Teaching, learning and psychotherapy

George Kelly from the 1950s based his psychotherapy on ways in which people construct their sense of self, self awareness, self construct (and through these self confidence and related features). He called this Personal Construct Psychology (PCP). Children are constructing their self understanding from birth, and they are helped or hindered by those around them, especially significant adults (parents, teachers, friends, enemies). Our model of learning should first and foremost embrace self understanding. This focuses on relationships and our place in the world. The mechanisms may be literature, or drama , or art, but always to see new aspects of self. This might suggest that the main purpose of education is self understanding, producing rounded individuals. Anything else is its context.

Transaction Analysis (TA).

TA by Eric Berne provided a therapeutic solution to observations about human transactions. This can be simplified as having three Ego states:

 Parent, Adult, Child.

These are modes, not age related so two adults could engage with each other in child to child mode. A transaction is a unit of interaction. Parent to Child is authoritative/ authoritarian, child to child is immature, adult to adult is mature. Every transaction can thus be codified. If one of you chided me petulantly (parent mode) and I cheeked you back (child mode), then we have a way of altering things by recognising this and each moving to adult mode. You could make a point rationally (adult mode) and I could answer seriously (adult mode). Things go wrong when inappropriate 2 way transactions take place. A teacher indulging in child to child arguments with children will fail. Equally a teacher who is able to talk to a 6 year old adult to adult is more likely to succeed.

Berne also spoke of people having a life script. We may have to take up a new script if our usual one fails us. Like a B movie, life might be bad because the script is awful.Psychotherapy, and education, can help people revise or rewrite their life scripts.

Carl Rogers is known for Person Centred Therapy, where progress can only be linked to detailed discussions between client and therapist. This replaces grand theory such as promulgated by such as Freud or Jung. In school, children present with complex individual issues, and the teacher's first task is to decode these to remove any blocks to progress. Again, teaching content is simply its context.

Paul Moustakos called this phenomenological therapy. It is in fact progress by deep discussion, getting as much information from patients as possible before diagnosis. The parallel for teaching children is patient listening to children's ideas and thoughts and interacting with them respectfully without putting them down.

The subject curriculum is not unimportant. In fact it is so important for this to be done well that we need pupils  to be in good heart, motivated, comfortable with learning, curious and hungry for understanding. This is where helping children to learn how to learn is the launchpad to their later success.

Postscript, 24 hours later.
The Education Minister Michael Gove disagrees with me, which makes me think I am probably right.