the avec quartet - continued

 
A presentation to the Networking 2003 Conference, October 2003.
Merv Edmunds
Project Manager

An article on the front page of the Melbourne Age on August 4 reports on research into an increasingly common disorder among young people, a form of depression. The symptoms present a challenge …

• inattentiveness,
• poor organisational skills, and behaviours that are
• aggressive,
• contrary,
• oppositional and
• defiant.

Media Reports of Vance (2003)

In fact these symptoms are presenting a major challenge for  many of us. I came away from one session feeling drained, frustrated, and asking myself: Why are these kids so unhappy, so angry and so anti-everything?

All behaviour is an expression of the way people are attempting to get their needs met. It doesn’t matter which model you use, there are at least four that crop up in nearly all of them - basic human needs like growth, connection, significance, control. But it’s not only the needs that are significant, it is the way disenfranchised young people are attempting to have them met that is the issue for us here. It presents two problems:

• for themselves – they are meeting their needs by maintaining an aroused (non-thinking) state, symptomatic of the disorder the Age article describes.
• for us – they are determining the emotional climate in which we have to operate, and, our own personal and vocational needs for growth, significance, connection, and even a sense of control will rarely be met in this environment.

So, at a very basic level there is a conflict over the way people are attempting to get their needs met. A sort of behavioural clash using responses that are more likely to be primal than intellectual. The avec esprit project addresses this clash and attempts to deal with the problem at the level at which it originates. It recognises the role of the limbic brain in the formation and influence of emotions, and the way these emotions pre-dispose us to thinking in certain ways.

The project focuses on developing four personal and workplace skills that may empower partners in the learning exchange to work together better. They are what constitute the ‘avec’ in the avec esprit project – awareness, visualisation, emotion management, and creativity.

You may be asking “How do we teach these skills?” The easy answer is we don't know yet, but two things are becoming clear – traditional pedagogy does not seem to work, and, the ‘stealth’ model seems promising.

‘Stealth’ learning has two dimensions:

• an overt dimension where all partners and stakeholders in the learning exchange can identify what it is we are setting out to achieve
• a covert dimension where not all participants fully understand what is going on, a sort of hidden agenda or a wider set of objectives running in tandem with the overt operation.

Now in case you think this is manipulative, I want to stress that it happens all the time in teaching – you might be teaching your students how to write an essay (the overt part), but running alongside this is an important dimension that may or may not be obvious to the student. Things like the development of their own opinion, seeing the bigger picture, exploring ideas and discovering way to express them effectively. What may not be happening as much as you would like is the development of these broader skills, the essay itself may become the all absorbing task, and the broader agenda gets lost.

With the avec esprit project we are attempting to focus on the broad or generic skills, use what we know about the limbic brain, and design the activities to provide a context that is likely to promote the development of these skills. We are in effect, formalising the two agendas, and focusing on specific tasks knowing that the task is not an end in itself, but a vehicle for something more important.

Let’s have a look at the tasks,

• Design Projects - creating and presenting a design to a review panel, a response that has maximum effect with  a minimum of construction,
• ICT Project – preparing teacher resources for online delivery and automatic correction, and providing instruction for the teacher in the process.

One of the guiding principles in stealth learning is the role of the uncertain and the unfamiliar. It is more likely that young people develop new thinking responses when they feel the ground moving underneath the normal routines. Unfamiliar challenges like becoming a ‘teacher’ and getting paid for it.

Now, let’s look at the four skills we are developing.

Awareness – is the skill of thinking about our thinking. This may sound strange, so let me explain. Edward de Bono describes the brain as a ‘self-organising system’, meaning we don’t have to think about what it does. If, however, we recognise that something in this automatic process has pre-disposed us to see things in a certain way, we need to be aware of this. Especially if what we think we see and know is in any way limiting our potential – frustrating our basic needs. The skill of awareness helps us recognise the times our mind may not be acting in our best interest. The operative question becomes:

 Is this how it really is, or just the way I think it is?

The design and ICT projects are presented ‘as if’ they are real workplace tasks in order to develop a new sense of self. Participants’ awareness is heightened by going through a ‘selection’ process including several psych tests, and focusing on the task with a client and supervisor in mind. Tasks designed to increase the space between stimuli and response. Participants become aware of new ways of thinking especially if this skill is developed in tandem with…

Visualisation – the skill of creating situation-specific and context-appropriate pictures in our mind. Let’s look at a more recent definition of the brain:  

An infinitely rich treasure house of incomplete patterns seeking completion from the environment.

Joe G. &  Tyrrell I. Human Givens HG Publishing 2003

Learning is creating a link between the known (pattern) and the unknown (a good match). As educators, our most frequently used phrase is: “It is like…”, creating a metaphor that will link what our students already know, with what we want them to discover. When they see it they go ‘ah ah’, a match between a familiar pattern and what is new. And when they don’t see it, particularly if this activity has an emotional dimension, say one’s need for acceptance or significance is threatened by not ‘getting it’, the looking for a match continues, a state of arousal is sustained. If a pattern takes on the emotions associated with their not ‘getting it’, that feeling will be in place and will colour their perception of the task, themselves, and their world.

