Psychology and the teaching of adult educators
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Psychology and the teaching of adult educators
Michael Toye, Industrial Training Research Unit
Has psychology, as an academic discipline, anything to offer as content for the training of adult educators? The easiest formula would be to take ordinary ‘teacher training’ psychology and modify it in some way so as to make it apply specially to adults rather than to children. The fact that conventional teachers’ psychology would look rather gutted without Piaget, however, would only be the start of our problem. (In one department of education, 80% of the booklist was by or about Piaget). The question of the usefulness and applicability of psychological theory to the teaching even of children is largely unanswered. Indeed forebodings about what the answer might be make is seldom asked.
What are the problems in applying psychological theories and findings to the practice of teaching generally? After all, experiments in the field of human learning have produced some cogent results - findings which are replicable, which make sense and are relevant to theories about how people learn. Why not simply familiarise educators with the relevant theories and findings and let them make use of these? The trouble is that learning theory offers no comprehensive structure within which an entire range of phenomena can be ordered, related and compared so as to allow definite decisions to be made about how to proceed to a defined goal. We must realise that this condition is not a temporary ‘state of the art’ as people sometimes imply: it is a limitation which will remain unless advances are made which are quite unimaginable. Compared with, say, electrical theory, it is fragmented. The truth is that people are so much more complicated than electrical conductors, so much less predictable than electrons and have potentials so much more puzzling than voltage that psychological theory has to have a quite different function for the adult educator than electrical theory has for the engineer. What we have to define is the particular nature of the problems which intervene between psychology and teaching.
It is often said that psychology is not a science, because of its lack of measurement. But the problem is not that. In fact psychology has a perfectly valid claim to be a science, though it is scientific only in fits and starts. This or that experiment by itself can be taken as a valid scientific exercise. What is lacking is some continuous connection between all the experimental results which psychology contains. Because of the abundance of variables and the super-abundance of combinations of variables, it is often impossible to argue cogently from one finding to the next But the practice of teaching, exemplified by a good teacher, is integrated and has a convincing wholeness about it. Our problem then is how to relate a fragmented science to an integrated art.
Perhaps the answer to this is to see experimental findings as refined anecdotes This means that we openly forgo the power of wide generalisation normally expected of a science. Instead we use this or that experimental finding to emphasise what we think is a valid point. This does not mean that we have forgone also the obligation to be scientific, that we can pick experiments which support what we want to say and ignore all the rest. What it means is that we take our wider conceptual grasp of teaching from traditional sources, our own. intuition or the example of outstanding teachers, and try constantly to see how this concurs with controlled data. The outcome of this process on particular occasions may be that we find an experiment lacking in subtlety or some important refinement, in which case we are obliged to say how it is lacking and to make explicit our own concepts about teaching and learning. Or we may find that an experiment suggests a distinction or discrimination we were only half aware of. In either case our opinions and theories have been given some exercise and possibly some nourishment. What has taken place is not essentially different from purely anecdotal discussions with other teachers The kind of issue discussed is the same and the concepts employed are not intrinsically altered. Where there is a difference is in the objectivity of the anecdote. By releasing the discussion from the particularised terms of an individual teacher’s experience, two advantages are gained public debate - one of the requirements of a science which aims to get anywhere; a greater argumentative force which cannot so easily be countered by vague dismissiveness. The process of becoming more definite and forceful could be compared with the calcification of a skeleton.
What then are the likely points of calcification? As a first step it is easier to eliminate a few of the non-starters. First, all those homely truths that everyone agrees about anyway. such things as trying to coax the shy class-members or suppress the speech hog The real skill is in actually doing these things in a wide variety of situations where the interplay of personalities and circumstances make it all but impossible to frame a general rule. Any training scheme which attempted these problems directly would be impossibly expensive Second, any kind of conditioning theory. Rats are interesting, so are undergraduates, but the relevance of trick-training to the education of people is abstruse at the least. This has not prevented the publication of teachers’ guides which dwell at length on the topic.
