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VALBEC Conference 2005 New Thinking, Better Results - the Human Givens approach to teaching and learning. Merv Edmunds I am in the UK, on a platform at Birmingham railway station. I arrive at the station, look at the departures monitor, identify the platform number for the train to Leicester, and proceed to platform number 7 via the stairs. On the walkway over the several rail lines, I fail to see access to platform 7, get confused, and return to the monitor to check the platform number again. I confirm that platform 7 is the required one, and returning to the stairway, this time I notice a sign stating that platform 6 and 7 are accessed via a subway. I might add, that I have a bad case of gout, my foot is swollen, covered only in a sock, and very sore. I limping up the stairs to platform 7, I hear an announcement referring to a train that is ‘terminating’ at Birmingham, and noticing a train already there with ‘Birmingham’ on its illuminated panel, I sit and wait on the platform seat. In my agitated state, and presuming the train in front of me is not the ‘right’ one, I ignore a later announcement over the loud speaker that includes my destination, Leicester. The train pulls out, ‘backwards’ and leaves me waiting for the next train. Now before you start wondering what sort of dill you have here, I want to use this story on myself to explain the way our brains process information, and shed some new insights you may find useful in your various personal and professional roles. We live in pretty exciting times, in no other period of history have we been able to examine a living fully functioning brain. No longer do we have to rely on how cadavers think (they don’t!) or learn by observing what happens when surgery goes horribly wrong. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) enables us to see what parts of the brain are involved in various circumstances. The ‘Mind and Life’ team, for example, using the world’s first non-medical MRI technology, brings together the very best of the east and west thinking, such as the Dali Lama and Daniel Goleman. The team is mapping this last frontier, and making discoveries that enable us to understand how the brain makes sense of our world, and what happens in the brains of exceptional thinkers that may help us normal people perform better. Their discoveries have increased our understanding of parts of the brain we knew existed, but didn’t know what they did in this amazing process of making sense of what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell. One such part is made up of four quite small organs, it is known as the limbic system and it is here that all sensory information (except smell) is processed. It is also called the emotional brain, because what has become clear is that emotion comes before thought. We already have a feeling about something up to half a second before even thinking about it. In other words, what we think is ‘real’ is in fact what we have been set up to think. No problem in this, providing we are aware of the possibility that we may have been set up in a way that is limiting our thinking. The brain makes sense of things by matching what it sees/hears/feels with what is already on file as a neural element or ‘pattern’. In this case, I had an understanding about access to other platforms via walkways over the train lines. I have, but did not use a pattern that includes subway access to other lines. When patterns do not find their match - in this case the correct platform - a state of arousal sets in. Humans have a basic need to make sense of their world, and in the case of this traveller, what he expected does not eventuate, leading to a state of confusion and anxiety. A state of arousal can lead to poor pattern-matching. When I arrive at the correct platform in this aroused state, I processes information rather poorly, in that I assume all the seats are facing the way the train is going, and ignore the possibility that I may be looking at the back of the train not the front. My state of arousal literally blocks out the announcement because it does not fit with what I think about this train. Paul Ekman, one of the ‘Mind and Life’ team, in his recent book states: We evaluate what is happening or about to happen, in a way that is consistent with the emotion, thus justifying and maintaining the emotion. …(and) discount or ignore knowledge that could disconfirm the emotion. Ekman, P This is an example of ‘black and white’ thinking where other possibilities are ignored, and the information processing is based on what has been in the past, not what is currently happening. I am sure you can see some relevance when dealing with learners who lack confidence, and have certain feelings about the learning process. I used to start talking about the Human Givens by saying there was an Englishman and an Irishman, but of course people expected a joke. What these two guys are doing may be amusing, but it is no joke. Anyway, this Englishman, a psychologist named Ivan Tyrrell, went on a search to find why of the 412 different therapy methods for treating depression, none of them seemed to be very effective. He decided there must be fundamental principles that are yet to be understood. At the same time, over a 15 year period, an Irish psychologist by the name of Joe Griffin was on a similar search: to explain why humans dream. Because of their common focus on sleep patterns, they got