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Your Pupil, The Pythia, And You
remedial tutoring, sen home education, and academic coaching: pedagogical problems and opportunities
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor and The Purpose (24 minute read)
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels (42 min.)
- Introduction to the Techniques (10 min.)
- Strategic Rapport (24 min.)
- Variable Aperture Questioning (6 min.)
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis (23 min.)
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.) (32 min.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice (17 min.)
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs (35 min.)
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns (30 min.)
(39,000 words, reading times estimated at 160 wpm)
Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
last updated 29th Sept 2024
My 1st DRAFT is here presented for all to correct & critique
I would be most grateful to anyone wishing to email me (click here) with their opinions, criticisms and corrections.
Resultant First Edition will be by Print, E-Book and Audio
Files coming soon.
Preface: The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
Apollo’s sanctuary of Delphi was no lonely hermitage or forbidden grove, disturbed only by the pious and the puissant: known to the Hellenes as the omphalos, or navel, of the world, Classical period Delphi boasted worldly richness, architectural grandeur and, of course, wisdom. Here, the ambitious, the well-informed and the powerful could rub shoulders and obtain the best advice — assuming, ironically, that they were not depending for that advice upon the mystagogically confused utterances of the Pythia. Enraptured and inchoate, the oracular priestess interpreted divine will into mortal expression as best she could. Fortunately for the Pythia, she had colleagues, priests known as prophets and holy ones, their professional services evidently including both developmental and line editing. Sometimes they offered construals straight forwardly enough. Other times, their interpretations were wrought of such marvellous ambiguities as to be but the starting point for a supplicant’s quest for understanding. Indeed, the immortal words of advice posted to the fabric of the shrine, to know thyself, implied that the true tenor of Apollo’s meaning would need, ultimately, to be found within yourself.
Today, in the UK, students are required to interpret questions, requirements, teacher feedback, assessment objectives, figurative ideas quotidian and topical, motivations personal and vicarious, and so on. They are expected to know and to understand their past and to divine their futures. Prediction, hypothesis, interpretation, perspective taking, emotional control, applied realism: it is a wonderful thing for students to receive so much opportunity for enhancement of these most developmental and experiential classes of composite skills. On the other hand, we are speaking of the kind of emergent faculties that almost define what it is for a mind, not so purely to learn, as to mature.
Much is predictable as to what to expect of human maturation, just so long as we are averaging that expectation across cohorts; however, in an educational system designed to allow for every student to float to the level of their natural response with regard to any one challenge or opportunity, the importance of problems in unevenness of maturation only heightens. Clearly, courses of education, in gross, are designed to follow the average course of human maturation, while doing so only partially vice versa. Strongly uneven rates of maturation are commonplace not just between students, but across developmental aspects within individual students.
This leads to important opportunities and educational milestones becoming delayed or even missed. In such cases, given student, and parents, hungry for progress, and given availability of resources, including availability of suitably capable adult, how can it be denied that to help such a student by tuition is a worthy and a beautiful thing — a thing that will benefit not just student, parents and teacher, but everyone else, too. Education is not some selfishly hoarded commodity. It is a much finer pleasure. It is something that the student, cooperatively with family, teachers and perhaps classmates, creates. It is a student’s first opportunity to know the pleasure, self-validation and honour of doing one’s duty.
This book will endeavour to assist you in assisting your tutee toward achievement of this. Although this guide is not intended restrictively toward working with only one sort of student, it is admittedly optimised for one sort of student, whom I now introduce, and refer to, as our default student.
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Our Student, and The Purpose of This Book
There is a substantial yet overlooked constituency of young people, of all ages, who genuinely languish, yearning to meet a particular and real potential within themselves: a potential that they also see, but in realised form, most likely in family, but also in friends — friends of a type, either, whom they are prone to loosing, or whom they know would be their natural familiars and colleagues if they could but express their true selves in work and play. They are most likely, perforce, pretty alone.
The student of this mould has obvious talents and is generally seen as the one ‘who’ll be alright’ (yet no one being able to say when) or ‘who isn’t living up to live up to their own potential’, despite the student in question being more upset than anyone else at their languishing. They probably won’t be helping their case by their brave application of emotional-masking. Why do I describe their masking as brave? Wouldn’t persistent masking of their true feelings instead indicate a disingenuousness? By masking I do not mean seeking to mislead. I refer to the moral of the putting on of the brave face: these students, by nature, will be of above-average conscientiousness, they will regret their inability to connect with their natural, yet unreachable, peers, and their inability to satisfy the expectations of their preferred role models — role models who will rightly be teaching their students to meet their challenges with a positive attitude.
And so, a sometimes profound unhappiness or accumulating panic goes little detected, as our student, conscientious but cursed, thrashes about in a loosing battle as their dignity slips ever further into deficit.
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Primary Purpose
The main purpose of this book is to teach certain categories of adult possessing certain forms of teaching or coaching experience (shortly to be discussed), to assist students by means of Strategic Rapport, Mêtis and MIDAS. Such students would include any student who may benefit from one-to-one guidance; however, it should be noted that the above mentioned techniques have been designed around, and are especially well understood in relation to, a particular profile of student.
The appurtenant profile of student identifies those:
- · whose knowledge (including skills and experience), or
- · whose neurodevelopmentally dependent abilities (for example, maturity of emotional regulation or recognition of patterns naturally felt by others to be innately obvious and important)
contain features that are so immature, absent or weak that the student, without skilled adult intervention and help, is flatly obstructed from advancing in a manner that
- should be typical for their personality and apparent intelligence, and
- that will cause them significant unhappiness, edu-developmental delay or edu-developmental omission,
even when the student’s own long-term academic history suggests that their level or unevenness of attainment is typical for them.
In other words, it feels like there is an impairment, relative to other deep features within that student.
Apart from anything else, as a rubric, this helps identify students who, too often, and are ‘left to it’ usually for two very understandable reasons. Firstly, since good teachers must, do or die, be good at sensing group mood and group personality, including how individual performance may ebb and flow with respect to that group personality, we should not be unfairly surprised if good teachers are not always terrific at seeing the difference between an individual’s deeper parts and their masked presentation of the same. Secondly, the very fact that the teacher can see a student’s specific difficulty (for example, an impairment) most often leads that teacher to conclude that — in some way and to some extent — it would be unfair notto expect lower attainment; so, now that typical adjustments and accommodations have been dropped into place, is not all right with the world?
Unfortunately not. In relation to our default student, the active impairment — diagnosed or not, treated or not, celebrated or not — should be noted not as something now understood, done and dusted, but as an on-going risk factor for negative outcomes. Far from explaining everything, it should be read as complicating everything. The fact and degree of the impairment’s negative impact will, by definition, be normal to the student’s personal academic history, yet, it will feel to them more like a curse and a puzzle than normalcy: it will feel ‘wrong’ to our default student.
Combined requirement of points 1 and 2, alone, may seem to narrow the field so far as to restrict things to very niche interest; it is, however, one of my central posits that occurrence of this category of student is much more common than accepted: let us say, without pretending any precision or verified accuracy, somewhat less than one child per typical classroom.
ADHD alone accounts for a figure slightly higher than my above stated estimate (studies suggest prevalence estimations that range from 1-in-10 and 1-in-30). Challenges that are not diagnosable further increase the total proportion of the whole. Even allowing for a substantial statistical overlap (co-morbidity) between documentable challenges, numerous less common issues (such as Levels 1 and 2 ASD) would increase numbers further still.
In other words, ‘somewhat less than one child per typical classroom’ is the result of rounding down, not up.
Clearly, the purpose of this estimate is not to persuade you of its accuracy but to share with you my premise; for my own purposes, I feel reassured by my informal meta-analytical reading of indirectly related studies of prevalence. On the other hand, I feel I do need, at least, to offer plausible hypothesis how it could be — as implied by my words, ‘much more common than expected’ — difficult for many experienced teachers to discern the need and the precise situation that I allege: the main reason for this is the thoroughness of camouflaging imposed by so much phenotypic heterogeneity,
- · by unevenness in maturation (inter and intra-individual), including in variations in timing and temporary effects contemporaneously with periods of neuronal proliferation and pruning,
- · by the unseen commonplaceness of clinical and subclinical neurodevelopmental impairments (not just the usual language, attention, social and communication issues that society loves to conflict itself over, but even including things: like highly ambiguous warning-sign pre-cursor issues to potential lifelong depression, personality disorder, OCD, Schizophrenia, Bipolar et cetera),
- · by the overlaying of masking and of emotional and cognitive maladaptions,
- · and by the particular difficulty distinguishing such masking and maladaptions from presentations of low conscientiousness as a long-term personality trait, one hand, and avoidance and/or oppositionality as a behaviour, on the other.
