Whose Behavior Is It Anyway?
The starting assumption here is that education is essentially relational. If all the equipment, furniture and materials used in a school were to evaporate and all that was left were teachers and pupils, teaching and learning would still take place.
Our understanding of relationships is usefully informed by the concept of ego states, which has its origins in transactional analysis.
Ego States (use these notes in association with diagrams)
An ego state is a set of related thoughts, feeling and behaviours through which our personality is experienced or perceived at a given time.
Diagram 1
On our life’s journey, we internalise associations with the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of our parents and other parent figures, whom we come into contact with. These internalised associations inform our Parent Ego State and throughout our lives we replay these out of our awareness.
As we grow and develop, we also internalise associations with the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of childhood and or own experience of it. These associations inform our Child Ego State, which we also replay throughout our lives out of or awareness.
When we behave, think and feel in response to what is going on around us using all the resources available to us as grown-ups, we are in our Adult Ego State. Unlike the Parent and Child Ego States, the Adult entails conscious responses in the here and now.
Diagram 2
When we reflect on the parent figures in or lives and the associations we make with them, we can distinguish between our Nurturing Parent and our Critical Parent.
Similarly, our childhood associations can be divided into Free Child and Adapted Child, which in turn can be sub-divided between Compliant Child and Rebellious Child (two halves of the same, rule-related sphere).
The Adult Ego State does not divide.
Diagram 3
When it comes to associated behaviours, the distinction between Nurturing Parent and Critical Parent is not a case of positive and negative respectively. There are positive and negative aspects to both Parent Ego States.
Similarly, there are positive and negative behaviours attached to the three divisions of the Child Ego State.
Getting Stuck & Un-sticking
As a rule of thumb when someone initiates an interaction or responds while in one of their Parent or Child states, they (subconsciously) invite a response from another Parent or Child state. When the invitation is accepted, the interaction can become stuck (Diagrams 4 & 5).
When the invitation to ‘play’ is not accepted and the response comes from the conscious Adult ego state, the possibilities of moving forward or resolving the difficulty emerge. (Diagram 6)
Observation Task & Discussion