Research
At Neufeld Aotearoa, our research focuses on attachment-based child development. We explore how relationships shape children’s emotions, behaviour and learning. Here we share studies and projects that inform our work with parents, educators and professionals across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Welcome to the heart of our research at Neufeld Aotearoa. Our core philosophy is grounded in attachment-based child development, highlighting how safe, secure relationships are the true foundation for a child’s learning, emotional maturity, and overall mental health. Rather than just managing surface-level behaviours, our approach focuses on providing emotional experiences that meet our children’s needs. This helps our tamariki and rangatahi facing high alarm, anxiety, and frustration to finally feel safe, seen, and supported.
Our research focus
Our work starts with a simple idea: children grow best in safe, secure relationships. Because of this, we study how attachment links to mental health, behaviour and learning. We look at how caring adults can protect, guide and nurture children in everyday life.
In addition, we pay close attention to the pressures children face today. Many tamariki and rangatahi experience high levels of alarm, anxiety and frustration. Our research asks how attachment based child development can help them feel safe, seen and supported again.
Key themes in our research
Across different projects, several themes keep appearing. Together, they shape how we understand children and how we support the adults around them.
Relationships Before Behaviour
Prioritizing a warm adult-child connection over strict behaviour management naturally reduces anxiety, aggression, and shutting down.
Emotion as the Driver of Development
Safe attachments provide the perfect environment to help children process, soften, and integrate difficult feelings like sadness, alarm, and frustration.
Contexts Where Children Grow
Bringing this attachment-based lens into the real world, applying it across everyday settings including homes, early childhood centres, schools, and community spaces.
Our commitment to ongoing learning
Attachment based child development is a living, growing field. Therefore, we commit to ongoing learning and reflection. We keep engaging with international research from the Neufeld Institute and other sources. At the same time, we stay grounded in the unique context of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The role of corrective emotions in the counsellor-client attachment
A model for processing emotions in therapy
Even though emotions are central in many counselling modalities, how best to work with emotions has not often been clearly articulated or practically presented for counsellors. This paper will outline a brief history of the science of emotion, highlighting the role of emotional regulation in the counsellor-client attachment and present a five-step model of working with emotions in therapy, adapted from the work of Canadian developmental psychologist, Gordon Neufeld. It provides a theoretical and practical framework for understanding the importance of a corrective emotional experience for the healing of attachments, especially in the context of therapeutic work with adult clients. Ruth's article is published in the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling.
Engaging the Disaffected Learner
Making teacher-student relationships count
The disaffected learner may be described as an underachiever with complex social, emotional and learning needs. Disaffection can correspond with a drop in engagement with learning and an increase in both passive and active behavioural disengagement, particularly as students enter secondary school. In the current dissertation it is argued that a positive teacher-student relationship is critical when engaging the disaffected learner. To explore this idea further, Neufeld's (2008) Teachability Factor™, an intervention that seeks to equip teachers to develop positive relationships with developmentally stuck disaffected learners, was implemented and evaluated, via a mixed method study design.
Effects of the Teachability Factor Professional Development Workshop
Teachers' Perceptions of Challenging Children in their Classroom
Within the extensive research literature on attachment neurobiology there is little empirical research on its application to education. The research suggests there is a significant relationship between being securely attached and one’s behavioural and academic outcomes, so the benefits of such an approach are potentially significant. While teachers have an increasing awareness of the importance of brain processes, neuroscience research has not been readily available to educators because it is such a new field. In this vacuum neuromyths have flourished based on pseudoscience and lack scientific validity. Therefore the need for an accurate translation of the empirical attachment research findings to education is urgently needed. This research tests whether Teachability Factor, an eight week session professional development course developed by the Neufeld Institute, is able to translate attachment neuroscience findings into an effective, evidence-based program for early childhood teachers.
Neufeld Institute Scientific Research Centre
To read further about international research connected with the Neufeld approach visit the Neufeld Institute Scientific Research Centre.