We need briefly to unpick the two categories presented in that final point.
Regarding Students Hampered By Involuntarily Deficient Interest
The first category would represent those with traits of, variously, poor fear response (problematically low anxiety), or apathy that is not merely situational or maladapted, or low conscientiousness (without low agreeability), or those who are able to perceive intrinsic worth or enjoyment within their own special interests and favourite subjects only. These disparate categories of student being more likely to respond better to cheery, reassuring yet quieter presentation of recommended techniques than to the enthusiastic and boldly ambitious tone generally implied by this guide. Having said that, these methods are based more in compassion than in enthusiasm per se, so there is no necessary reason why the techniques should be dropped wholesale for these personalities. The main reservation relates to epiphany. Methods of pedagogy argued hereafter often involve precise methods and roles for epiphany (the ‘ah-ha moment) in learning. Epiphany will have a reduced role for these categories, but likely a role, nonetheless, as long as steps toward it are compassionately and lightly trodden, and with a gentle positivity. With other students, epiphanous revelations grant new tools that can be used and new avenues that can be explored, though it must be admitted that these are less likely to impress, the lower the natural conscientiousness; however, an amusing revelation, or a revelation providing a pleasing moment of social celebration or indeed a revelation granting some freedom from momentary annoyance, could be welcomed. I have found that keeping that in mind — especially the general steerage of teacher-enthusiasm away from expectation-suggestive energy, and toward more of a teacher-lightness of heart and a greater awareness of one’s compassion — has associated with better results when working with less concerned students.
Especially should the low anxiety student be more generally apathetic too, complexity and intensity of techniques should be lesser. Low conscientiousness is at least partly malleable in childhood, so there is no reason not to commit, cautiously and compassionately in execution, to making a real difference to their progress and every reason to seek to do so.
Presentation of some apathy with some low-anxiety yet depressed behaviours would be quite another thing. It may or may not do very well with the cheerful and supportive techniques in this book; just take care that all the proactive tutoring style doesn't pressurise a student who seems depressed: can-do learning methods that really do demonstrate their potential effectiveness can make a student feel a sense of having no place to hide: if they tend to withdraw out of depression or sharp anxiety, buckets of can-do energy can backfire, and could even do some small harm.
Regarding Students Hampered by Chronic Irritability and Avoidance
The second category for unpacking, represents students who variously suffer from avoidance or oppositionality or both, or just chronic, easily triggered irritability, including low conscientiousness with high disagreeability. I have the privilege of working with such students; it is a fascinating thing and I very much feel for them in their challenge. For such students, less pedagogy often seems like more. As with happy-go-lucky, apathetic students, it is very easy to push too hard, triggering an involuntary shutdown, but more so. Although the techniques in this book will certainly help the tutor or coach to understand the student with this sort of trait, I have found that steering much closer to more standard pedagogies, minimal bells and whistles, very much with the mainstream emphasis on creating and maintaining the right learning environment for them, quite important.
Even combined with high consciousness traits, oppositionality frequently confounds the more distinctive aspects of advice in this book. For example, even if the tutor absolutely succeeds literally in merely enabling the student to work out their own sudden step-change advance, absolutely for themselves, no external pushing, this can still trigger a defensive shutdown in some folk, as the student reacts to the feeling of existential change within themselves, perhaps sensed as something unrecognised or unexpected and therefore alien, violating or unsafe. I’m not saying that exact scenario is likely to be common or rare, just that acts of anger or refusal or deflective sabotage and so on are all far from being one thing. I’ve seen these shut downs as onset of irritability, sadness, brain fog and headache and confused dreamlike inattention, often preceded by tiredness, frustration or confused, obstructive playfulness. Beware: it is sometimes even easier to engineer ‘break throughs’ in skill, perception and understanding with someone who suffers from moderate oppositionality (assuming, among other things, appropriate conscientiousness), but the reaction that can result in more setback than net advance. Having said that, sometimes the whole point to tuition is that the student’s oppositionality is all that has prevented them achieving coherence in some kind of composite skill: complex skills often require some sustained and complex conformity with a goal and even with a mindset. If that is the case, it could be that you and the student have nothing to loose, in such case a very sensitive but open chat with the parents is usually most helpful.
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Secondary Purpose
This book has also, of course, the secondary purpose of helping those same categories of adult to work with any other category of student, as well, doing so with more imagination, reach and precision than before. The guide expressly avoids advice for classroom teaching, explicitly limiting pedagogies offered to those that are focused upon single-student support; nonetheless, I would be fibbing where I to deny my further hope that insights consequent upon these advices will prove, indirectly, to be fertile ground for the classroom teacher, just as I hope that, out of these advices, intended as they are for one-to-one purpose, classroom teachers will derive desire and method for increase in role played by deep compassion for individual students not just as motivation but actual mechanism of assessment and planning, itself.
_______________________
My Dear Readers! — Audience
This book is primarily envisaged for:
- subject tutors already basing their practice on professional teaching techniques, but wanting to upgrade sensitivity and effectiveness, and
- coaching professionals interested in specialising in academic coaching for school-age students, or
- classroom teachers interested in forming medium or long term one-to-one teaching and mentoring commitments or having the opportunity very substantially to deepen individualisation of support in their class, and
- I suppose a smattering of therapeutic and medical professionals, parents and older students with SEN will also find interest in this guide; accordingly, to representatives of these groups, I say, forgive these pages that they know not who you are!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Tutors
Category-One readers, assuming we are speaking of tutors who have not previously been a teacher (or coach), are the most likely to feel a sense of clear benefit from this guide; despite this good new, having, by definition, the prior training of neither Two nor Three, I would recommend they play constant devil's advocate against all this guide suggests, while mental role-playing school teacher or professional coach, before only then giving the suggestions herein a sympathetic ear, as otherwise this category of reader risks seeing unintended meanings (for the saying of which, I hope to be forgiven!). As further indicated under ‘Introduction to Techniques’, I also strongly recommend that readers of this category without teaching experience will, at the very least, undertake some well chosen reading about school teaching and teaching theory. Furthermore, a number of august bodies have produced many a video series, available on Youtube and the like, demonstrating and discussing aspects of teaching excellence, pursuit and study of which would be an excellent inclusion to your preparations toward private tutoring, and perhaps before reading this short book as well.
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2. Coaches
Category-Two readers, are most at risk of feeling disrespected by this work in that coaching already is a one-to-one profession with its own much-considered training processes, philosophical tradition and protocols for working with individuals, including students, toward many types of goals. Furthermore, as these thoughts are not meant as a training guide to teach, that further narrows the foci of utility for the interest coaching professional.
Clearly it will be those coaches wishing to focus on academic coaching of school age students who will find my thoughts, here expressed, the most useful. There are some excellent books written on academic coaching of emerging adult aged students, for example, focusing on executive function skills and maladaptions. Note, this book is not a guide to coaching children. It is, from the point of view of coaches, a guide that adds specific pedagogical techniques that will compliment the techniques they already have and which are already suited for work with students who are younger that those with whom they have professional experience.
To this end, adaptation of coaching to younger students will probably require an increase in the visibility and substance of structure and support than is traditional for coaching: like a lot of classroom teaching, coaching is commonly visualised as empowering others to make their own desired changes, not reaching in and re-engineering their client, temporarily taking charge. There will be many professional coaches who feel that academic coaching for young people, also, should adhere to that usual principle.
