The Trouble with Behaviourism
Neil Davies - neil@nardavies.demon.co.uk
Published in All-In Success Vol. 9 No. 1, Autumn 1997
Warning
If you are perfectly
happy with the results that your teaching approaches are delivering
my advice is do not bother to read the following. It could call
into question the very basis upon which you live, as happened
to me.
The proposal
is that most of our current theories of motivation and behaviour,
and hence the attempts to manipulate them, are based on inappropriate
assumptions about how humans operate. Ideas from work now going
on in this field have been found to be useful in the classroom
where teachers are seen as managers of systems, and hence responsible
for a major leadership role in society. They have to date received
inadequate support in this job from:
- psychologists, who have only
just begun to develop a useful theory of learning;
- philosophers,
who are in a tangle over the role of the structure of language
in their ideas;
- politicians, who have repeatedly enforced every
principle of poor management known today. Some illustrations
from the full age range are outlined to hint at the general applicability
of the thinking.
What most of us do?
'Behaviourism' may be thought of as a theory resting
on the assumption that people are controlled by stimuli
that occur in public space, outside themselves. The implication,
which is somewhere near the root of our culture, its language
and institutions, is that we behave like machines which can be
switched on and off and generally pushed around. The theory is
so pervasive, so obvious, that most of us apply it to ourselves
and to all our relationships without even questioning it for one
moment. We are led, in our attempts to control others, to employ
what we hope will serve as rewards and punishments in order to
steer people in the direction that we want them to go. Glasser
has argued that this theory-of-the-world is responsible for the
breakdown of families, failure in schools and the resulting load
placed upon major institutions like the prison and health services,
etc., (1969) and (1992). The work of Deming (1982) and (1994)
and others is being used in some companies to explore the meaning
and attainment of quality goods and services, here too the same
world-view has been challenged and found wanting.
An alternative model has been advanced by Glasser
(1996) under the name 'Choice Theory'. All of humanity is assumed
to have been born with the same cluster of basic needs which serve
as a model for the sort of creature we are. Thus:
- we need to give
and receive love from at least one person in the world;
- we need to feel significant with a sense of recognition and power
over our lives;
- we strive for freedom in the fulfilment
of ourselves and others;
- we engage in activities, very often
with other people, simply for the fun of them.
Here stimuli
are seen as providing information enabling us to satisfy
those basic needs of love, power, freedom and fun, but we choose
how we act on that information. Glasser views all behaviour as
an attempt to satisfy one or more of those needs in the circumstances
that the individual has encountered so far. This theory underpins
a method of counselling called 'Reality Therapy' in which people
are helped to find the courage to replace actions based on a denial
of reality, which have produced self-destructive behaviour, with
new choices which lead to a more efficient need satisfaction.
It is very similar to the 12-step programme used by the self-help
group Alcoholics Anonymous. The choice can only be the individual's
and they are seen as ultimately responsible for their own behaviour
and supported in facing, not shielded from, the consequences of
their choices. All behaviour is therefore seen as chosen. It
is a tough counselling approach, not a 'soft option'; it says
that in the end we all have to 'face up to reality' but, for the
method to work, the counsellor must not judge or impose punishments
of their own.
My own teaching used to be firmly 'behaviourist'.
I felt pleased to be consistent and fair in the punishments I
handed out (mainly verbal) based on the admonition, 'shape up
and face reality!' I did not suspect that my methods were undermining
the aims that I sought, objectives which are still relevant, though
others have now been added. I did not suspect at the time that
the kinder route of using rewards could also turn out to be ineffective
in producing the sort of work that I hoped to see from my students,
and now am beginning to get. The start of the transformation
for me was embarking upon a course of training with the 'Centre
for Reality Therapy' (see below), whose name is stranger than
the very down-to-earth people that I have met there.
The counselling method is so applicable to teaching
that it might have been invented for it, being very flexible it
can be applied in seconds or over an extended period of time.
The type of questions go something like this:
- What do you Want?
- What are you Doing?
- Is what you're doing working (Evaluation).
- What do you Plan to do about it now?
