigation is about, consider four examples.
1. When a professional's words become the parent's position
A school professional asks parents about their "vision" for their child's education.
The parents explain that they are asking for adjustments to accommodate their child's needs. They never describe these requests as their vision. They even make clear during the conversation that they are asking for adjustments.
The school subsequently presents those requested adjustments as the "parents' vision" and uses that framing as part of the reason for rejecting the child.
Who gave the professional permission to redefine what the parents were asking for? At what point did a request for an adjustment become grounds for exclusion?
2. When a biological need becomes a disciplinary issue
A teenage girl needs more than four minutes for a toilet break because she is menstruating.
The school imposes a four-minute limit. She takes longer and receives detention.
The following day, she stays home because she no longer feels safe at school.
Who gets to decide that four minutes is enough? What happens when a school rule is given greater importance than a student's biological needs, dignity, and sense of safety?
3. When equipment becomes a reason for punishment
A student receives detention for arriving without the correct pencils.
What is the purpose of that detention? What is being taught? And what happens when the consequences of punishment have a greater effect on a student's ability to participate in education than the missing pencils ever could?
Who gets to decide that punishment is the appropriate response, and who questions whether it serves any educational purpose?
4. When a teacher wants to help but feels unable to
A teacher recognises that a student needs additional support or an adjustment and wants to help. But the teacher feels unable to act because of expectations, targets, policies, or instructions coming from higher up within the educational system.
The teacher may be expected to meet institutional requirements even when doing so conflicts with what they believe the student needs. Questioning those expectations may carry consequences for the teacher as well as for the student.
Who is making the decision when a teacher feels they cannot help? What happens when meeting expectations from above becomes more important than responding to the needs of the student? And who is accountable for the consequences?
These four examples raise questions about far more than individual school rules.
They raise questions about authority, interpretation, accountability, biological needs, and the permission structures through which one person or institution decides what another person must do.
Who gets to decide? Who gets to question those decisions? And who pays the price?
These are some of the questions I want to investigate over the coming year.
I want to hear from people on all sides of these experiences, including those making decisions, those expected to enforce them, those questioning them, and those living with their consequences.
This cannot be allowed to carry on.
When the Behaviour of a Few Affects the Many
At the moment, we are allowing the coercive behaviour of a few to influence and shape decisions that affect the many.
And those decisions can become educational policies, professional frameworks, institutional rules, and expectations that others are then required to follow.
Sometimes the people enforcing those decisions had no part in creating them. Sometimes those making the decisions have never experienced the consequences themselves.
And sometimes protecting the framework becomes more important than questioning what that framework is doing to the people affected by it.
This is why the investigation must go beyond the individual making or enforcing a decision.
Who gave them the authority? What evidence supports the decision? Who is allowed to challenge it? And what happens when the people paying the price are the very people whose voices were never included?
There is also an important distinction between having the authority to make a decision and the coercive behaviour that may be involved in making, defending, or enforcing it.
A decision can be made through established procedures while still requiring scrutiny of its evidence, consequences, and the opportunities available to challenge it.
The investigation begins in schools, but the questions extend to every level at which decisions are made.
Because understanding coercive behaviour also means understanding how the behaviour of a few can become the rules that govern the lives of many.
How More Than 30 Years of Research Brought Me Here
My more than 30 years of research into dopamine receptors brought me into 15 years of research into burnout. That work then led me into six years of investigative research into coercive behaviour, both online and offline, directed against others and against self.
And now, what is taking place with our own son, alongside the experiences of many other children and families, has brought that work to this point.
Where research is now becoming education and accountability.
This is why we are creating The School of Abnormal.
A school built around research, education, understanding, and accountability, rather than daily classroom lessons.
The School of Abnormal is part of Understanding Burnout and The Sessions, all under the umbrella of Brilliantly Unbalanced.
Its foundations include Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology (WSNE) and my ongoing thesis, Permission Architecture.
The research has brought me here, but what we are now experiencing, and what others are experiencing, has made turning that research into education and accountability increasingly important.