We are still left though with a sizeable body of work from which a necessarily limited selection must be made. In trying to decide a priority or central point around which to select Hoggart’s views seem especially helpful. In a candid and salty review of adult education, Hoggart emphasises the disastrous flabbiness which can undermine the teacher of adults. Far more than harsh authoritarianism, it is vacuous democratism which he sees as the enemy. For once the intellectual backbone of a course is weakened, teaching objectives lose any clear derivation and as a consequence monitoring individuals’ progress becomes meaningless. Quite apart from this, it would seem natural and logical to put the teacher’s own grasp of his subject right at the centre of his training as a teacher. Any conception of the teacher which represents his own intellectual grasp of a subject as being in a separate compartment from his ability as a communicator of the subject misses the point. This is not intended to mean that there is no such thing as a general teaching skill: it means that what is general to teaching performance is also general to intellectual style. Bruner in fact deliberately equates the development of teaching approach to a particular point with the development of the teacher’s own comprehension of it. Or again, one eminent mathematician’s criterion of a perfect proof was one which could be instantly explained to the first man he met in the street. Perhaps he lived in a very good neighbourhood.
We now have twin objectives: to find a way of integrating teaching and a science of learning which has a low degree of generality and how to initiate this process using the teacher’s intellectual discipline itself as the starting point. Precisely what sort of activities would this entail in the training of the teacher? Essentially he would be required to produce a piece of course material in writing, diagrams or demonstration. Ideally this should be evaluated on real learners but, assuming this would not always be possible, his supervisor or fellow trainees can play the part. The object of the game, from their point of view, is to find the holes in what he has produced, to see in how many ways its point can plausibly be missed or misconstrued. The next stage belongs essentially to the subject-matter expert He follows up the imperfections, ambiguities etc. by trying to diagnose what the trainee’s failure was. Whether for instance it was a case of inadequate expression or whether there is an unresolved ambiguity in the trainee’s own understanding. Group discussions would be centred very precisely on concrete instances of teaching material.
On this view, the core of the teacher’s training is the organisation of his subject matter. Not the social skills by which he makes personal contact with a class, but the intellectual skills by which he makes contact with his particular discipline. These intellectual skills are the essential bedrock from which all generalisations should stem. The discipline on the educator’s supervisor is to derive all that he has to teach from his trainee’s performance in this respect. The method by which such skills are displayed and evaluated is of course the preparation of instructional sequences (by-word, diagram, demonstration, etc.) The point of this type of exercise is that it is not just teaching practice but a form of intellectual examination. To reinforce this point it is not necessary for the instructional exercises to be directed at the kind of population the trainee expects eventually to teach. Or the sophistication of his material may be pitched above or below the level his future classes are likely to reach. It may not even be necessary or best to confine such training to the subject area concerned. Intellectual style is a general phenomenon, not tied particularly to any one subject. For instance it might be fruitful to ask a trainee to prepare ‘A layman’s guide to relativity’. If he is ignorant or confused on that topic, so much the better. The object is always to make the trainee think about his own thinking. Emphatically the object is not to practice the tricks of ‘Ed. Tech.’
Training of this kind could be made particularly sensitive by the incorporation of discovery sequences. Two purposes are served by this familiarisation with a potentially useful techniques and the added discipline of constructing discovery exercises. Just as the introduction of programmed learning put a premium on the clarity and proper sequencing of instructions and statements, discovery methods demand especially a well founded sequence of ideas in which problems can be set. An attempt to write discovery material is highly productive of analogies (not necessarily verbal) and allusions which might not otherwise be necessary. It is also guaranteed to force several restructurings of the sequence of ideas.
So far we have been concerned with the trainee as thinker since that is the core of his abilities as teacher. The next stage is to consider how pedagogic principles can be built on to this foundation. What follows is of course only one set of possibilities.
Having used discovery techniques in the first aspect of training, it is natural that their pedagogic value will come into question. This will raise issues of immediate consequence.
Is ‘discovery’ a genuinely separate way of learning or are its effects merely a by-product of the discipline exerted on the teacher? (An interesting parallel with programmed learning can also be explored here, for many of the effects of P.I. are now suspected of being just such artefacts).
Are its effects real anyway? What is the difference between recall and transfer of learning? What does this tell us about framing objectives and measuring progress? Does discovery benefit transfer merely by giving extra practice at the transfer type of test item? (that is, is it a cheat?) Why do older learners appear to benefit relatively more from discovery? What are the problems of older learners which might account for disproportionate benefit?