That's great, but if you're reading this, thinking through adaptation of your coaching practice to academic coaching for school age pupils, that means you will already have considered the dramatically trickier nature of the challenge involved in getting school age students conceptualising, recognising, evaluating, sorting and threading together their newly clarified or adopted objectives, goals, meta-knowledge and life-skills, not forgetting to use all of this new equipment in order to shine that bold clear light, into their future. Allowing, of course, for sensible age- and aptitude-appropriate realisms and simplifications, what is it that will provide the biggest challenge to achieving this? Unless your objective is to give them skills that you intend to re-teach a year or two hence, then school-age students — especially if receiving coaching in order to address a challenge that is making things harder generally — will need to be shown exactly how, when and where to apply their new skills in context, and that means the coach knowing how to get more directly involved in the underlying learning.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Teachers
I anticipate Category-Three readers finding the most about which to be surprised or sceptical, possibly needing to resolve a good deal of cognitive dissonance in order fully to profit from the ideas found here; thus, Category-Three readers will likely see furthest into this text and derive greatest efficiency of benefit from the reading of it, so that, even were the benefit mostly to eventuate out of profound and systematic disagreement with the recommendations and conceptions found here, I would still be confident of their finding this to have been an stimulatingly original and productive experience.
Certainly, the techniques and insight herein may inform a class teacher's approach to understanding, to making adaptations for, and, perhaps especially, to those occasions when teachers devote precious moments to speaking individually with their students.
More generally, home education teachers, boarding schools, day schools with extremely high teacher-student ratios — indeed, almost any pedagogical context capable of offering some regular parallel support, pastoral or subject specific — already will (or, I contend, should) benefit from at least some blended presence of the approaches I suggest; nevertheless, this is not supposed to be a guide to the optimisation of tuition and coaching for students with SEN, per se.
_______________________
Whether coach, teacher, tutor, parent, student, jewel thief or health professional, I would think that anyone curious about bringing together the following themes will find my arguments refreshing and thought-provokingly relevant to them:
- · masking by pre-adults of their suffering in learning contexts;
- · perennially misunderstood students possessing both high conscientiousness and inadequately analysed SEN;
- · subject-, assessment- and SEN-focused educational psychology and epistemology;
- · invisible thinking skills (cognitive, emotional, schematic), especially of pre-fundamental and of mid-level compound skills;
- · psychology of consciousness and value-judgement;
- · interactive aspects of student-teacher pedagogy;
- · the threat to education, science, healthcare, among other things, posed by humanity's perennial iterations of radical nihilisms and jealousies.
I have not said that this book is about these things, nor even that it addresses these things — merely that the coach, tutor or teacher whose interests resonate with this combination of items is most likely to derive most satisfaction from this guide, whether that be by agreeing or disagreeing.
More generally, though, I would identify the person most likely to find usefulness in this guide, to be that person who is driven, from deep within, to reach out, to understand and to help, where help is actually wanted, with a problem, a concern, a hope or just an enthusiasm.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
‘Labelling,’ And Other Labels
Special Educational Needs: The Use and Misuse of Terminology, and Heterogeneity of Taxonomic Purpose
The advice in this book is not exclusively intended for use with students who have or who could obtain some form of diagnosis or other identification of SEN, including sub-clinical traits and isolated problems; nevertheless, the great majority of students likely to benefit most from the pedagogies herein proposed will indeed be those who probably would be able to obtain some sort of official identification of long-term challenge.
It is worth noticing, therefore, that your own emotions, your ethical positions, and your taboos that you hold in relation to the emotionally and ethically charged topic of SEN will have a major effect on how you understand your student. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t feel emotions, ethical positions and taboos about these things, but without a surprisingly complex awareness of them, you’re going to have a tough time, starting straight away with seeing the point behind many a nicety, in this book.
This chapter will help toward that end in so far as that can be achieved by a discussion of some important misuses of terminology (and therefore of ideas) in relation to SEND, and by a discursive summary of error and possibility relating to heterogeneity of SEND taxonomy.
This chapter also hopes to prepare you for the main arguments of the book by exposing agenda and biases, very much including my own, supported by just a little content of technical or scientific nature. Naturally I would like my arguments to influence my reader, but I would not want to do so in a manipulative way: I hope that I have achieved some transparency and would certainly be most grateful if, upon finding my opinions explicitly inconsistent with your own, you credit the respectfulness of my openness, and forgive the insult of my directness. I mean to empower you.
- “…it is the mark of an educated person to search for the same kind of clarity in each topic to the extent that the nature of the matter accepts it […] Each person judges well what they know and is thus a good critic of those things. For each thing in specific, someone must be educated [to be a critic]; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1 1094a24-1095a
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Who Denies, People Can’t Be Labels?
Hopefully, you already regard yourself as beyond or above the misconception of SEN-related ‘labels’ as representing not features (such as a symptom or a diagnosis) but individuals themselves, thereby implying not someone with a particular problem, but the false discovery of an entirely distinct category, race or genre of person.
The notion that a diagnosis might signify membership of a tribe is so illogical that its own incredibility contributes to a revealed-truth frisson of mystique and its attractiveness; after all, what young person doesn't want their invitation to join the X-Men? Furthermore, it is in the interest of activists, many of whom are article-writing social scientists, to nurture association of wide-eyed young people into being; there is no shortage of willing Professor Xs. Once the impression of a community has been established, other groups, such as the medical profession, find it necessary, and sometimes most beneficial, to address these same avatars. Meme after meme has added implication of political affiliation, cultural attitudes and collective duties and interests to these postulated greater communities.
While it is true that some portion of people do experience remarkably pervasive effects exerted upon development and life by their recognised condition (such ADHD or ASD), there is far too much heterogeneity between effected individuals for this to suggest of such folk the functional or experiential coherence of a group or community. Of course, there are very enthusiastic associations of people who share common neurodevelopmental affliction and other experiences — usually painful and haunting, and therefore important, but their memberships have developed out of conscious, assortative cultural assimilation.
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Personal Agenda: Mine, Yours, Everybody's
Obviously, this analysis is opinion. I believe that the evidence strongly supports the argument as an interpretation and that ethics strongly justifies the argument as an agenda. Thus, it is, on the one hand, no more than belief, and yet, on the other, is more than personal observation and attitude. Scientific, clinical and even social scientific academical analyses are of course rightly entitled to propose what does or does not contribute to social or academic benefit, to an extent subjectively, as long as they can do so in specifically definable way, with adequate contributory antecedence, so that, by the measure they propose, they can still carry out their definedly subjective evaluation in a manner that is transparent and objective. Here are a couple of selected ways in which one scholar breaks down three identifiably distinct approaches to conceptualising and contextualising non-‘neurotypical’ (neurodevelopmentally healthy or unimpaired) ‘neurodivergence’ (neurodevelopmental heterogeneity associated with ND diagnoses).
Example of concept belonging to so-called ‘Medical model’:
- ‘These diseases and disorders may be innate or they may have originated through developmental cascades and interactions with the environment, but either way, they exist within the person [. …] Disability should be addressed by curing or normalizing the disabled person to make them more like an abled, typical individual’
Example of concept belonging to so-called ‘Neurodiversity approach’:
- ‘Disability is the product of an interaction between the characteristics of a disabled person and the environment around them [. …] Curing or normalizing the disabled person should not be goals’
Example of concept belonging to so-called ‘Strong social model’:
- ‘Disability is caused by barriers imposed on the disabled person by society [. …] impairments are not disabling unless society imposes restrictions on people with impairments [. …] Disability should be addressed by reforming society to provide accommodations, increase accessibility, and decrease stigma and discrimination’
I take no pleasure but feel no hesitation in concluding that, based on this, the ‘Neurodiversity approach’ (the middle way) and the ‘Strong social model’ (the most radical path), seek both to prevent (by persuasive and ideological means) opportunity for treatment and therapy for impairment and to impose a politicised role and function upon members of those groups.
I can draw no other conclusions than that the majority of adherents to these two positions:
- · are honestly and innocently unable empathetically to understand why (or, honestly and innocently unable sympathetically to feel that) most people would find self-awareness of significant internal impairment to communicating, feeling, learning, creating, caring, interacting, moving or contributing according to their will, to be intrinsically a great cruelty.
- · cannot see (did not experience and cannot sense in others) that children mostly cannot be taught ‘not to notice’ or to have no primal reaction to other children’s impairments, and nor should they. They honestly cannot see the purely internal pain of being unable to achieve often innumerable things that can, however, all be envisaged by that person.