This work follows questions that have shaped my research over the last three decades.
How does behaviour become possible?
How is behaviour restricted, reinforced, or inhibited?
How does the protection of self influence what people are able or willing to do?
What happens when an established framework becomes something a person or institution feels the need to protect?
And what happens to those who question it?
The School of Abnormal: Flipping Who Gets to Decide
More than 100 years after the original School of the Abnormal, we are flipping the question of who gets to decide what is normal, who needs to change, and who is allowed to participate.
A fundamental part of The School of Abnormal is showing what many of the adults who would once have been placed in, or considered candidates for, the original School of the Abnormal are doing today.
People who, over 100 years ago, might have been observed, categorised, separated, and educated according to what others believed they were capable of, without ever being asked about their own experiences, abilities, needs, or understanding of themselves.
We want to show what those people are creating, researching, building, teaching, questioning, and contributing to society today.
And perhaps most importantly, what happens when the people who were historically the subjects of observation become the people conducting the research, creating the education, and questioning the frameworks themselves.
Who gets to decide? And why were the people being decided for so rarely asked?
This is part of why we are building The School of Abnormal from the experiences and understanding of people who have so often been expected to fit someone else's definition of normal.
It is about questioning the definition itself, and being happy, proud, and comfortable being abnormal.
The school will also examine what happens when the people who have spent their lives being asked to change are given the opportunity to show what they have learned, created, achieved, and understood.
Their stories become part of the education.
This Is About Behaviour, Not One Group Against Another
This investigation is not about neurodivergent people against neurotypical people, or one section of humanity against another.
My six years of investigative research into coercive behaviour have examined behaviour directed against others and against self, online and offline.
One of the central questions emerging from that work is how coercive behaviour can develop through the protection of self and the protection of a framework, particularly when someone's sense of safety, identity, authority, or understanding depends on that framework remaining unquestioned.
This can happen between individuals, within families, in professional relationships, across communities, and within educational or scientific institutions.
A person may defend a framework because questioning it would mean questioning their own understanding, decisions, expertise, or position.
That protection can become more important than listening to the person affected by those decisions.
And the same mechanisms can operate inwardly, when learned expectations, fears, and rules become part of how self is monitored, restricted, or protected.
Coercive behaviour can take place through conscious choice, learned behaviour, institutional expectations, or without the person fully recognising the coercive nature of their behaviour.
The question is not which group of humans is responsible. The question is how coercive behaviour becomes possible, how it is maintained, how it is justified, and what happens when the framework supporting it is questioned.
Protection of self does not automatically become coercive behaviour. Part of the investigation is understanding the conditions in which protection of a framework, belief, or position can lead to the restriction, silencing, punishment, or control of another person, or become coercive towards self.
Understanding these mechanisms is important because identifying someone as an expert, professional, parent, teacher, neurodivergent, or neurotypical does not in itself explain the behaviour taking place.
The behaviour, its mechanisms, its context, and its consequences must be investigated.
When Concerns Are Turned Against Those Raising Them: DARVO
Sadly, we are also seeing situations in which people raising concerns about harmful decisions find that the focus shifts away from the original concern and onto them.
One pattern worth investigating is DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It describes a response in which wrongdoing is denied, the person raising it is attacked, and the roles of victim and offender are reversed.
Within education, a parent may ask why an adjustment was refused, a student may describe feeling unsafe, or a teacher may question a policy. Instead of investigating the concern, the institution or individual receiving it may portray the person asking questions as difficult, unreasonable, or responsible for the breakdown in trust.
Who is being questioned, and who is now being made to defend themselves?
This can discourage further questions and shift attention away from the original decision and its consequences. For neurodivergent students and their families, the costs can include further delays, exclusion, and loss of trust or access to education.
The research will examine where this pattern may be present, including what was said, what was documented, which explanations changed, and whether the original concern received a substantive answer. Disagreement, criticism, or a defensive response alone does not establish DARVO; the sequence and evidence matter.
A concern about harm should be examined on its merits. Raising that concern should not itself become the reason someone is treated as the problem.
