The Three Core Disciplines at the heart of teaching and learning
A debate on education in The Psychologist magazine spurred us to write them an article suggesting how the Three Core Disciplines for Leadership and Team Performance can be applied in that context, too. After its publication, Richard edited the article to make it more accessible to non-psychologists and shared it on LinkedIn.
I feel compelled to offer some food for thought following two excellent and related articles in October’s issue of The Psychologist. Neil Martin’s ‘A persistent misconception’ reminded us that plenty of people still believe in the ‘learning styles’ fallacy and looked at why certain approaches to learning work better with some learners than others. Madeleine Pownall’s 'Unprepared undergraduates?' was a lament on the failure of A-Level psychology to prepare students for the very-different experience of undergraduate study.
I’m an organisational psychologist specialising in leadership and team performance. It struck me that the Three Core Disciplines that I share with my clients in our work together also apply both to teaching in general and to the ever-present challenge for our profession of ensuring psychologists are taught, awarded chartered status and developed in ways that continue to enhance our credibility as a profession and the impact we have on society as a whole. Conversations with practitioners in other professions suggest we're not alone in that regard.
When coaching and consulting to leaders across a range of sectors, I talk of four domains in which each of these Three Core Disciplines applies. Each has its parallel when it comes to teaching and learning. The individual ('self' in the image opposite) needs a clear Direction: a purpose for learning and clarity on what they should be learning. The teamaround them – which includes teaching faculty and supervisors – needs to agree on a clear direction for that learning.
This Direction needs to be aligned with the Direction chosen by the organisation (the educational establishment providing that learning), otherwise far too much energy will be spent on in-fighting and game-playing. This in turn needs to be aligned with the needs of stakeholders beyond the organisation, i.e. outside of the three concentric triangles above. Where education is concerned, Direction in this external domain comes from the curriculum as specified by any governmental and/or professional bodies and from the needs of the current and future societies we psychologists exist to serve. Failure to align Direction across all of these domains means individual learning will prove unfit for purpose and will fail to prepare students for the next stage in their lives – the very problem Madeleine Pownall is seeing in the lack of alignment between the Direction established for A-Level Psychology and the Direction set for studying the subject at degree level.
Motivation to learn is frequently flagged as a critical success factor in learning and echoes the second Core Discipline: Commitment. If we want to learn, whether we’re motivated by praise, fear, a sense of accountability or an intrinsic love of the subject matter, we’re more likely to learn. I think it’s partly this that lies behind the widespread belief in learning styles, which persists in spite of a lack of sufficient evidence to justify that 'persistent misconception' that teaching people according to their supposed preferred learning style makes an actual difference to their actual learning.
Learning design that factors in a variety of styles should in theory make for a more varied learning experience, which should in theory keep people interested. Similarly, one would expect that a learner who believes they’re being told the training / teaching matches their learning preferences would be more prepared to engage with it. So it’s hard to believe there’s no benefit even at the placebo level - after all, the placebo effect is evident in so many other areas, as is the finding that the placebos even work when people know they are placebos.
It’s not just the learner’s Commitment that’ll affect learning outcomes, though. Without the visible and felt Commitment of our teachers we’ll struggle to learn as effectively. You might have heard of the classic ‘Pygmalion’ studies (see references below) showing that teachers’ belief in their students’ potential has an effect on those students’ success that is independent of any other factors (like intelligence and appetite for learning). That’s the power of a teacher’s Commitment on learning outcomes! I know that most people who go into teaching enter the profession for the love of it. However, I wonder (as an outsider), whether they believe their environment feeds or undermines that original, deeply held Commitment to ensuring the curriculum is fit for purpose and each individual student has the most enabling learning experience…?
Looking beyond the faculty itself, learners’ Commitment is subject to the contagious effects of the Commitment to learning displayed by their fellow learners and the people around them outside the organisation – friends, family, the media and/or other role models.
And finally, looking through the lens of the Three Core Disciplines, there’s Capacity. Learning is itself capacity-building but learning efficacy depends on a range of capacities in its own right. At the individual level, when critiquing learning styles in that letter to The Psychologist, Neil Martin speaks to individual capacity when he cites Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013) and Kalyuga et al (2003), arguing that tailoring instruction to learners’ existing levels of knowledge or cognitive ability is far more effective than indulging the learning styles fallacy. Then there’s the question of whether faculty and the organisation have the right knowledge, skills, resources, processes and enabling structures in place to facilitate learning. We know that this sometimes isn’t the case. I know a teacher whose school was so deprived of resources that she was required to teach French and Maths despite not speaking French and having failed O Level Maths multiple times as a teenager.
One of the most important aspects of Capacity when it comes to learning, though, is the processes we use as learners, teachers and organisations that enable or inhibit learning. Kolb’s (1974) learning cycle is a process. Learning styles were an attempt to create some good process. What Kirschner and van Merriënboer suggest is a process. As a discipline, psychology arguably has more to offer than any other when it comes to providing evidence-based processes to achieve optimal learning outcomes for the learner and the wider system.
I’m an organisational psychologist, not an educator or a coach / consultant to educational establishments. However, the two articles that spurred me to write this one suggest that – as a profession – we’re applying too little of what we know about commitment and capacity-building to the teaching of psychology. Surely psychology students should be the most motivated students of all, with the perfect tools to help them learn? But I wonder how many current and past students (at whatever level) feel this is the case…?
It seems we could be doing more, too, to establish a clear, consistent and joined-up Direction for education at all levels that maximises psychology’s chances of meeting society’s complex, diverse and evolving needs. That’s a tough ask and we’re a far-from-united profession, but I’d like to think that the qualities that drew us to this vocation are the same qualities that will enable us to rise to the challenge.