- · honestly believe that, once you are an adult, being given the job you crave should be enough for mental health. They either disbelieve or cannot perceive that experiencing, daily, that you cannot actually do (ie adequately and profitably) that job, will only make life more degradingly shaming and isolating, each day, as you are pushed further and further into your own bespoke nightmare.
- · obviously sincerely believe that those who really could just be given a bit of extra training, and a bit of extra equipment, or a bit of help, or a bit of shifting around of duties, represent more than a tiny proportion of, across the earth as a whole, of the hundreds of millions of relevantly impaired individuals whom they are wishing (negligently, not deliberately) into non-existence as inconvenient to their political vision.
- · sincerely believe this to comprise an entirely socio-political problem and solution.
Needless to say, howsoever sincerely and ethically intended, they are quite in error and they are causing harm.
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Fears And Clear Thought
For people who suspect likelihood of their own or their child's possession of a SEND, the constantly renewed representation of people with NDs as ideological initiates-in-waiting will be alarming and will, of course, prejudice the weighing of their options.
It is also a fertile basis for, as above discussed, a certain amount of demagoguery; however, our point now is that fear interferes with clear thought.
It leads, for example, to a not uncommon experience for mothers (of someone who may have ADHD) encountering a friend or teacher reacting with much negative emotion to the topic of ADHD as a diagnosis. Perhaps they argue that treatment is tantamount to against teaching children to give up, or characterise taking medicine as parents 'doping' their children unfair performance enhancement drugs, or perhaps they allege ADHD to be a capitalist plot by big pharma.
What is the mother to think of this? Given the constant barrage of claims about labelling in public discourse, the mother’s thoughts will most likely focus on whether the other person’s anger is alerting her to a potential threat to her child if she allows (as perhaps she now starts to see it) the doctor to label her child: has she now placed a great placard on her child's back, with the exhortation, ‘Persecute me!’?
No. Successful treatment can only reduce any persecution. Nor will this induce the child’s teacher to regard the child negatively: the very fact of a teacher’s passionate views guarantee that the child will have to be seen as the victim in this. Whatever the teacher thought of the child’s behaviour before, having now been ‘cruelly labelled’ (as this hypothetical teacher sees it), the child will necessarily now be seen by that teacher as a victim. Furthermore, since this teacher is someone disinclined to credit the medication in a fully positive manner, the teacher is even more likely to be very generous in crediting the child with all her achievements once the medication is allowing her to show her mettle.
Simultaneously reassuringly and frustratingly, the surprising fact is, with regard to SEN-related issues, most conversational labelling (the mode most likely to impact upon parental decision making) in the real world, is generated, not in connection with diagnosis and teaching, but, unthinkingly, in the course of attempts by anti-labellers at defiance against perceived labelling! For example, in their drive to deny a recognisable and addressable difficulty or problem, the anti-labeller insists that the student should instead be seen as a certain kind of person, in general — someone whose identity itself neutralises the would-be wrongness of the labelled difficulty, thereby, truly, deeply labelling the person themself. Thus, the enthusiastic labeller’s chief concern will often be, ironically, to liberate, defend or enable those they end up labelling!
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More Fears: Fewer Diagnoses
All this adult paranoia is most harmful to the young.
Among other things, paranoia over labels can be genuinely obstructive to a young person’s potential access to medical mental health care options. There is plenty of evidence, from a variety of modalities, that simply accurately identifying a SEND has an importantly beneficial effect (strongly including the beneficial resultant effect upon parents’ and children’s future interactions and strategies): thus, aside from the most patently exceptional cases, fears that self-knowledge of a SEND — in a child already dissatisfied with their academic or social skills, or consequences thereof — could impede their happiness and success really can be placed in the bin marked ‘nonsense'. There may be all sorts of other category of reason for a parent wisely to delay, defer or compromise this sort of thing, but professionals really ought to put Freudian, sci-fi, superstitious, folksy, ideological, social-media and tooth-fairy nonsense out of their own heads. The evidence shows: knowing and understanding is best. Progressive liberal? Accepting the biology and the statistics won't somehow make you, or them, more ruthless or less egalitarian. Social conservative? Accepting the biology and the statistics won't somehow morph you, or them, into a scrounger or a moral relativist. Devout? Be honest with yourself: how confident are you that the precepts of your religion truly addresses the chemistry of learning, behaviour, genetics or epi-genetics or the validity of longitudinal research?
This question of parents identifying SEND and of parents informing children of their SEND, is not to be confused with the question of mentors bringing concerns to parental attention: of course there are situations in which a tutor with only mild to moderate cause for concern may validly choose not to bring their concern to a parent’s attention at all (for example, a tutor with a narrow and focused brief, or when the parents have already established their view that their child has no unexplained issues). Always exercise restraint and a genuine compassionate sensitivity for the parents as well as the student! Almost always, you should ‘sleep on it’ before bringing previously unsuspected causes for concern to parental attention.
Tutors and coaches who have not been a parent should take note: relative to whatever level of reactivity experienced by that parent before becoming a parent, and regardless of what self-evident joy and energy parenthood is conferring upon your client, their underlying capacity for fear (and anger!) in relation to their child’s honour and safety should not be underestimated. This is important for self-preservation, yes, but also for compassion: you should definitely develop a brand of sensitivity does not feed catastrophising! In other words, whereas I do make the unexpected recommendation (Chapter 8 and Chapter 9) of literally commiserating with SEND-laden students (in situations more usually bringing rebuke or a blind eye), I recommend assiduously avoiding the giving of news or advice to parents with any slightest tone of condolence or trepidation. Having said, that you should also avoid coldness in such a moment! Compassion? Yes. Enough seriousness for professionalism and for slowing such moments down? Also, yes. But, keep it both upbeat of tone and enthusiastic of message. Where undoubtedly called for by the moment, even telling parents about statistical associations with negative outcomes can be the right thing to do, but, remember: knowing and managing a difficulty is powerfully advantageous to them: thus, you are always, de facto, delivering empowering news; so, ensure your tone allows them to feel that.
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Fear and Stigma
In connection with SEN and ND, much anxiety about labelling can be characterised as comprising but reflections of the fear and confusion that arises from our being constantly warned in relation to the alleged epidemic of global ND stigmatisation. There cannot, both, be an epidemic of disbelief in Neurodevelopmental Disorders and an epidemic of stigmatisation of having a Neurodevelopmental Disorder. We could be drowning in dismissal of diagnostic consequence, or we could be drowning in opprobrium toward diagnostic consequence. It isn’t credible that both — the one representing matter, the other, anti-matter — sustain momentum and attractiveness in the face of competition from its incompatible other: in short, more evidence of paranoia.
SEND stigma is a black-box stigma. We take others’ word for the monsters within, and for the viscerally communicated taboo that one must not look in the box. In fact, we only really know that the box itself even exists, because, like the war in Orwell’s 1984, we are given daily reports of it; in fact, stigma enjoys a double life in the social sciences as a thing which shibboleth demands shall be found in all places and all hearts. Although I would concede the existence of some low level of common garden stigmatisation of the parent who acquires a diagnosis and treatment of an ND for their child, I do NOT accept that stigmatism will also rest upon the child, thereby. The child may already be stigmatised by their behaviour, but as addressed already in the related matter of labelling, not only are the child’s behaviour and school results henceforth contextualised or even just plain improved, but, to anyone condemning the parents, the child must logically be victim and not perpetrator.
Sadly, there actually is a genre of rather specific anecdotal evidence of the occasional adult family member occasionally reacting with shock and agitation at the parent taking this course, even trying to demand a different course of action. I trust the lack of any relevance to stigma or labelling is obvious. The problem in such a case probably relates to the many ways in which people mistakenly see SEND diagnosis and treatment options being somehow political, cultural or ideological. This means that people can sometimes mistake the decision-making adult for taking the family off in some identity-wrecking ideological lurch. Tale of such upsets in other people's families can transfer to unrealistic fears about teachers and family friends, too; all the more reason why tutors should avoid feeding unrealistic worries such as whether a child’s teachers will think less of the student who obtains a diagnosis and treatment.
Our purpose in touching upon such a situation is to help rebalance our attention away from the jealous demands of our twin diva, labelling and stigma.
And yet, I do take the phenomenon of ND stigma seriously:
- - seriously enough to recommend professionals maintain an environment in which their client feels safe to use the word stigma; is safe from misinterpreting that professional’s reflective listening as encouraging stigma-oriented concerns; and won’t be put off from expressing themselves again to the professional, as openly, in the future.