These latter questions lead to further ones concerning concept formation, problem solving and the relation of these to problems of short-term memory, particularly interference. Close to the discovery method and to problem solving is the problem of authority. Older learners show reluctance, even in learning experiments, to accept the terms of a problem as laid down by the experimenter. The need for an approach which disentangles the perception of a problem from the authority of the teacher is thus highlighted. Short term memory defects which increase with age have also been shown to have a precise effect on the solution of some kinds of problem. It is instructive to explore the identification of that class of problem, their connection with the sort of concept formation studies by Bruner, and with the understanding of logical propositions studied by Wason Not all of these areas of study have been explicitly related to age, but their connection with the other research which has been permits profitable speculation.
Beyond the kind of research mentioned so far is another layer which is not so well developed, but highly relevant the experimental study of individual differences in learning. The work of Leith has been directed towards the correlation between personality (as ‘measured’ by an inventory) and the reaction to discovery techniques. His finding that neurotic extraverts react badly would be an interesting hypothesis for examination in the classroom. Even more so is Pask’s more complicated scheme of four kinds of intellectual stylist: redundant holists, irredundant holists, redundant serialists (rare - if they exist at all) and irredundant serialists Behind Pask’s characteristically intimidating terms lies a fertile plot of experimentation from which have grown ideas rigorous enough to be useful and realistic enough to be translated into actual classroom events. Similarly with Bruner’s ideas on levels of learning: motoric, ironic and symbolic. So also with Berlyne’s analysis of ‘epistemic curiosity’, its parameters and function in intellectual activity. (Berlyne himself is notable for having derived humanly relevant and original ideas from a study of rats.)
The remaining area of training is of course the handling of a real-life class. Questions of the organisation of content and methods of presenting it should be largely affected by the training described in the previous section. But sensitivity to the individuals in a class and responsiveness to those individuals are skills which grow more slowly. Mainly the problem is one of feedback. The first requirement is a real situation in which the trainee can exercise. The next is the amplification of normal social feedback mechanisms. This can take two main forms the use of counselling and group discussion with other trainees, especially if it can be supplemented with video recordings such as Argyle uses and secondly the study of writers such as Goffman whose insights into the processes of social contact can crystallise one’s own experience of other people. More than at any other stage of training there are pitfalls to be avoided. It is too easy for the counsellor to be dogmatic about what is right and wrong and easy also for the trainee to resist the counsellor’s advice for equally dogmatic reasons. The whole trouble is the lack of objective criteria, and there is no easy solution to it. Perhaps the best answer is the use of comparison between trainees and between the classes they meet. Here, video or sound recording are of greatest assistance.
Lastly, many teachers would object to the way the training presented here has been chopped into discrete sections:
- Development of teachers own discipline
- Development of pedagogical technique
- Development of social relationships
However, this approach doer not imply that there really are three watertight compartments. It is only too obvious that they intermingle, and this was especially clear concerning the first two. The subject of this paper is too diffuse to wrestle with all at once, so some kind of sectioning is necessary simply as an expository ploy. It is not recommended here that the training of educators should be carried out in that particular sequence or any other rigid sequence.
In particular, the brief treatment of social relationships at the end of the paper is likely to appear to some as an inverted order of priorities. It must be admitted that this was deliberate. It is central to the ideas put forward here that the social relations of the teacher should fit in around his intellectual relations - first with his own discipline and second with his class members. The dangers in the reverse process are serious.
Discussion
There was no representative of Bath University present to introduce their contribution to the somewhat heterogeneous collection of papers, so that its content was totally ignored in the discussion. In the absence of Mr Harries-Jenkins his paper was introduced by Dr Thomas, who, in addition to attempting further definition of the professional, laid stress on the danger of elevating training to the status of sacred cow in order to avoid the task of defining basic professional aims. His introduction set the tone for most of the discussion, which centred introspectively around the question of whether adult educators ~ or, more particularly, the educators of adult educators - could be regarded as forming a profession; some confusion arose because it was not always clear which of these two groups, the general or the specific, was being referred to.
Mr Toye, in speaking to his paper, attempted to stick to his brief and developed a comparison between education training, which consists of restructuring material already learnt, and other professional (e.g. medical) training, which essentially teaches new skills. In discussion, however, he was immediately seduced by Professor Styler into outlining the historical emergence of psychology as a profession. This was elaborated by further speakers, who chose examples from several other fields, in spite of Professor Wedell’s plea to distinguish between a profession and an academic discipline.