There is a simple
mnemonic which is a useful aid when crafting questions and trying
to make sense of what has been happening: WDEP. The order
doesn't matter and all questions need not be used. Sometimes
simply asking "What are you doing Ben, is it helping?"
whilst at the board teaching has been enough to calm a situation
so that the lesson can continue. I should add that the tone
of voice (which I found gradually altered as a result of internalising
another way of thinking) is crucial since it should ideally not
contain any hint of judgement, criticism, sarcasm or punishment;
curiously reward may also hinder the process under consideration.
All the above, it seems, prevent 'reality' coming into sharp
focus for the child. An example: a year 8 boy was running through
the newly planted bushes, the questions went: "Why might
I want to talk to you? What did you do? How might that affect
other people? What are you going to do in future?"; or sometimes
bluntly "OK what is your plan?". Early on I dropped
the habit of asking the useless question "Why?", it
invariably produced an "I don't know" which never seemed
to lead anywhere and left us both feeling powerless. Chewing
gum is an ever present irritant in the classroom and forms of
questions and statements may be "Is what you're doing helping?.
What is the rule about this? I can't ignore this Mark.";
if I still get no swift action I may say "I will have to
find a way to enforce this rule". I will try to avoid
telling the pupil what they have to do in order for us all
to continue the lesson, but they must believe that I will take
the matter further, either to tutor, management or parents if
we cannot work it out together. I will try at all costs to avoid
doing any punishing myself; this is not easy for me at present
as threats or tone of voice call upon the old ways! Ideally they
should choose the behaviour given that I have clarified the reality.
To my astonishment simply pausing in recognition that I have
spotted the gum can now produce a walk to the waste basket! This
is the central point that has intrigued me during this last year:
plans genuinely arrived at by children themselves (the heart
of Glasser's approach) were invariably stuck to, whereas ones
forced upon them tended to be temporarily complied with, then
subsequently ignored.
By building up an atmosphere in this
way from the start, with say better rule planning involving the
students, the culture could shift further away from coercion along
what may be thought of as a coercion-freedom continuum, thus reducing
the tension in the classroom and unblocking restrictions to learning.
I feel the pupil sees control as moving towards themselves (internal)
and away from the environment (external). When Alan in year 9
was having trouble I asked him at the end of the lesson (using
WDEP) what he might do to help his situation. To my surprise
he chose to move nearer to me so that I could more easily help
him. He has stayed there, despite my repeatedly moving him the
year before for talking and disrupting others. His attitude switched
from that day forward and his concentration on work began to lengthen
whilst marks steadily rose. Others in the class have told me
that they noticed the change and understood what led to it. Incidents
like this, happening time and again have convinced me that we
have here something of immense importance.
It seemed that another type of system was being subtly
created in the classroom. I began to feel different, as though
something were growing and I was merely feeding it. In seeking
an explanation for this I was led to the British Deming Association
who are engaged in a number of projects with schools (address
below) inspired by the work of W.Edwards Deming on systems which
produce quality work. Here I found suggestions for working with
students to clarify objectives and give people the feedback to
monitor their own progress in an atmosphere in which fear is
banished. For example my form (year 7) complained that a
small group were responsible for most of the disruptions to the
work of the class. A boy and a girl agreed to record them each
lesson, with no mention of those responsible, and transfer numbers
to a graph in the form room for all to see. These annoying interruptions
rapidly dropped, and stayed low, (see the run chart with James'
and Clare's impressions, fig. 1). This was around the time that
the form were being punished (e.g. a minute added on to detention
for each interruption) due to noisy behaviour and I suggested
that the alternative to reward and punishment was WDEP, or choice
theory, which I took care to explain under intense cross questioning
to an initially wary group of children. Teachers began to tell
me, in writing, that my form changed and were now a delight to
teach. So the children and I spent time in thinking about the
long and short-term future, about goals in life and how to get
there. We have begun to talk openly of continual improvement
to emphasise the direction in which we want to go. There seems
to be no limit to this once the teacher and pupils are getting
need satisfaction from working towards the same ends. It was
interesting to find that Glasser (1992) had strongly advocated
that the ideas of Deming should be 'brought undistorted into our
schools'. I have become aware that some teachers and entire schools
are doing this quietly and completely naturally, but I think we
need a method for helping people such as me to understand why
they are so effective, see Dupey (1996) and the two schools listed
below for instance.
