Chapter 8 Implications for Teaching: The Facilitation of Learning
IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING: THE FACILITATION OF LEARNING In the last chapter of their book From Skinner to Rogers; Contrasting Approaches to Education the authors Frank Milhollan and Bill E. Forisha sum up both school of thought and their impact on education, learners, and learning. No school of thought can stand up and meet the total requirement of learners and learning. However, the child s interests and potentials (phenomenology) should be considered first through proper facilitation and empathic listening by the teacher that is a contrasting role as compared to traditional educational set up. Then by providing effective and supporting environment (behaviorism) learners could be facilitated in a learner centered teaching, curricula, and resources. Here are the key concepts of the chapter: Rogers declined to use the term revolution in education; he nevertheless believes that only a tremendous change in the basic direction of education can meet the needs of today s culture. The goal of education must evolve from dynamic nature of our society. There must be a climate conducive to personal growth where innovation is not at all frightening but creative capacities of all concerned are nourished and expressed. The end-point our educational system must be the development of fully functioning people involving all the stakeholders (students, teachers, administrators etc). Rogers confesses, 1. I cannot teach another person to teach, 2. Outcomes of teaching are either unimportant or hurtful, 3. I have lost interest in being a teacher, and 4. I am only interested in being a learner. All these surprising confessions are consistent with a phenomenological view of man. For example, what shall be taught? What does the student need to know? or what shall be course cover? All these assumptions run counter to the individual
freedom and uniqueness. The implication is, of course, that our present system lacks trust in the human organism; it denies man both his freedom and his dignity. The goal of education must become the facilitation of change and learning. Only from an interpersonal context in which learning is facilitated will arise true students, real learners, creative scientists and scholars, and practitioners, the kind of individuals who can live in a delicate but ever changing balance between what is presently known and the flowing, moving, changing problems and facts of the future. The facilitation of learning does not rely upon his any particular skills, scholarly knowledge, curricular planning, use of audiovisual aids; nor upon his programmed learning, lectures, oral reports or even books and pencils and paper. They might become resources, but the facilitator is a living resource who works in relationship to the learning i.e. interpersonal relationship with learner is of prime importance in education. Rogers has discerned certain attitudinal qualities between facilitator and learner. The first of these essential attitudes is realness or genuineness. A facilitator must discard the traditional role mask, façade of being The Teacher and become a real person with his students. He should not hide his whatever feelings from the students. He freely expresses his emotions (if is bored or angry or enthusiastic or sympathetic) and students should also be free to respond likewise. A good example; a sixth-grade teacher in a self directed classroom setting was upset with a messedup room; the teacher announced that she had a problem that she found it difficult to work in all the mess and asked the group for help. The students responded by setting up a cleaning system. A second attitude in the facilitator-learner relationship is the trust and acceptance, even a prizing of the other person as a worthy, valuable individual. Since learning may often involve a change in the organization of the self, it occurs more frequently when external threats to the self are at a minimum.
And finally, where learning is to occur, empathetic communication must ensue between those persons involved; and it is only possible in a climate characterized by empathic understanding. A facilitator of learning must be sensitively aware of learning and education. Rogers maintains that this kind of non-evaluative understanding is practically unheard of in the average classroom. Learners need communication if they are to succeed; they need to be understood, not evaluated, not judged, and not taught. Facilitation requires acceptant, empathic understanding. Rogers supported with argument from relevant research those three attitudinal qualities: degree of genuineness shown by the teacher, degree of unconditional positive regard, and the degree of empathic understanding remarkably supported higher achievement in classroom learning. The achievement of these attitudes is no easy task. Basic to all of these attitudes is trust in the capacity of the human individual for developing his own potentiality. Only with this trust can learning be facilitated, opportunities provided, freedom given. A facilitator works on the hypothesis that any student who is in real contact with problems deemed relevant to himself will want to learn, to grow, to discover, to create, to become self-disciplined. What learning truly is the very vital striving of the organism for life itself (self-initiated learning). Self-initiated learning involves the whole person of the learner (feelings as well as intellect) and is the most lasting and pervasive. Learning to be an independent, creative, and self-reliant is facilitated when self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of secondary importance. (this is, of course, learning the process of learning) The classroom atmosphere must be student-centered. It may be necessary to confront them with real life situations, which will become real problems to them. Oftentimes, however, this may also simply be a matter of allowing natural confrontations to occur. How many of our schools really desire to teach democratic values? If students were free from so many of those rules imposed from above and without, they would, from the necessity of their own social
interaction, formulate laws designed to enhance those reasons for their coming together. This idea was of course, the central premise of Locke s democratic political philosophy. And in this sense, Rogers is actually very much in the Lockean tradition. A. S. Neil s Summer-hill is a self-governing school. Everything connected with the social interaction of its members, including even punishment for social offenses, is settled by vote at Saturday night general school meetings. Each child, regardless of age, has one vote. And so does each staff member, including Neil himself. Rogers claims when children are given a responsible freedom, in a climate of understanding and non-possessive love, they choose with wisdom, learn with alacrity, and develop genuinely social attitudes. As a human resource he (facilitator) is himself introductory material to a wider world of potential experience to the learner. Unfortunately, state certification requirements often tend to disqualify persons with a truly wide range of life and work experience. Rogers observes that by the time, the child has spent a number of years in traditional school, intrinsic motivation may well be dampened. Yet it is always there, waiting to be tapped. Jerome Bruner has called for the activity of enquiry or discovery learning or learning by doing. Students become self-directed researchers, scientists themselves, on a simple level. They learn how to learn. Similar to enquiry learning is the experiential learning entailed in simulation. Real life situations are simulated with as much of their complexity and urgency as possible. Rogers does not hesitate also to recommend both his own humanistic approach and behaviorist programmed instruction. However, latter should never become a substitute for thinking in larger patterns i.e. through enquiry or discovery learning.
Rogers has written and spoken extensively on one of the practical considerations of humanistic psychology the encounter-group also known as T group (laboratory training, sensitivity training, and workshop) An encounter group has ten to fifteen people, along with a facilitator or group leader. The group is unstructured and provides a climate of freedom for the expression of personal feelings and interpersonal communication. The word encounter refers to that interaction which occurs when people drop their defenses and relate directly and openly as real persons, same as in client centered therapy. The trust that is generated enables a person to recognize, experiment, and exchange self-defeating attitudes for those more conducive to innovative and constructive behaviors. In the educational setting, the encounter group may be used to release the capacity of participants for better educational leadership through improved interpersonal relationships and to facilitate learning by the whole person. The emphasis is on the whole system, including administrators, teachers, students, and parents. People are less resistant to change when they do not feel threatened and when they are determining these changes themselves. The exercise of freedom is inseparable from the burden of responsibility. And that burden may actually become lighter and ever fulfilling in a climate of trust and positive regard.