The Teacher in the Learning Group

The Teacher in the Learning Group the basic concepts developed in a notable article in "Adult Ed ucation" by the director of the Division of Adult Education, National Education Association. The article somewhat adapted is here presented by per mission of author and original publisher. The author (A.B., A.M., Ph.D., Illinois) has contrib uted to numerous educational journals and has ful filled educational missions for the federal govern ment, Ford Foundation, and N.E.A. It is a valued privilege to present his interpretation of teaching learning in context. By LELAND P. BRADFORD Teaching is a human relational problem. The teaching-learning transaction includes teacher, learner, and learning group. Each has its forces and impact on the learning outcome for the indi viduals. The class group is not merely an econom ical way of teaching. It should be at the heart of the learning process. Group impact and influence on its members can be a powerful force toward learning and toward supporting the learning process. Learning is not a matter of filling a void with information. It is a process of internal organiza tion of a complex of thought patterns, percep tions, assumptions, attitudes, feelings, and skills, and of successfully testing this reorganization in relation to problems of living. The teacher works with a learning group. Good teacher-group rela tions are certainly as important as good teacher student relations. The teacher's ability in group leadership and membership has much to do with the learning of the individual students in the class group. His emotional, motivational, perceptual, and attitudinal systems, and his awareness of them and their consequences for learning and change are import ant forces in effective teaching-learning. Research into the dynamics of group behavior indicates how powerful group forces are in group and individual productivity. Some groups have the task of making machine parts, others of reaching decisions, and still others of increasing the learn ing of their members. In all instances, for the group to be successful, attention must be given to helping the group form, organize, grow, and keep in good repair. Just as the leaders in work groups should assume responsibility for encouraging the growth and maintenance of the work group, so should the teacher of the learning group. As teachers recognize emotional aspects of group behavior, individual anxieties and hidden motives, interpersonal threats and competition, problems of relations to leadership and author ity, factors of individual involvement in groups, they will be better able to help classes become groups where the group task is individual learning and where group forces of cohesion are exerted on the learning of each individual. Group forces, inevitably present in all group situations, often work against the teacher and against learning. The class group bands together against the teacher to reduce learning because the teacher did not know how to develop an effective learning group where members helped members and where morale was high. How many teachers fail to encourage, or even allow, learners to help educate each other? If teachers were able to create learning groups in which member influenced and helped member, learning results would be far greater. Educators are just beginning to realize the powerful forces present in groups which could measurably in crease individual learning and change. Research in group dynamics in many university centers and experimentation with applied group dynamics carried out by the National Training Laboratories have much to offer an expanding teaching-learning theory.1 The teaching-learning transaction has seven aspects: (1) what the learner brings (in addition to ignorance and abilities), (2) what the teacher (helper) brings (in addition to subject knowl edge), (3) the setting in which the learning and change take place, (4) the interaction process, (5) the conditions necessary for learning and change, (6) the maintenance of change and utilization of learning in the life of the learner, (7) the estab lishment of the process of continued learning. 99 100 IMPROVING COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY TEACHING What the Learner Brings What, for example, are the learner's percep tions about the need for learning and change? How deep is his dissatisfaction with his present situation? How acutely, to use an analogy, does he feel pain? Are external pressures to learn and change reacted to but not really accepted intern ally ? Where is the balance between desire for and resistance to learning and change? What implicit theory about learning drawn from a variety of past experiences does the learner bring? If his concept is built around hearing lec tures, reading, being quizzed, he will feel uneasy with and resist a learning process which more deeply involves him. If his concept of learning keeps him a passive recipient he will fail to enter into an effective learning transaction. Perhaps the first major task of the teaching-learning transac tion is to help the learner learn different ways of learning. What are the learner's perceptions about the potentials for learning in himself, the teacher and the learning situation? Does he perceive the learning as abstract and irrelevant to his needs? Does he perceive the teacher as capable of under standing and helping him? To what extent does he even recognize the kinds of help he would most appreciate as well as most need? Does he feel ac ceptance or rejection from the teacher and the group? Does he have security in the learning sit uation and the learning group ? Inevitably each person enters a change situa tion with actual or latent concerns and anxieties. To learn poses unknown possibilities. To change raises images of potential failure, discomfort, pain. What threats to self-image are present as the individual opens himself up to consideration of present inadequacies in knowledge or behavior. We all recall what fears and anxieties we can have in learning a new language or a different course in mathematics. Each person has a perceptual screen filtering out or distorting communication to him. Informa tion too threatening for him to accept is blocked out or interpreted in such a way as to pose less of a threat. Adults, particularly, have self-images more resistant to the subordinating role of accept ing knowledge from others. What information about personal performance