together and proposed a new therapy approach called the Human Givens. The term means several things. Firstly, it is a set of ideas that together make up a new framework or paradigm for the brain’s information processing. Secondly the term suggests that these ideas are a starting point for further exploration, no need to argue over these fundamental ideas, instead test and apply them in the various arenas of mental health, education, disability and so on. In its simplest form, the term refers to a set of things humans have been given: a series of needs, and an array of resources to help them meet these needs. Physical needs include a wholesome diet, exercise, restorative sleep. Emotional needs, previously thought of as things that get in the way of clear thinking, are becoming recognised as equally important as physical needs. Emotional needs (with the corresponding fears that arise when they are not met or getting them met is threatened) may include:
Of the basic needs, these last two pairs are crucial, and often overlooked. The need for meaning, for example, is met when one’s world is in order and makes sense. The need for significance is met when one recognises something of themselves existing in their world, it has to do with one’s identity. The need for meaning and significance is uppermost during infancy, adolescence, and periods of change. Fine for when societies were stable and slow-changing, but no longer appropriate to nominate particular stages of the life cycle when these needs are important - they are important all the time. The need for control is the power to change things or deal with change, and autonomy is being able to choose how this is to be done. When these needs are not met, one feels out of control, dominated by some thing or some one, and usually invalidated as a person. As well as needs, we are all given a set of resources that can help us get these needs met. Things like imagination, long-term memory, the ability to learn through metaphor, a dreaming brain, and the capacity to observe ourselves. Problems arise when needs are not met, or resources are mis-used. Depression, for example is an over-use of the imagination and the dreaming brain not being able to restore emotional balance. While essentially a therapy model, the Human Givens offers educators some great insights in lay-person’s terms into how the brain processes information. Let’s look at some principles. The first principle: all behaviour is needs driven. Behaviour is an expression of an individual’s attempt to get a need met; the way they are getting a need met; or their response to a perception that a basic need is threatened. My station behaviour represents my need for meaning (making sense of an unfamiliar environment and getting to my destination), and also autonomy, being able to cope, problem-solve and make decisions related to my purpose. Both were threatened as I limped from one part of the station to another trying to find my way. This principle is deceptively simple - and teachers ignore it at their peril. I was at a meeting of VCAL teachers this week, discussing our programs for quality assurance purposes. There were some great programs - the teacher’s need for control, meaning and significance clearly being met. The only problems, however, were the usual ones about the kids’ poor learning skills, no motivation, and general lack of appreciation for such wonderful opportunities. If all behaviour is needs driven, it is possible to ask: “In what way does this activity, (insert, planting trees, raising money for Africa, clearing the waterways, or worst of all in my mind, making farm trailers for the school to sell) meet the young peoples’ basic needs?” The second principle: the brain works through a pattern-matching process. I have talked a little about the way we make sense of the world is by matching what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste, with a pattern already in our heads. Sometimes this pattern matches perfectly, sometimes it doesn’t. My three year old son was on all fours once, looking at a string of hairy caterpillars on the footpath. When I came closer, he looked up at me and said: “Look Daddy, a train.” The closest match in his head was ‘train’. At his age he didn’t have one for caterpillars, so this was a first-time event, and learning took place. He now had a pattern for what he was looking at, and it included the differences between train (carriages, wheels, large) and caterpillars (hairy, legs, small). My experience with trains was not so simple. The patterns I used enabled me to make sense of my environment, but they in fact set me up to miss the train. My train patterns did not include trains that look identical front and back, or people that go the entire journey facing backwards. I need to explain some more things about patterns because they are fundamental to the Human Givens approach as it is applied to education. We are set up by the limbic brain to interpret things according to a series of patterns. Some of these patterns we were born with, most were added during the formative years, some more during adolescence up to the present. It is our way of viewing and making sense of the world. These patterns:
I know a nurse who breaks out in a sweat every time the helicopter lands at the hospital - she was a triage nurse in Vietnam during the war. The sound of the helicopter triggers her memory and the picture comes up in her mind, complete with the awful feelings.