When Theory of Mind Becomes a Reason to Refuse Adjustments
One of the major concerns I want this investigation to examine in the Netherlands is the continuing use of Theory of Mind (ToM) as a framework for understanding autistic students, especially when it is used to dismiss new understandings of autism or reject adjustments a student needs.
The question is not simply whether a school refers to Theory of Mind. It is how a theory is interpreted, what authority is given to it, and whether it becomes a reason to stop listening to the autistic student and their family.
Over roughly the last 15 years, research has challenged the idea that social misunderstanding can be explained as a one-sided deficit within autistic people. The double empathy problem, developed by Damian Milton in 2012, emphasises that understanding can break down in both directions. Later critical reviews have also questioned the evidence, measures and explanatory reach of traditional Theory of Mind claims.
When a parent or student asks for an adjustment based on their lived experience or more recent research, what happens if the response is shaped by an older framework that professionals feel compelled to defend? Does the school examine the specific need, or does the framework itself become the answer?
This investigation will seek documented examples of how Theory of Mind is actually cited and applied in Dutch educational decisions, whether requests were refused, what reasoning was given, what alternatives were explored, and what consequences followed. Reports of harm require examination rather than assumption that every school or professional acts in the same way.
This cannot be allowed to carry on where a framework is used to close down questions, dismiss an individual need or justify preventable harm. A scientific or educational framework must remain open to being questioned, including our own.
The questions are: whose understanding counts, who can challenge the theory being applied, and who pays the price when the framework takes priority over the student?
Selected research: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008; https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000532; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6959478/
Who Pays the Price?
While coercive behaviour is not exclusive to any neurological group, there is another part of this that cannot be ignored.
Regardless of whether coercive behaviour is intentional or unintentional, neurodivergent people are often the ones paying the price.
When an educational framework is protected more strongly than the needs of the student, it is often the student who struggles to fit that framework who faces the consequences.
They may be punished, excluded, misunderstood, labelled as difficult, denied adjustments, or eventually become unable to attend school.
The professional may continue working within the same framework. The institution may continue applying the same rules.
Yet the student is the one who loses access to education, safety, participation, and opportunities.
And there is another cost.
What happens within self when a person repeatedly experiences their needs, questions, or differences as something unacceptable?
When does a child begin monitoring, restricting, or punishing self because of what they have learned they are expected to be?
When does a student stop asking questions because they have learned that questioning authority comes with consequences?
When does a teacher stop questioning a policy because challenging the institution could threaten their position?
And when does an educational institution become more concerned with protecting its own framework than understanding the people it is supposed to educate?
Understanding why someone behaves coercively does not remove accountability for the consequences of that behaviour.
This investigation must examine both how coercive behaviour becomes possible and who carries the consequences when it does.
Because the question is not simply who gets to decide? It is also who pays the price for those decisions?
From the Classroom to Those Making the Decisions
This investigation begins within schools, looking at coercive behaviour in education, the decisions being made, the frameworks being protected, and the consequences for those affected.
But it will naturally extend beyond the classroom.
Every school operates within wider structures of authority, policy, professional guidance, research, and legislation. Decisions made at one level can become rules and expectations imposed at another.
A teacher may be enforcing a policy they did not create. A school leader may be protecting a framework they believe they must follow. A researcher may be defending an established theory. A policymaker may be making decisions without fully understanding the experiences of those affected. And a professional may genuinely believe they are helping while making decisions that cause harm.
At every level, the same questions apply. Who gets to decide? Who gets to question those decisions? What happens when they do? And who pays the price?
This investigation will examine coercive behaviour whether it arises through conscious choice, learned behaviour, institutional expectations, or the protection of self and the frameworks people depend upon.
The investigation is not based on the assumption that everyone involved is deliberately choosing to be coercive.
But the absence of deliberate intent does not mean the absence of consequences.
And the existence of professional authority does not remove the responsibility to question how that authority is being used.
The research begins in schools, but the responsibility for what happens within those schools may extend to people making decisions at every level.
