Executive Function & Wellbeing With Victoria Bagnall | In This Together

In this episode of In This Together, host Becky Dawson sits down with Victoria Bagnall, an acclaimed educator, executive function coach, and author of The Neuro-Inclusive Educator. Victoria shares her journey as a neurodivergent teacher and specialist tutor, explaining how understanding the brain’s "management system" can transform classroom outcomes. The conversation delves into the critical link between executive function and wellbeing, offering a roadmap for shifting from compliance-based discipline to a neuro-inclusive pedagogy that fosters student autonomy.

Victoria explains that executive functions—skills like organization, task initiation, and emotional regulation—are often inhibited when a child is in a "protective state" due to stress or trauma. By prioritizing wellbeing and psychological safety, educators can help students access their prefrontal cortex for higher-order learning. This episode explores how co-regulation, interoception, and explicit strategy modeling can empower all learners, regardless of diagnosis, to become self-aware and independent "self-starters".

• Executive function as the foundation for learning: These skills encompass organization, time management, and emotional regulation, which are essential for academic success and life beyond the classroom.
• The link between wellbeing and brain function: When a child feels unsafe or stressed, the brain diverts energy away from executive functions toward survival instincts, often mislabeled as "defiance" or "laziness".
• Shifting from compliance to autonomy: Rather than using shame to control behavior, educators should foster student autonomy and self-awareness, allowing young people to take responsibility for their own learning journeys.
• The power of co-regulation: Teachers act as caregivers whose own nervous systems impact the classroom; by practicing self-regulation, educators can naturally help settle the energy of their students.
• Explicit modeling of strategies: High-impact teachers share their own struggles and humanize the learning process by explicitly modeling how they start difficult tasks or manage their time.
• Developing interoception: Helping students become aware of their internal body signals is a prerequisite for self-regulation and accessing learning states.

Victoria recommends the Smart but Scattered book series by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, which provides tailored strategies for children, teens, and adults. Additionally, she highlights the Self-Determination Cups activity. In this exercise, students color in "coffee cups" to represent their current levels of belonging, competence, and autonomy. This tool helps educators identify hidden barriers to engagement and design interventions that build students up rather than undermining their sense of belonging through traditional punishments.

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1. 00:00 - Introduction - Becky Dawson introduces executive function coach Victoria Bagnall.
2. 01:55 - Defining Executive Function - Victoria explains how her own neurodivergence led her to study the brain's "management system".
3. 04:54 - Neuro-Inclusive Classrooms - Why what is good for neurodivergent students is brilliant for everyone.
4. 06:26 - The Wellbeing Connection - Understanding how "threat" states in the brain take executive functions offline.
5. 08:36 - Co-regulation in the Classroom - How a teacher’s own regulation sets the tone for 30+ students.
6. 12:18 - High-Impact Strategies - Modeling the "humanity" of struggle and using body scans to settle a class.
7. 14:52 - Interoception and Trauma - Learning to read body signals as a prerequisite for self-regulation.
8. 17:20 - Language Matters - Shifting the conversation from "misbehaviour" to "unfilled skills".
9. 18:32 - Autonomy and Metacognition - Developing "self-starters" through an autonomy-based pedagogy.
10. 21:15 - A Social Experiment with Time - How Victoria taught her six-year-old the foundational sense of time.
11. 25:28 - Moving Beyond Curriculum - Why an executive function "curriculum" isn't enough without psychological safety.
12. 28:54 - The Dream School Model - Shifting school culture over 10 years to treasure wellbeing and autonomy.
13. 32:44 - Sharing is Caring - Recommended resources, including the Smart but Scattered series and Self-Determination Cups