A baby, for example, will look for something that matches a nipple, and immediately suck on it. They may put their thumb in their mouth, and ‘click’ this matches a pattern they were born with. They might keep sucking on it for a couple of years - it makes sense to them without even thinking about it.
A few years ago, I took kids sailing to King Island. First night at sea, some start to get sea-sick. They would come up the hatch, go to the rail and throw up over the side. The old skipper said, “You watch them, they will go to the same spot every time, just like rabbits to a burrow.” Sure enough, they did. But one kid, had chosen a path that included clambering over the winch, and I was sure he would get tangled in the ropes and be over the side himself. So on his way back to the cabin, I suggested he go around the winch, not over it. He clambered over the winch every time, simply because in his fear and anxiety, he was acting out a script and his thinking brain didn’t get a look in.
Pete was one of my students, wild
lad, wiry and unlimited energy, works on a dairy farm. He continued
to attend my class one day each week, so I picked him up. There’s
a herd of cows crossing the road one morning so we wait. Nearly
all Friesians, then one jersey.
You have probably heard of David Helfgott, and seen the movie ‘Shine’. Well in his wife’s book she recounts the time David come into the house and asked “Who owns this place”. Gillian quickly realised David had no pattern for ‘ownership’ - he had lived in institutions and rented places all his life. So, she got a large piece of paper and drew David playing the piano, people paying money to hear him play, then the money going to buy their property in NSW. Then it clicked in his brain, he stood up, and said “Well in that case I had better take a look at it. He was gone for nearly an hour, seeing the place like he had never seen it before, which when we understand the way the brain relies on patterns for making sense of the world, he was literally looking at it for the first time. He now had a pattern for ‘ownership’, and it influenced his behaviour in that for the first time in their married life, he helped make the bed, and did the vacuuming. The third principle: the higher the emotional arousal, the more primitive the pattern-matching. Arousal helps us notice particular things and blocks out other things, it is designed for action not thinking. In Daniel Goleman’s term the emotional brain ‘hijacks’ the thinking brain. In the dance of feeling and thought, the emotional faculty guides our moment-to-moment decisions, working hand-in-hand with the rational mind, enabling - or disabling - thought itself. Goleman, D (1996) Emotional Intelligence. Bloomsbury. My station experience shows all the signs of high arousal and poor pattern-matching. Patterns linked with walkways over train lines (certainly the most common in my experience), and patterns that tell me which way the train is going, were wrong in both instances. And, not only that, but my aroused state literally blocked out information that could have corrected these incorrect perceptions. Thinking, as it turned out, was momentarily disabled. The fourth principle: needs met in a way that maintains a state or climate of high emotional arousal, will reduce the likelihood of other important needs being met. If we accept that all behaviour is an attempt to get a need met, it is possible to see that some people can only get their needs met by creating and maintaining a high state of arousal. The problem is not that they are getting their needs met, but the fact that they are being met in a way that creates an emotionally-charged climate that will reduce their chances of getting other needs such as the needs for love, connection, and meaning met. And, with a continuing state of arousal, their thinking patterns will effectively block out other possibilities for behaving differently. I have been out of the classroom and on the streets for eight years. Long enough to see at dreadfully close quarters a lot of young people for whom school as it is structured does not work. Before accepting an offer to return to the classroom and deal with the kids that didn’t want to be there, I stressed that what these kids had been through hadn’t worked, so more of the same wouldn’t either. I also stressed that this old dog had learned some new tricks, and he needed to be on a long lead if you wanted him to stay around for a while. They bought it, and the tricks are looking good. What tricks? If the Human Givens can give us a valuable insight into what is happening at the level at which the behaviour originates - the emotional brain - can it not also give us a framework upon which we can create different learning environments that can lead to better results? My response is that they can. Let’s look at their definition of the brain: An infinitely rich treasure-house of incomplete patterns seeking completion from the environment. Joe Griffin and Ivan