- - seriously enough to regret the inflationary scope and devaluating power of the word stigma; and
- - seriously enough, too, to lament the obvious fear of stigma (or rather, fear or retribution) that may attach to the kind of research into ND stigma that would be calibrated to question the ever heaping allegations of its malignance and growth.
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I Though Labels Were For Preventing Confusion?
Vision statements about labelling and stigma can lead to a farce of misunderstanding: trying to infer exact meaning from conversational statements about labels and stigma, thence to divine that meaning's intended purpose with regard to the conversation that you are having, usually misses the point. The majority of personal expressions of attitude and principle by clients and parents are just meant as polite requests that the conversation just doesn’t go to a particular place. It can really matter when the professional doesn't understand this, as, among other things, that professional will then find it hard resisting the temptation of offering corrective advice that is about to be very ill-received.
‘Labels’, ‘stigma’, ‘psychiatry’, ‘pharmaceutical’, et cetera: none of these terms should be emotionally or politically charged, but my goodness they are. None of these terms should diminish and muddy meaning by their use, but my goodness they too often do. I said, above, that, ‘in connection with SEN and ND, many concerns regarding so-called labelling can be characterised as being but reflections of fear and confusion over black-box stigma’. Whether talking of stigma, labelling, medicalising or just diagnosing, it has become routinely impossible (partly thanks to these words’ myriad re-programmings at the hands of so many social scientists) to know which of the following ‘inner voice’ statements may actually be being asserted:
- - “It is important to me to respect the fears, hopes, opinions and personal autonomy of other people in my family, therefore I need a reason to explain my non-commitment in a way that avoids pressure on them while keeping my options open.”
- - “I’m so busy earning a living for my family that I haven’t had time to research the disorder in question but I feel that saying that at this time would disrespect the importance of my child’s health and/or loose my conversation-partner’s engagement in the process.”
- - “Doctors mean well but no one should be diagnosed for anything/ for anything psychiatric/ for anything non-psychotic since societal comfort with labels is politically terrifying.”
- - “Doctors and diagnoses are fine and I do understand that diagnoses label health conditions, not people, but diagnoses nevertheless allow people (who are bad-or-confused) to act harmfully toward the diagnosed person; THEREFORE diagnoses should be prevented.”
- - Exact same as above, concluding differently: “…THEREFORE the bad-or-confused people must be gently nudged, over time, until their thought and behaviour is corrected.”
- - Exact same as above, concluding differently: “…HOWEVER, I hesitate to permit a label for my child GIVEN THAT I’m unconfident that he or she has a medically treatable condition, BECAUSE I think the doctor is wrong / BECAUSE I’m afraid of the unknown consequences that may associate with asking a doctor.”
- - Exact same as above, concluding differently: “…HOWEVER, I hesitate to permit a label for my child GIVEN THAT I know THE TRUTH that doctors and scientists are wicked and foolish which is how I further know that, secretly, all medicine is primarily dangerous and only secondarily helpful, OR, that most medicine is ok but that all psychiatric medicine is primarily dangerous and only secondarily helpful.”
- - “The only reason for diagnosis is treatment, and I wouldn’t know how to tell the difference between talk-based therapy improperly used for manipulative persuasion (eg to change a patient’s familial, socio-political or philosophical identity) and talk-based therapy that would not seek to do that, or whether my concern is silly or not, therefore I need time to figure this out.”
- - “I wouldn’t know how to tell the difference between the kind of drugs that are known to have personality changing effects and the kind of drugs that a doctor may prescribe, or whether my concern is silly or not, therefore I need time to figure this out.”
- - “Doctors/ pharma/ etc are trying to hurt people for pleasure/ cash/ some other warped motive.”
- - “the mentally ill must be sacrificed as otherwise the wicked will not be punished and the lazy will not be trained into not being lazy / as otherwise there will be no justice for my lifetime of anger at having to work hard.”
- - “there is no such thing as mental illness.”
- - “Some psychosis is real, but no other forms of mental illness are real.”
- - “I don’t really care, I just loath being told what to think and this really stimulates a loathsomely large quantity of major logically consequential conclusions.”
- - “If she she gets medicine / treatment, she will start living by better judgements and behaviours, causing people to forget her past bad decisions and behaviours, and that means she’d get away with it.”
- - “If he gets medicine / treatment, he’ll start pulling his weight: that will show me up.”
- - “No one is offering me a pill that makes life easy, therefore other people should be prevented from getting medication.”
- - “This stuff is creepy (like spotting a spider or a maggot) and people who need medicine are creepy, and people who need medicine for their mind and behaviour are extremely creepy; therefore, they should not be helped as otherwise they won’t end up on the street, and if they don’t end up on the street then they won’t get their comeuppance for being creepy, which would be bad because then they would remain creepy.”
- - “I understand that what a label really means is just a diagnosis, and that the doctor can only prescribe to alleviate suffering/harm, BUT the sheer quantity of hoo-ha(in the public domain) that it generates is too great to be explained by ideology, paranoia and individual egos, THEREFORE in order to explain all the hoo-ha I conclude that there must be far too many diagnoses [point of information: the opposite is true], or too much money going into hand outs and other costly non-medical ‘benefits’/‘entitlements’ for those who receive ‘a label’, THEREFORE these diagnoses should be prevented [Point Of Information: no UK monetary or non-medical benefits are attached to any ND diagnosis – monetary and non-medical benefits are allocated only for fact of not being able to work, etc, entirely regardless of diagnosis or no diagnosis, although there may be some charitable assistance that requires both diagnosis and evidence of actual need].”
- “Labels/ stigma/ medicine/ medicalisation of problems/ too much welfare state/ not enough welfare state/ too much emphasis on desert/ not enough emphasis on desert, et cetera, offends my [insert appurtenant ideology here, eg social conservatism or progressive liberalism].”
One takeaway of this would be that placing pressure on clients to seek diagnosis is always likely to backfire if for no reason beyond the unknowably great situational complexity that will be in play. So, that adds to all things I have said about what specialists should not, as it were, say or do in relation to diagnosis and identification of challenges. What then do I advise you should say, if asked to advise? I address that a few paragraphs below, under the sub-title “Specialising in a SEND?”. But first, I owe you a couple of evaluative conclusions on the topic of Labels from the point of view of Stigma.
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History is littered with the quite horrific consequence of truly substantive stigma. The word stigma directly refers to the deliberate branding or scarring of a visible sign into a person’s flesh in order to condemn them to lifelong dehumanising exclusion. ‘Witches’ and heretics were literally burnt at the stake. Our own contemporary, over-wrought and highly circular qualms, about what we call labelling and stigma, risk trivialisation toward some truly horrific human behaviours.
These self-feeding qualms, at worst represent the self-indulgent virtue signalling of a society lost in technological safety and luxury; vain, insubstantial and unimportant as that sounds, it nonetheless contributes to, for example, large numbers of toddlers and young children missing their only chance for treatment for ASD, or adolescents missing their chance at sufficiently early identification and treatment against a life of psychosis, suicide-risk, addiction, and so on. Thus, the question of abuse and exaggeration with regard to stigma should be regarded with the seriousness argued for.
My point is not to suggest extreme rarity, nor less non-existence, of stigma arising from knowledge of SEN neurodevelopmental disorder diagnoses; however, there is a great deal of negligent participation in stigma exaggerations, resulting in unjustified fears and poorer mental health and educational outcomes as a result.
Having said that, I must hurry to distance and to disambiguate my criticism of ‘negligent participation’ as not at all referring to those who hope that by use of the more problematic language and tropes with which their target audience seem most comfortable, they will more successfully draw that audience into engagement, maybe even successfully de-emotionalising words like ‘label’ by deliberately neutral re-application of such words. An example of an organisation that seems to be blending-in this sort of approach, across various of their presentations, and in an excellently well-considered and controlled manner, would be ADDitude Magazine, whose excellent podcasts, briefings and other media do such excellent work. I don’t know how deliberate they are in the policy, but they most certainly proceed without any of the cynicism of which I am so clearly guilty.
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Specialising in a SEND?