One part of this work will be to follow decisions backwards, from the student experiencing the consequences to the professionals, policies, research, and frameworks that contributed to those decisions.
Who created the rule? On what understanding was it based? Who decided it was appropriate? Who has the authority to question or change it? And what happens when the people affected provide evidence that the rule is causing harm?
This is also where accountability becomes part of the research.
Understanding why something happened must include investigating the decisions and structures that allowed it to happen, especially when the people affected have already raised concerns.
Permission Architecture and Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology
This investigation is also part of my broader work on Permission Architecture.
Permission Architecture investigates how behaviour becomes possible, is restricted, reinforced, or inhibited, and how those processes operate both between people and within self.
It examines how permission and space to act can arise through biological processes, learned expectations, relationships, social structures, and systems of authority.
Within education, this raises questions about how a child learns what they are allowed to do, ask, express, or refuse.
It also raises questions about the behaviour of adults making decisions.
What enables someone to impose a rule without questioning its consequences? What leads someone to comply with a rule they know is causing harm? What happens when questioning a professional's understanding is experienced as a threat to their authority, position, or framework? And what changes when someone begins to question the framework through which they have always understood self or others?
Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology provides a biological foundation for investigating behaviour through cooperating neural, endocrine, sensory, and physiological systems.
This includes research on action, inhibition, stress, adaptation, learned responses, and protection of self.
The aim is to view behaviour from the whole system, rather than treating individual behaviours, diagnoses, or neurological groups as standalone explanations.
These frameworks are part of the research approach, and their explanations and predictions must themselves remain open to evidence, critique, and revision.
What We Want to Investigate and Who We Want to Hear From
Over the coming year I want to hear from people with different experiences and positions within education.
Students who have been punished, excluded, or made to feel unsafe by rules or decisions they could not question.
Parents who asked for adjustments or support and then saw their requests reinterpreted, misrepresented, or used against them.
Teachers who questioned school policy or were expected to enforce rules they believed could cause harm.
Education professionals who made difficult decisions, including those who believe the frameworks they work within are appropriate and can explain why.
Researchers whose work shapes education policy and professional practice.
And those involved in creating, overseeing, and reviewing the rules and structures that schools must follow.
I also want to hear from adults who look back on their own school years and recognise how they were categorised, restricted, misunderstood, or expected to meet someone else's idea of normal.
What do you do today that the education system from your youth might never have imagined you were capable of?
How have those experiences shaped your understanding of self?
What happened when you questioned the expectations placed on you?
And what would you want the next generation of students, teachers, and decision-makers to understand?
These experiences will help shape the questions and direction of the research.
The research will need to distinguish between documented incidents, first-hand experiences, different interpretations of events, and allegations requiring further verification. Accounts involving children will require particular care around privacy and consent.
The purpose is to understand the behaviour, the decisions, the frameworks, and the consequences, including the perspectives of those who may disagree with our interpretations.
Your experiences, questions, and stories can become part of the research and education we are building.
Accountability Must Work Both Ways
Education itself must always be open to questioning, including the frameworks, professionals, and institutions that claim the authority to decide what education should look like.
And that same principle must apply to us.
The School of Abnormal, Understanding Burnout, The Sessions, our research, our educational frameworks, and the wider work of Brilliantly Unbalanced must always remain open to being questioned, challenged, corrected, and developed further.
The very behaviour we are investigating includes the protection of frameworks when those frameworks become difficult to question.
We cannot investigate that behaviour in others while allowing our own work to become something that cannot be challenged.
If our understanding changes, our work must be allowed to change with it.
If our evidence is incomplete, that must be acknowledged.
And if the people affected by our work question our interpretations, their questions deserve to be heard.
Accountability cannot be something we ask of others without applying it equally to ourselves.
More than 100 years later, the questions remain:
Who gets to decide?
Who gets to question?
And who pays the price?
This time, the people being decided for must be part of asking those questions, and part of building the education that follows.
The School of Abnormal, Part of Understanding Burnout and The Sessions, under the umbrella of Brilliantly Unbalanced.