Tyrrell, You will notice this definition suggests that what takes place in a person’s head is incomplete without an ‘environment’. It follows then, that by manipulating this environment, we can change the thinking - particularly appealing if the thinking has in any way limited the individual’s performance. Risky assumption, you may say, except that the assumption is based on some pretty formidable insights. It has long baffled educators how kids - including functionally illiterate ones - can get the required information, process it, and apply it with obvious success. According to popular thinking, if they haven't read the instructions they will not know what to do; what the strategies are; and how to play to win. In his remarkable book, Professor James Gee states: Cognitive science has taught us a great deal about thinking as a mental act taking part in an individual’s head … we know much less about thinking as a social achievement and as part and parcel of a great many different social practices. Gee,J. Video games suggest that the brain works just as well (if not better) without the information we think it has to have to complete a task. Electronic games also confirm that brain function is interactive with its environment (in this case a virtual one), not isolated from it. According to Professor Gee, there are many learning principles in operation in good video games, but two are significant. One is the notion of ‘stealth’ learning - being totally immersed in the activity means the brain absorbs the information without the learner being aware of where the information is coming from: when the learners are so caught up in their goals that they don't realise they are learning or how much they are learning or where they actively seek new learning The other is the identity the game-player takes on. They play with a whole series of skills, attributes and resources they don’t have in real life. Taking on a virtual identity constitutes a form of identification with the virtual character’s world, story, and perspectives that become a strong learning device at a number of different levels. And, I might add, Professor Gee is not the only one talking about changing the environment so the learner takes on a new identity. Here is a quote from Professor Jean Lave, one of the foremost thinkers on socially situated cognition: Most important, learning is a change not just in practice, but in identity - crafting identities in context becomes the fundamental project Lave, J. 1996 ‘Teaching,
as learning in practice.’ So, the challenge is twofold: to have young people ‘totally immersed’ in the activity that they don’t realise they are learning (stealth learning); and to create a learning environment in which young people can take on all the characteristics of a successful person, someone not carrying the baggage of any learning difficulties real or otherwise. Stealth learning has two agendas:
Now what about the learning environment. My role is to put in place - in class and online - a set of values, beliefs, and ways with words, deeds, and actions, that represent what it means to be a particular designer or ICT professional doing a project. The student takes on a ‘project persona’ or virtual identity, they are experienced, qualified, and highly recognised as successful in their field. In other words, they have a set of cognitive and social practices appropriate to the project, and in most cases very different to their normal ‘student’ selves. Not a lot different to the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ notion. Perhaps not a comfortable arrangement for the purist pedagogue, but one of my guiding principles is I get paid for my results, not my methods. My role is split between a classroom teacher and a ‘project manager’. The former is providing some instruction and lots of assistance to the young people in completing, on time and on standard, the tasks set by their ‘project manager’. This latter role is done online. All my contact in this role is by emails written as a person managing the project and coordinating the expectations of the client with the performance of the ‘professional’. The young people have to ‘apply’ to join the projects and undergo a ‘selection’ process involving several psychometric tests. They are taught to relax and visualise the task and various solutions, as well as seeing themselves confidently explaining their work to visiting teachers or a news reporter. I use guided imagery - images of success like sailing around on a luxury yacht, teaching teachers, airline travel, house, car, family - some I propose, some they propose, all embraced at an emotional ‘this-can-be-me’ level. Why? Because the brain matches patterns, and my job is to assist young people create patterns that will find their completion in their environment. The emotional brain loves stories, role-playing, metaphors. With graphics programs we are able to manipulate digital images to create ‘success metaphors’, that help sustain the question: What would I look like if I were very successful at this task? Now, so that you can consider the possibility of applying some Human Givens thinking to your setting, let’s look at what I regard as essentials
If I sound passionate about the way the Human Givens principles can make a difference, it is because I have seen the results in people’s personal as well as professional lives. Information that helps us understand behaviour needs to be in every teacher’s bag of tricks. Things like understanding that behaviour is needs-driven, the role of metaphor in creating new patterns, awareness that arousal can limit thinking and so on. Strategies that enable us to get our basic needs met in a way that sets a positive emotional climate. A climate that enables us and those around us to work with each other on tasks that make sense, offer personal growth and the development of skills to negotiate this maze called life. |