Planning to Refuse to all Comment on SEN Assessment and Diagnosis?
I Didn’t Think So.
If your client’s brief to you includes any presumption that you are going to be educating them about SENDs of relevance to them, at the same time as their having no plan in place to seek assessment or diagnosis for the student, then, if the situation arises in which it feels as though the client wants to know what opinion you have in relation to the value of seeking assessment, then you should either emphasise studied refusal to do so (good luck with that) followed by careful avoidance of saying anything they may choose to interpret as a secret opinion (perceived Freudian slips are powerful persuaders), or, upon expressing an opinion, that opinion should not exclude at least some summary or hint at the broad balance of risk-of-benefit to risk-of-disbenefit relative to the SEND, undiagnosed, merely diagnosed and diagnosed plus treated.
Conjure, in your mind, a professional who wishes to specialise, to some modest degree, in working with students in relation to their SEND, for example, as a tutor. The idea of that would-be specialist tutor taking serious-minded interest in whether to call something a label of not, without having spent any serious-minded time simply googling around for some serious-minded measurements of benefit vs disbenefit in relation to:
- average experience of the condition, and
- average experience of identification/diagnosis vs without identification/diagnosis, and
- average experience with vs without all major classes of remedy, if applicable, (eg, specialist educational training, vs specialist CBT therapy vs pharmacological therapy)
is desperately frustrating. The idea of someone choosing to specialise, to the slightest extent, in any one or more SENDs, yet claiming the above task ‘difficult’, time consuming or in any way hard to fit in, let alone other than just plain fascinating, would indicate inappropriate career choice.
If you have not educated yourself as to a balanced picture of specific, statistical, measured benefits and specific, statistical, measured risks (as originate from scientific, peer-reviewed sources) associated with any one particular SEND that you wish to support as a professional, then, please put this book down at once and devote yourself to that objective before doing anything else.
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Back already? OK!
There just is no other logical real-world way even merely to define the words, ‘value of seeking assessment’ than to research and evaluate the issue in this way. Every alternative method of evaluation is but expressive of an emotion, whether paranoia (eg, accidental, impulsive, techy assertions of half-way experts being trusted above considered view of the specialist) or tribal loyalty (eg, what your best friend said over a glass of wine, or , what ‘other parents’ said over social media).
If you haven’t considered the thing, at least once, as something like a balance sheet of probability of benefit vs probability of risk, then you haven’t yet seriously considered it at all.
What about the high cost of assessments? If applicable, that goes with the disbenefit of getting an assessment. Risk of student finding future academic year groups increasingly, not decreasingly hard? If applicable, that goes with the benefits to getting an assessment. Student threatening to reject treatment in case of side effect? That’s one for the disbenefit box. Stigma associated with label? Risk of assessment-&-declaration disbenefit. Stigma associated with unexplainedly ‘unnatural’ behaviours? That’s one for the assessment benefits column! Of course, the fact that there are no direct ways, and no clinically prominent ways, at all, for measuring disbenefit of stigma is most telling. This poverty of evidence contrasts with, for example, statistic-rich measurements associating unaddressed SEND with bullying, getting bullied, college failure, involuntary lonesomeness, addiction, death by accidental, manslaughter by dangerous driving, sudden and permanent disappearance, suicide, bankruptcy, serial divorce, sexual crime, sexual exploitation, prison, and so on and on and on).
Note, I have said, I called upon you to prepare to provide a ‘summary or hint’ of a ‘broad balance of risk-of-benefit to risk-of-disbenefit that exists relative to the SEND’, not ‘that exists relative to that one student’, as you are (probably!) not a doctor. If you know some typical differences in relation to gender, etc, you could very reasonably narrow your description of benefit/disbenefit a bit in those terms, but you must avoid sounding like you are applying medically dependent advice that is customised to that student, directly: if you do that, parents are likely to count that as a reason not to need consultation with a doctor! Also, as you’re not a doctor, bear in mind the risk that, despite what you read, you really might be just wrong!
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SEND and Taxonomy
Please note that I have nowhere argued that contemplating or referencing scientifically definable challenges ought in some way to be kept artificially narrow or orthodox. Certainly, any direct reference to concepts defined by the medical profession do need to be carefully made with inclusion of appertaining, accurate, current, clinical terminology; however, in reality, whatever it is one may wish to say about some sort of difficulty or condition be the things that have been set down as expressly defining clinical concepts and processes, so, it is proper, desirable and inevitable that there will be much variety in both related concepts and related terminology, just as it is harmful, unfortunate and inevitable that there is so much innocent mishandling and so much abuse of the same.
My own approach to presentation of tutorially relevant student-challenges ranges from specifying them as named medical diagnoses, to listing them as thematic experiences, for example: student attentional challenges; emotional and other self-regulatory challenges; social and communication challenges, including challenges of figurative and empathetical comprehension, empathetically predicted and verified pattern-intuition; challenges that affect reading; and so on. It is necessary for the one-to-one teacher or academic coach to have enough understanding, at least, to sense the evident inadequacy of restricting thinking to any one single method of taxonomy for a given pool of challenges.
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A Non-Comprehensive List Of Ways in Which Terminological Approaches Are Frequently Conceptualised, Together With Some Sense of Cause, Use, Logic or Significance For Each.
Indicated categories represent variation not only of semantic possibility, but of motive, of function and more. Such multi-modal variation inevitably results in much homonymic variety and overlap, which seems inconvenient and certainly lays usage of better known terminology open to abuse, yet, ultimately, is just reflective of the underlying reality of complexity.
Clearly, one of the list's purposes is simply to record a wide range of terminological usage and meaning for my readers. Another of its purposes is to imply the breadth of benefit that arises from encouragement of multiple concurrent taxonomic systems. Not only does variety of taxonomy ease constant evolutionary improvement in collective understanding, but it brings to life for us just how much gets lost and goes wrong whenever the fact of profound complexity becomes misrepresented — especially when done manipulatively and politically — as false simplicity. We all need models of explanation that make complex things workable: what we don’t need is the misrepresentation of explanatory model as intolerant mantra. Furthermore, it will be transparent from my list that I am indeed disapproving of some few motivations and criteria in relation to some labelling choices, with special scepticism for politicised and science-phobic reflexes, motivations and contexts. I would like to ask of those of you who do experience feelings and opinions about terminology, that you consciously suspend the natural reflex to form comparative value judgement as part of analysis until, at the very least, you have completed reading of the list.
1. Taxonomy conceptualised according to current medical diagnoses (most commonly meaning ADHD, ASD/Autism Spectrum Disorder/Asperger’s Syndrome, Language Disorder, Social [Pragmatic] Communication Disorder, Specific Learning Disorders, Developmental Coordination Disorder/dyspraxia, put mainly in DSM-V terms),
2. as relating to particular conceptualisations of observably emergent challenges or processes: (such as executive functioning, slow processing speed, oppositionality, demand avoidance, developmental delay, learning difficulty/difference/disorder, brain fog, tiredness, poor focus, lack of confidence),
3. as relating to neurochemical networks comprising individual (or systems of connected) nuclei of neurons for electrochemical connectivity within the brain, for example: anatomical connectivity (visually observable connective structures of tissue) vs functional (statistical) connectivity vs effective connectivity (causal interactions); or Structural networks (feature eg: perhaps distance regions connected by long axons); or, as individually identified systems including the Default Mode Network(eg thought patterns associated with passive rest, its relevance to ASD for example self-referential processing), the limbic system (melding ancient and recent brain structures, for example facilitating aspects of recognising and finding words for emotions, and deliberate/learned regulation of emotional control), the Fronto-Striatal Network (for example Frontal Corticostriatal Circuitry and its relevance to inhibitory deficits in ADHD), the Ventral and Dorsal Attentional Networks (and for example their relevance to attentional deficits in ASD), and the Central Executive/Fronto-Parietal Network (together with, for example, its relevance to inattention or to anxiety/depression in ADHD)
4. in relation to neural substrates (physical areas of central nervous system or brain) involved in functions, capabilities or disorders: eg: activity between precuneus, TMJ-STS, temporal pole & medial prefontal cortex, also supramarginal gyrus in maintenance of explicit/implicit Theory of Mind and other social perception processes, or, eg: regional morphological abnormalities in ADHD, variously of the bilateral amygdala, accumbens, hippocampus, caudate, putamen, midsagittal corpus callosum, globus pallidus and basal ganglia, cerebellar vermis, and other areas of white matter tract.