does the learner accept or reject? How much does he pigeon-hole knowledge, or turn it into abstractions, thus removing or modi fying its threat to his self-image? To what extent does he maintain the ability of verbal recall but reject internalization into being and behaving? Does he have sufficient acceptance of himself as he is to accept need for improvement? Motivation, perceptions, anxieties, all influence and affect the teaching learning transaction. Self perceived threats to the learner as a person be come real blocks to learning. Venturing into the unknown means leaving the tried and sure and safe, unsatisfactory as it may be. Resistance to leaving the safe, but at the same time wanting the new, frequently causes the learner to prefer the kind of presentation of knowledge which can be copied and recalled but never internalized, rather than a deeper process of learning involved in a program of change. Stu dents frequently encourage more passive but less effective methods of learning and, by their satis faction in being protected from important learn ing, reward teachers for ineffective teaching and thus perpetuate poor teaching.2 Each learner brings to the learning situation his skills, or lack of skills, in group membership. If he lacks the ability to work effectively with others in a group situation, it is difficult for him to enter into the human transaction of learning. Inadequate ability to listen or interact with others makes it less possible for him to learn from the learning group, thus increasing his tensions and anxieties about himself, decreasing his satis faction with the learning transaction, and very likely increasing his resistance to learning. Because the learner is one part of the human transaction of teaching-learning, his motivational, perceptual, emotional, and attitudinal systems are very important factors in how he approaches learning and change and how open he is to them. It is the total individual, not just his mind, that comes to the learning experience. When only part of him is understood and approached, all of him is not reached, and learning does not get very deeply into him and his actions. The emerging field of social science is begin ning to contribute much to our total understand ing of the process of learning and changing. From psychiatry and clinical psychology comes knowl edge of individual anxieties and concerns. From social psychology and sociology comes knowledge about resistance to change and the process of changing. From psychology comes knowledge of motivation and perception. Teachers need to util ize such knowledge in broadening and improving THE TEACHER IN THE LEARNING GROUP 101 understanding of the teaching-learning trans action. What the Teacher Brings The teacher, like the learner, brings far more to the teaching-learning situation than a knowl edge of the subject, skill in organizing and pre senting material, or ability to test for recall. First, he brings a certain degree of awareness or lack of awareness that the teaching-learning process is basically a delicate human transaction requiring skill and sensitivity in human relations. The effective teacher's role is that of engag ing in a relationship with the learner and the learning group in which the learners and the teacher together go through the process of diag nosis of change needs and blocks, of seeking and analyzing relevant information from outside sources and from the interaction of the learning group, of experimenting in new pathways of thought and behavior, and of planning for use of new behavior. The teacher's role of helping in the complex process of learning and change, however, is based upon a set of human relationships precariously established with the learner and the learning group. These relationships are always precarious because of the anxieties of the learner, the threat of the teacher as a judge and expert, and the mixed feeling held by the learner about his dependency on the teacher. The teacher needs to be aware of the importance of these human rela tionships, sensitive to changes in them, and adept at repairing them. Second, the teacher as a partner in the trans action of learning needs to be aware of his own needs and motivations, and of their consequences to the learning process. To what extent do his needs to control people, to maintain dependency upon himself, or to seek love and affection, dis tort and disturb his helper function and the learn ing transaction? To what extent does his fear of hostility develop repression in the learner so that healthy conflict as a basis of learning is lacking? To what extent does his fear of relationship with people keep the learner at arm's length and thus reduce the possibility of an effective teach ing-learning transaction? (This does not mean the other extreme of having to make himself love the learner. Rather it means the ability to enter planfully into a human transaction without need for either rejection or over acceptance.) Knowing one's own motivations and their possible conse quences on others better enables one to keep mo tivations under direction and control. Third, the teacher brings an ability, or lack of ability, to accept the learner as a person. Ac ceptance means ability to respect and listen to the other and to separate the person from unliked parts of his behavior. The physician who, hating disease, also hates and rejects the person who has the disease, is not an effective doctor. Yet teach ers frequently are not aware that they reject learners because of lack of knowledge, abilities, or effectiveness in relating to them. Acceptance does not mean approval of the present status of being and behaving of the learner. It rather marks the basic point from which the teacher tries to enter into a helping relationship. The Setting Revealing thoughts and behavior and accept ing reactions about them take place effectively only when the atmosphere or climate in the learn ing group and the teaching-learning transaction is one which reduces threat and defensiveness and which also provides emotional support while the learner is undergoing the difficult process of changing patterns of thought and behavior. The teacher has the important responsibility of helping to create a climate conducive to learn ing. It is crucial that the teacher help the group create this climate. The temptation to the teacher is to attempt to supply, himself, all the under standing and support necessary for each learner. This