Circle time had always been an important mechanism
for children to work on their problems, in fact much work in PSE
has grown from it. I have seen it used successfully from Reception
to year 13. In a reception class a new entrant had begun kicking
people to get his own way. During the circle, to his amazement,
he found this discussed openly and a girl saying that he needed
friends, and that his behaviour wouldn't help him and she offered,
with another girl, to be with him at playtime. When the time
came one was seen to take each hand, and they began helping him
to socialise and meet his needs in acceptable ways. Over time
bossing and bullying subsides. The teacher tells me that the
circle is the main forum for managing behaviour and that the children
produce very good ideas, self-reliance develops and the class
becomes more self-regulating, leaving more time to teach. Parents
have also reported their children counselling them during quarrels
using techniques learnt at school. In front of my form a history
of fighting between two gangs was brought to an abrupt halt after
one long session using WDEP; some coming from other classes.
The starting point was that they all wanted to stop, but had not
been able to find a way to do so and they agreed that with help
it ought to be possible. I managed to convince them that I had
no interest in punishing them, that it just doesn't do the job
we want it to. People sometimes need help in trying other ways
to behave that more efficiently satisfy their needs, one who punishes
will not be trusted with that honour, I discovered. The use of
'paradoxical' approaches sometimes emerges spontaneously: Kevin,
in year 13, was talking manically, about sex I think, to his friends
who were trying to prepare for an exam, he clearly had a lot on
his mind, and it wasn't maths. When I suggested he might like
to work on his own as the others were disturbing him he
seemed so puzzled at what I could mean that he said nothing more
and worked till the end of the lesson.
I still wanted to know why a choice can be stuck
to whilst coercion is so unproductive in helping students to develop.
The work of social psychologist Alfie Kohn (1992) and (1993)
began to open up new vistas for me. External punishments or rewards
(seen either as bribes, or punishments when they are withheld)
create resistance or otherwise disrupt the healthy functioning
of the intrinsic or internal motivation of people. Behaviourism
turns out to be a fallacy. Rewarding people 'works' in the
sense that it gets you temporary compliance in the short term,
but it can lower the quality of performance, or product,
over time. In numerous studies externally rewarded groups always
produced poorer quality work than those that were not. Worse
was to come! I had always been a very competitive person (and
yet had, paradoxically, always had a deep sense of failure).
Kohn has convinced me, based on overwhelming evidence from research,
that competition is detrimental to the production of quality work
since it runs counter to our basic nature. Amongst many of its
complex effects it lowers self-esteem, increases anxiety, prevents
collaboration by interfering with normal relationships when others
are seen as potential rivals, suppresses continuous improvement
and prevents adequate understanding of where a pupil is going
wrong, is an extrinsic motivator and therefore reduces 'joy in
work' and probably comes from and inculcates a deep sense of failure.
I began to find ways to reduce competition through abolishing
grading and having a system of 'passing' before moving on to more
demanding work, etc., and to manage for co-operation at all times
in the classroom whilst at the same time improving the content
of work set and allowing more choice wherever it could be designed
in. For one class I organised a camping weekend built around
managing for collaboration in cooking, abseiling and team activities.
The result? The quality of all students work has steadily risen
and I have kept a diary to record the detailed changes. They
are happier and so am I.
Digging deeper into this I came upon the work of
deCharms (1968) who suggested that 'people have a need to experience
themselves as causal agents, to view themselves as the originators
of their own behaviours rather than pawns to external forces'.
An area of research has developed dealing with issues of motivation,
power and control, Perlmuter (1979), where external rewards have
been found to usually cancel out rather than add to the
internal motivation, or 'joy in work', that a person experiences.
This calls into question many of the assumptions upon which well-meaning
people operate and it helps to explain why not even verbally rewarding
students appeared to produce better work in my and their opinion.
When witnessing their pleasure instead of saying "well done"
I would ask them how it felt and this would usually give me some
useful feedback which we could then discuss. Amongst others Deci
and Ryan (1980) helped me to understand why so many students enjoy
working on abstract maths problems, provided they can make progress
at some optimal rate, which appear to have no 'survival value'
or direct relevance for them at all. 'Human beings are active
organisms who are continually interacting with and adapting to
their surroundings. They need to experience themselves as competent
and self-determining in these interactions as a pre-requisite
for psychological health'.