5. as ‘constellation’, being a way of grouping symptomatically related phenomena that will be broadly spread, may only indirectly include formal medical symptoms and which will be useful for grouping those meaningfully associated symptomatic phenomena in a manner that permits association between the parts to be loose and ill-defined where that reflects the reality of what is known, allowing an author (click quote) to describe ADHD as “A constellation of disorders”, and this author (click quote) to say, “Historically, ADHD has comprised a constellation of behaviours that reflect attentional problems, poor impulse control, and motor activity or restlessness.”, or this one (click quote) to describe islands within ADHD in this way, “Such information could suggest particular areas of difficulty (e.g., specific symptom constellations) faced by individuals with ADHD which might be useful assessment and intervention targets.”, and without any such approach being meant as invalidation the others,
6. as environmentally mediated genetic risk factors with associated symptomology, rather than, for example, a symptom constellation with genetics, again without intention of invalidating other explanatory or descriptive approaches, for example, “ASD is a complex human genetic disorder with high heredity and involves interactions between genes and the environment.” as it is put in this article (click quote).
7. as enabling standardisation (and therefore reliability) of method for recognising category of disorder, as part of diagnosis, without reinforcing invalid notions of ‘a concrete threshold between “normality” and a disorder’ by means of a dimensional approach to diagnosis (dimensions which in the DSM-5 are represented by means of these terms: shared neural substrates, family traits, genetic risk factors, specific environmental risk factors, biomarkers, temperamental antecedents, abnormalities of emotional or cognitive processing, symptom similarity, course of illness, high comorbidity, and shared treatment response).
8. as categorised according to UK government SEND code: (communication and interaction needs; cognition and learning needs; social, emotional and mental health needs; sensory and physical needs),
9. as [first subcategory] legal or task-focused or accommodation-focused identifications, also [second subcategory] identifications which have been medically current diagnoses in the past, and, not forgetting, [third subcategory] potential future medical diagnoses or potential future diagnosis terminology, while noting that examples among these subcategories often belong to more than one of them, for instance:
- · Learning Disability [a category in relation to law];
- · dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia [vs Specific Learning Disorders vs ADHD, inter alia];
- · visual- or auditory- or sensory-processing disorders, sensory integration dysfunction [vs Speech and Sound Disorder, inter alia];
- · 'on the spectrum', referring to the DSM-V's unification of Autistic Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Asperger’s disorder, and PDD-NOS, into Autism Spectrum Disorder [vs ASD];
- · 'on the spectrum' used euphemistically, given a misconception of the phrase having been created by doctors to mean "less shameful than being / being called Autistic";
- · 'on the spectrum' used to mean Complex ND, or indeterminable ND, or sub-clinical;
- · 'Condition' or 'Community' (as opposed to Disorder) used in order to pinpoint the semantic intentions as to what what the user is trying convey;
- · 'Condition' or 'Community' (as opposed to Disorder) used out of sensitivity to those who prefer the selected word;
- · 'Condition' or 'Community' (as opposed to Disorder) used out of fear of those who prefer the selected word;
- · 'Condition' or 'Community' (as opposed to Disorder) used out of a desire to create and recruit to or influence a socio-political community;
- · 'Condition' or 'Community' (as opposed to Disorder) used out of condemnation and activism against modern medicine;
- · 'Condition' or 'Community' (as opposed to Disorder) used to scapegoat (see also bullet point below) fear and judgement onto those who do use 'Disorder' to self-label, including those who only disapprove of 'Disorder' for reason of it sounding phonologically/morphologically similar or related to 'Disease');
- · or ADD or 'on the spectrum' or' just slow processing' or — et cetera, used, occasionally, to scapegoat fear and judgement onto those people who do use, or cannot avoid using, less slippery nomenclature for whatever the situationally appropriate window onto their category of challenge may be;
- · Variable Attention Stimulus Trait [vs ADHD];
- · Sluggish Cognitive Tempo/Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome [vs subtype of Inattentive ADHD vs symptom cluster];
- · ADD simply used anachronistically, probably understandably unclear as to how the diagnosis would translate to ‘the now’, anyway; or
- · ADD used as protest against or just decline to engage with the medico-scientific basis or nature of the decision to remove officiality from the term ADD, requiring insertion of the ‘H’ even in cases of predominant inattention.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
Introduction To The Techniques
The techniques are encapsulated within the interlocking constructs that I have termed Strategic Rapport, Mêtis and MIDAS.
They are the evolved response to seven years of professional private tutoring and educational therapy, including homeschool teaching, mentoring and academic coaching, which means, of course, the evolved response to each student’s journey, which comprises the student and the context through which they are journeying.
Remedial and complimentary one-to-one teaching ought, by definition, to shape itself not only around the student, but, remedially and complimentarily, around their context.
The techniques in this guide, though forged by the challenges and opportunities of work with the above profile of student — from early years through emerging adulthood — can also be powerful and inspiring for typically developing, ambitious students wanting to achieve mastery and excellence.
More specifically still, these thoughts are most certainly not meant as a comprehensive approach to one-to-one teaching, nor less a comprehensive approach to academic coaching. They do not presume to, as it were, teach someone to be a tutor. These thoughts do presume the reader to have either some basic knowledge and experience of mainstream teaching practice and theory, or, as an alternative, some basic knowledge and experience of coaching young people, together with, if not experience then at least some well chosen reading about school teaching and teaching theory.
This brings us to this guide’s central paradox, or perhaps I should say, central distraction. The book’s advice is not intended for the classroom, and yet I have confessed delight at the idea that I may influence a classroom teacher or two. The techniques are grown in the laboratory of one-to-one educational therapy, coaching and tutoring, and yet they assume some teaching (or similar professional) knowledge and they certainly include many reactions and criticisms to mainstream teaching theory and practices, which unavoidably expresses itself almost entirely in the classroom.
So which is it? Are these techniques meant as criticisms of classroom teaching or not? They are not. This guide is not meant as a Juvenalian satire in the vein of Johnathan Swift’s 1729 A Modest Proposal, although now that I think of it, that book’s purpose would provide the perfect model for satirising the less critical, more anarchic, sort of calls for pupils to be ‘teaching each other’.
So, although I cannot prevent discussion of advice from making criticism of things that do manifest in classroom teaching, I do not accept this constitutes any sort of general deconstruction or rejection of classroom teaching, and certainly not of classroom teachers. I have said that these techniques should all be seen as adjustments to standard best practice school teaching (with or without coaching practice); but then, where does the core of standard best practice end and the mantle optionality begin? I greatly and flatly admire the self-possessed, big-picture, high responsibility figure of the classroom teacher, monitoring and calculating complexities, past, present and future, limited only by imagination and attention. Such a figure embraces that the lesson just isn't, as the saying goes, 'about them'. They do not allow their own charisma to compete with the learning or with the students' own discovery of their own enthusiasms. Class teachers, widely and willingly, dampen the vibrance or individuality of their own personality in class, being motivated more by sense of purpose than sense of ego. The bizarrely nonsensical movie trope of primary school teachers being supposedly meek, or of middle and upper school teachers somehow socially or emotionally indifferent, partly takes advantage of those same professional teachers' existential sacrifice for the environment they build for their students.
The school and classroom mission is all about prioritising the creation of a learning environment in which the student learns to be as self-driven and as self-starting as possible, at the expense, for example, of 'teacher-talk'. Quibbles could be made of the unrealistic assumptions such autonomy requires of sheer happenstance of student maturation (regardless of intelligence and grit). Quibbles could further connect this vision with dangers in reinforcing intergenerational disconnectedness in a world already splintering faster than tech corporations can change their branding. And, to be sure, these quibbles do fall in with others of my themes. These notwithstanding, the example set by such teachers, looking to draw their students into their own discoveries — discovery of the thrill of personal responsibility; discovery of personal revelations of skill and excellence, discoveries of the amazing things that fill all there is of the past and the future — is humbling and admirable.