Patterns originate in the limbic brain, and they are unable to make the fine distinctions necessary in a complex modern environment. More than that, the brain organises itself to use readily accessible and frequently used patterns. Many of our young people are using patterns formed in early school years that are inappropriate and they can’t see how they can change them. Visualisation is about lowering arousal and creating patterns that help them instead of limit their potential. Young people can be assisted in the process of creating appropriate patterns for particular contexts, or what we call a ‘success metaphor’, with the operative question:

What would I look like if I was very successful at this task?

Emotion Management – the skill of understanding where our emotions come from, and being able to manage them better. This skill is crucial, because emotions are designed for action not thinking. In Daniel Goleman’s term they ‘hijack’ the rational thinking brain. No prizes for naming the brain we are trying to engage in the learning process. Attempting to teach emotionally charged, highly aroused young people to be more reflective is like trying to train bull terriers in a cage full of rats.

Emotion management is about recognising the factors that form the emotions, and understanding that changing one of the factors changes the emotion. Three factors contribute to the formation of emotions:

• brain patterns (they carry the emotion in which they were formed),
• physiology (breathing, posture, stance)
• language (not just words, but the way we say and interpret them)

Emotion management is the cornerstone of the avec esprit project and the hardest one to develop. When we ask young people to present to a review panel, and teach adults online learning skills, the patterns with a pre-set feeling of fear attached all but paralyses them. However, when there is a reason to understand where emotions come from, and a reason to manage fear of teaching teachers for example, the overt and the covert come together. The design and ICT projects are a context for this skill development by ‘stealth’. The process relies on high levels of trust, an atmosphere of transparency and empathy, and lots of practice. The operative question in this context is:

 What can I change in myself to feel different?

I should point out two important words in that question: in myself.  The tendency in all of us is to look outside of ourselves for things to change in order to feel different. So often, the things we want to change are probably not going to change no matter what we do, so we get frustrated. However, realising that we have some control over how we feel is empowering – this is especially so in young people.

Creativity – the skill that ties each of the other three together. It is being prepared to try new ways of thinking, a sort of mental ‘freeing up’. Creativity, higher order thinking, thinking outside the square, each of these terms relate to the capacity to switch from automatic thinking to explorative thinking. And one way to stimulate this process is unfamiliar experiences – ‘walking over new ground’. The ‘self organised’ patterns will not work, so there is a chance a new one will be made.

Creativity has a direct role to play in the process of designing responses to interesting and realistic projects. It also underpins each of the other skills enabling young people to ‘free-up’ their thinking when they are suitably challenged – such as asking them to become teachers. The operative question becomes:

 How can I think about this in a different way?

It should be pointed out that these skills can benefit the teacher as much as the learner. Creative thinking may be as simple as walking into class differently. You may ask, “What’s the point of that?” Well for the creative mind there doesn’t have to be a point to it. You might think walking like this just isn’t possible or realistic for you. For the creative mind it doesn’t have to be possible, nor does it have to be real.

Don’t underestimate the effect of a creative thought or action in the privacy of your own classroom. The patterns in the students’ minds won’t match what they are seeing, so if nothing else you will at least have their attention. They might make some dreadful remarks, but at a deeper level, there will be some powerful impressions being made. They probably won’t verbalise these impressions, but they will be linked to childhood fun, play-acting, fantasy. If you think these things aren’t important, try explaining the Harry Potter or Finding Nemo phenomena.

The question that started this project: “How do we teach these skills?” is yet to be answered fully. But we do know that traditional pedagogy and the assumption that one can ‘deliver’ curriculum like this doesn’t seem to work. The curriculum models that do work are yet to emerge, but those with the most promise will probably:

• require a significant component of professional development
• have a major online component
• have a project facilitator, a mentor for the students and those working with them
• include practical project-based, work-oriented activities
• involve other disciplines to complement the project-based activities
• rely on innovative engagement strategies

A Case Study CD on the avec esprit project will be available December 2003. It will include all the resources used by the participants this year, examples of completed projects, a comprehensive research report, as well as teachers’ and learners’ experience in developing the four skills in three different settings – a TAFE college, an Adult Education facility, and a secondary school.

I am not suggesting these resources, or the four skills we have discussed, will fix every besetting condition we face. I am confident, however, that by becoming aware of thinking processes, familiar with forming appropriate metaphors, and empowered with emotion management skills, there is a good chance that new thinking, and better results will follow.

You may even get reported on the front page of The Age - with that depressing list replaced by the skills of awareness, visualisation, emotion management, and creativity.