It is now possible to sense what Deming meant when
he taught that, contrary to our 'intuition' generated by upbringing,
only co-operation over common problems amongst producers and with
their customers, can lead to quality for all. Ultimately everybody
(in a global sense) could win. We have an education system mirroring
our world economic order in its production of winners and losers,
though in the long term we will find that everybody loses under
these conditions. Humans have created this crisis, and it does
not have to be this way.
I was recently puzzled to observe a number of pupils
from a slow maths group in year 10 suddenly solving problems that
I felt were beyond their normal level, tricky ratio questions
that I had not taught them. I wondered if the new conditions
of reduced stress and coercion had released the real mechanism
of learning which is not reliant on clever explanations by the
teacher. In this respect the work of Feuerstein (1980) suggests
that 'intelligence' can be developed well into adolescence, it
is not a fixed characteristic like eye colour. Poor performance
in school may be a function of inappropriate 'mediated learning
experiences' in a child's early life; i.e. the absence of adults
who can focus attention and interpret the significance of objects,
events and ideas in the child's world. He has produced classroom
material to help teachers overcome such disadvantages and develop
the intellectual potential of their students.
There appears to be a case for fundamental change.
The fine details of how we implement such a programme seem at
present less important than how we persuade our leaders to embrace
another way of thinking. We will make no progress if we continually
battle with the dysfunctional thinking of those in power, and
the systems resulting from it. There can be no real knowledge
without theory and in the hands of every teacher it will receive
a different interpretation and application, as happens now with
the misleading theory of behaviourism. After a year of trying
many ideas I can begin to sense in myself a personal transformation
which affects all my life and my teaching, such that now, as I
prepare for the next academic year, I am beginning to ask new
types of questions, representing a substantial shift from 'boss
manager' to 'lead manager'.
It seems as if we may have constructed an education
system geared to the cancellation of quality, from the coercion
of 5 year olds through to the uncreativity of examinations. It
is surprising that many teachers and young people produce so much,
in spite of, not because of, the way in which this hierarchy is
managed. We now require leaders who understand that some former
theories of behaviour and motivation are outdated and harmful,
and who embrace a leadership style which can foster co-operation
and develop the skills and talents in our young and our workforce
that lead to 'joy in work'. I find a quote from Kohn helpful
when oscillating between paradigms and trying to hold on to my
beliefs in the face of sceptics: 'You can't motivate someone.
All you can do is to create an environment in which they may
recover their natural urge to do quality work'.
- deCharms, R. (1968) 'Personal Causation: The Internal Affective
Determinants of Behaviour'. Academic Press.
- Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1980) 'The Empirical Exploration of
Intrinsic Motivational Processes' in Berkowitz (ed.) 'Advances
in Experimental Social Psychology'. Academic Press.
- Deming, W. Edwards. (1982) 'Out of the Crisis'. Cambridge U.P.
- Deming, W. Edwards. (1994) 'The New Economics'. M.I.T.
- Dupey, R. (1996) 'Deming's Way'. A series of 4 articles in Managing
Schools Today.
- Feuerstein, R. (1980) 'Instrumental Enrichment - An Intervention
Program for Cognitive Modifiability'. University Park Press.
- Glasser, W. (1969) 'Schools Without Failure'. Harper Perennial.
- Glasser, W. (1992) 'The Quality School'. Harper Perennial.
- Glasser, W. (1996) 'A New Look at School Failure and School Success'.
in Phi Delta Kappan.
- Kohn, A. (1992) 'No Contest : The Case Against Competition'.
Houghton Mifflin.
- Kohn, A. (1993) 'Punished by Rewards'. Houghton Mifflin.
- Perlmuter, L.C. (1979) 'Choice and Perceived Control'. Wiley.
- British Deming Association, The Old George Brewery, Rollestone
Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 1DX. Tel. 01722 412138.
- Centre for Reality Therapy, Green House, 43 George Street, Leighton
Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 8JX. Tel. 01525 851588.
- The Ecclesbourne School, Wirksworth Road, Duffield Derby. DE56
4GS. Tel. 01332 840645.
- Lipson Community College, Bernice Terrace, Plymouth, Devon. PL4
7PG. Tel 01752 671318.
Run chart of the number of disruptions to lessons
(shown by the children as interruptions) for a sequence of 13
lessons during May 1997. The two impressions by a boy and a girl,
who were seated on opposite sides of the class, are for the purposes
of comparison.
Neil Davies - mailto: neil@nardavies.demon.co.uk
html by Alan