keeps the learner in the bondage of emo tional dependency on the teacher. If the climate is built by the group, with en couragement and assistance from the teacher, the individual learner can accept emotional sup port interdependently, rather than dependency, because he is contributing to the group support given to other members. It is a false assumption, more common in secondary and higher than in elementary educa tion, that the mature person doesn't need sensitive teacher-student relationships or group support. Fortunately many adult educators have discovered the fallacies in this assumption and have come to realize the importance of developing a supportive climate that reduces resistance to learning. With the interaction process basic in learning, the actual interventions of teachers and learners, and the response to them, are of critical im portance. What are the consequences, for example, of action or lack of action by the teacher on shift 102 IMPROVING COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY TEACHING ing the balances of motivation of the learner? What are the consequences in increasing or de creasing a feeling of support or of changing the perceptions of the learner? What are the con sequences for the helping relationship between teacher and learner? Does any particular action create over-dependency on the teacher? It is unfortunate that there is a dearth of studies dealing with the effect of teacher inter vention on the learning process. If the interaction process is basic to learning, then experience in the area of consultation and therapy, and research in the social science fields of social and clinical psychology are important to a full development of a learning theory. Recent work on human relations training carried on by the various group development laboratories has been exploring the area of teacher intervention in the interaction process. Experience in clinical psy chology is highly relevant to this area. Finally, recent studies in social psychology on the process of change and the function of helping with change have importance.3 The Interaction Process The interaction process is basically a network of interactions taking place in a group setting. Teacher interaction with one student may be heard in many different ways and with different consequences by others. Praise or reward to one student may be heard as punishment to another because he was not selected for reward. To the learner, interactions of support and reaction from the group may be more valuable or more readily acceptable than from the teacher. The teacher needs to be aware of the conse quences of any interaction on all members of the learning group and on the group itself. Does an interaction designed to give needed knowledge to one learner create greater unhealthy dependency on the teacher by other group members ? The interaction process has two basic pur poses : first, to establish and maintain relation ships which reduce anxieties and defensiveness in the learner and help him open up for learning, and second, to bring about learning and change. The Conditions Necessary Learning and change take place most effec tively only when certain conditions are present, making it possible for the learner to enter into a process of diagnosis, experimentation, informa tion finding, generalization, practice and applica tion leading toward learning, growth, and change. These conditions will be merely outlined here. 1. Revealing thoughts, feelings, behavior. Until the thoughts, feelings, and behavior needing change are brought to the surface for the individual and made public to those helping him (in formal learning situa tions, the teacher and other members of the learning group), there is little likelihood of learning or change. Buried, they are blurred and indistinct for the learner, covered by misperceptions of adequacy, anxieties, defensiveness. Surfaced, they can be examined by learner, teacher, and learning group in the light of greater reality. Until thoughts and behavior are revealed and ex posed, there is little that the learner or his helpers can take hold of to bring about improvement or change. The basis for reorganization, and thus for learning, is diagnosis of inadequacy. Such diagnosis should be made collaboratively by the learner and those helping him. It is ineffectual for someone else to make the diagnosis for the learner?a frequent fault in edu cation. The diagnosis is never simply that of general in adequacy. It should include motivations, desires, anxi eties, defensiveness, insecurities, perceptions. In com bination they create the normal ambivalences found in learning and change. Diagnosis depends on having adequate data. Sur facing or revealing the thought, feeling, and behavior patterns of the learner provides a common experience for learner, teacher, and learning group to make pos sible a collaborative diagnosis. 2. Seeking reactions to revealed ideas and behavior. Re vealing inner thoughts, attitudes, behavior without securing accurate and acceptable reactions from the teacher and learning group, from additional sources of information, or from self would be without much value. We do not learn by doing only. We learn by doing under conditions in which relevant, accurate, and acceptable reactions which we are able to use get through to us. Increasingly, it is clear that the concept of feed back has important meaning for the educational pro cess. Information following exposure which recognizes the individual's perceptual system and which has for its purpose development rather than destruction is the heart of learning. Feedback must be clearly and completely heard. Here is where the human relation ship aspect of teaching-learning perhaps has greatest importance. In an executive development program recently, one member told the group in various ways that he saw himself as a warm-hearted person who liked people and who was a democratic executive. His recital of his problems of apathy, irresponsibility and lack of creativity in his immediate subordinates revealed him as fearful and hostile toward people and certainly autocratic in his management. Lectures or discussions about good executive be havior would have been heard by this man as referr ing to himself. Only as his behavior was revealed to himself and to other members of the learning group, and as he gradually received helpful feedback reactions THE TEACHER IN THE LEARNING GROUP 103 enabling him to correct his per