About this text: This is an edited account of the interview, prepared from the recording with the help of automated transcription and translated into English. Questions and answers have been shortened for reading; it is not a verbatim transcript. The Vísir recording is the source for exact wording.
Hosts: There has been much discussion of behavioural difficulties in primary schools, difficult interactions, and the pressure teachers face. You wrote that existing solutions need rethinking. What is the solution?
Helgi: That is a good question. Schools use different approaches. I work with schools whose methods draw on applied behaviour analysis, including SMT and PBS. The starting point is to examine the behaviour and the circumstances affecting it. From there, positive methods can be used to teach and reinforce the behaviour we want to see.
Hosts: Teachers speak of growing disrespect. What do you think is behind it?
Helgi: It is difficult to state the causes with confidence. My article makes a different point: established approaches can be good and supported by research, yet their implementation has changed very little. They still often rely on paper, pencils, stickers, and considerable manual work. Teachers are already stretched, so even a valuable method can become too complicated and time-consuming to use.
Hosts: Are you proposing to make that work digital?
Helgi: Yes, but not merely to put an old paper form on a screen. At Beanfee we keep the same professional foundation while developing a different way to put it into practice. Digital recording can organise the process, keep the people involved coordinated, and make the reward system more engaging and accessible to the child. Game-like elements and a digital rewards shop are part of that approach.
Helgi: In my work at Lækjarskóli in Hafnarfjörður, I have seen how much difference it can make when a tool like this fits daily practice. In the interview I describe a marked improvement in the cases we worked on after introducing it. That is my experience of the tool, not a claim that one product solves every behavioural difficulty.
Hosts: But children's screen time is controversial too. Isn't the screen part of the problem?
Helgi: How a screen is used, and in what setting, matters. We cannot treat all screen time as the same thing. We need to consider the child's age, responsibilities, free time, and family circumstances. A child spending hours alone in front of a screen is not in the same situation as a child using a digital tool for purposeful practice, or enjoying free time after other responsibilities are met.
Hosts: Is Beanfee about punishing poor behaviour, then?
Helgi: No. The part of the system I am describing is about encouragement and rewards for positive behaviour, not punishment. The focus is on teaching and strengthening what the child should do, rather than allowing difficulties alone to determine where attention goes.
Hosts: Do you agree that increasingly young children disrespect teachers and that teachers feel at a loss?
Helgi: I recognise that feeling of not knowing what to do, but I would not claim without data that disrespect has risen by a particular amount. Children also respond to how we adults treat them. That alone will not solve every wider social problem, but how we speak with children and meet them in everyday interactions matters.
Hosts: What does this mean for teachers in busy schools?
Helgi: A solution must not add ever more paperwork and manual recording to workloads that are already heavy. If we want useful methods to be used in practice, the tools must make them easier to carry out. That is what we are trying to do.