And yet, this will not be the last time that my words will blend praise with mealy mouthed perspectives or even, occasionally, downright opprobrium. This gives me no pleasure as I do not wish to be mistaken for gnawing at the fundamentals or at the sincerity of these admiring sentiments. But then, I do offer criticisms. I do so of wider educational themes and fashions — and fashions necessarily express themselves in practice. I claim the age-old defence, that I condemn, not the King, but his advisors.
The techniques in this guide, in their recommended form and detail, are neither intended nor automatically fit for dropping into any group learning scenario, even if a creative minded teacher can see their way toward deriving some inspiration from them. The fact of this being the case does support the claim that my suggestions and concerns truly aren’t born out of riposte to mainstream teacher-training and classroom practice. The are intended as standing on the shoulders of the same.
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Strategic Rapport
(including Variable Aperture Questioning)
Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, below, will tell you about Strategic Rapport.
Strategic Rapport is my system for managing those lesson-based opportunities and risks that distinguish single-student teaching and learning from group teaching and learning. If taken to include management also of factors held in common by classroom and by one-to-one technique, that would further distinguish it from much of typical, non-academic coaching process, too.
Strategic Rapport can be thought of as something that provides the tutor or academic coach with a stand-alone frame of mind and approach for guiding one-to-one leadership, or, it could be conceptualised as the intended ambit of amendment to one's usual practices for those already experienced in standard best practice teaching and coaching. Strategic Rapport re-orients the classroom teacher to the highly co-operative and fluid opportunities inherent to one-to-one teaching (for example, Variable Aperture Questioning), while providing coaches with a perspective that allows them to take their experience of being partners to clients, and reinvesting that in an approach that still counsels, but also leads. For either teacher or coach, Strategic Rapport charts a way of becoming more involved in assisting one single student to reach their urgent, once-in-a-lifetime objectives, without dishonest scheming toward misdirection of examiner, interviewer (and student), and without missing student-opportunities for becoming more robustly flourishing, altogether.
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Mêtis And Growth Mêtis
Chapter 6 will cover Mêtis, and its main component, Growth Mêtis
I use the term Mêtis to refer to the combining of a particular a kind opportunity — one that is recognised, not created — with the act of perceiving and exploiting some deeper, secondary opportunity from within the same, but of a greater, gateway, or game-changing, value. Growth Mêtis, then, sees teacher and student taking that experience and developing out of it an attendant philosophy and process, or mindset. This ‘development’ is a process more implicit than explicit — more gardening than construction — but, at least on the part of the teacher, it must be absolutely consciously predicted and guided. This system customises experientially learnt recognition and repetition of steps of an experimental and anticipatory nature which that student can use:
- · first, to discover and demonstrate (to themselves) talent and ability of which they were themselves sceptical,
- · second, for rolling that success into an immediate, if nascent, practical philosophy and frame of mind that will reinforce and be reinforced by perpetual repeat of cyclical process, and,
- · finally, by action of conscious practice, for bringing forward the sublimation of the process, as a schema, into automatic behaviour that would otherwise have required perhaps up to a decade of maturation to have happened completely naturally.
The driving dynamic at core of this process is thus referred to as mêtis. Growth Mêtis is crafted for the student by the tutor; however, like the sculpture that merely awaits release from its marble, each personalised system of Growth Mêtis is already within each student, ready to pop into existence merely by action of the student’s (guided) recognition, tidying and practicing thereof. In this way, the system needs no name from the student’s point of view, but neither is there harm in giving it one.
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M.I.D.A.S.
MIDAS is addressed by Chapter 7, Chapter 8 and Chapter 9. MIDAS stands for:
- Map It,
- Invert It,
- Divine It,
- Assess It,
- Sense It.
MIDAS, is a guide for the coach or educator that explains, structures and draws attention to those opportunities for reaching and enabling the student's mind — opportunities which, though not systematically available to classroom teaching, can be ideally suited to the single-student scenario.
Alternatively, seen as a system, MIDAS is designed as an aid for increasing the sensitivity, depth and reflexivity of the tutor's powers of empathetic comprehension and prediction.
One of its more important components (a combined aspect of ‘Assess It’ and ‘Sense It’) comprises a stepped method termed The four Æs, discussed in Chapter 9: Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs.Contrasts are drawn between it and Johann Friedrich Herbart’s five pedagogical steps, and between Herbart’s five steps and the sequence of MIDAS as a whole.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
Strategic Rapport
Strategic Rapport is an approach to combining formative assessment, scaffolded independent learning and responsive, one-to-one didactic elements developed by Rupert Pearson’s practice. The combined modality makes much of reflective listening, Socratic dialogue and Variable Aperture Questioning for maximising student academic autonomy without impeding tutor reach.
Education's beating heart — the classroom and class teacher — offers much that one-to-one tuition cannot; tuition and coaching should, however, have at least one edge. One-to-one teaching allows lavish, fluent formative assessment that is precise, rich and certain; assessment that operates discretely, without disturbing flow; assessment that explores a learner's foundational and contextual concepts and assumptions as easily as it explores the student’s hopes and fears. Critically, tuition can and, at its best, will, do so in a manner that informs adjustments to teaching and learning on a second-by-second basis. Strategic Rapport takes robust advantage of this.
A system known as Strategic Instructional Model, or SIM, together with its component method, Strategic Tutoring, foreground practicality and situational reality as part of their approach to the development of student independence. Strategic Tutoring and SIM provided inspiration for Strategic Rapport; nevertheless, Strategic Rapport is not structured in the same way. For one thing, it draws on a much wider range of techniques, rendering Strategic Rapport much the harder method to evaluate statistically, unfortunately (for example in terms of inter-rater or parallel forms reliability). On the other hand, this same fact allows a more analogue, more nuanced, more painterly personalisation of pedagogy to student, which seems a profitable trade-off. Examples of techniques that Strategic Rapport easily draws upon include the following. Cognitive Strategic Instruction (CSI), finds procedures whereby learners apply metacognitions in order to enhance processing of learning: one such CSI procedure — known as SSDM/SRSD, or, Self-regulation Strategy Development Model — uses reflective listening, skill modelling and deep processing in ways that are very similar to Strategic Rapport. An exciting area to watch is the inter-disciplinary specialism known as Prevention Science. Prevention Science brings together and promotes evidence-based interventions, ranging from the less well known, such as Motivational Interviewing (changing attitudes, comprehension and behaviours), to the extremely well-known but well-neglected, such as plain, rigorous, frequent exercise (supporting - and even repairing - cognitions).
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Operation Of Strategic Rapport
Strategic Rapport’s emphasis on discrete, acute, qualitative formative assessment enables the necessary proactivity and fluidity with which the academic coach or one-to-one teacher must adapt lesson content and scaffolding.
Adaptations to learning frequently include tight and precisely customised spiral curricula of misconceptions, misperceptions and missing or faulty fundamental and pre-fundamental skills. Forward momentum often needs pausing for massed-practice infilling and exploration of missed lower-order knowledge, skills and wisdoms. When this is the case, the remedial tuition will include repeated presentation of evidence and examples demonstrating the inescapable role played by the overlooked learning in their current curricular (and other) challenges. It is far too easy to minimise the extent to which missed skills — together with missed opportunities for developing coherence between missed skills — tend to substantiate (albeit without explaining) the gap in progress between gifted struggling students and gifted thriving students.
In this way, adapted curricular and supplementary items are folded into the originally planned learning, remedially, complimentarily or anticipatorily, using procedures similar to those of Embedded Discrete Trial Teaching, Imitation Method teaching, Incidental Teaching, and standard best practice teaching.
By these means, the method keeps the student at the forefront of what she can do, from which advantageous position, the student can be largely responsible for inferring powerful revelations about topics that formerly seemed to her quite opaque. For example, imagine a lesson-component that is about to teach a skill. Instead of presenting the targeted skill to the student explicitly and explanatively, Strategic Rapport would more typically open with a description, in expressive, and even compassionate, tones, of some common yet demoralising difficulty that would be avoided by the, still unpresented, new skill. The example difficulty would be selected for being something the student will likely have experienced or would easily be able to imagine. A short discussion will ensure that the student understands and, more importantly, feels the contours of the problem. By means that would include some Socratic questioning, some mock or actual task pursuit, and, preferably with reference to some specific error or omission which has been worrying the student, the tutor does as little as possible toward nudging the student into discovery of the targeted skill that is the lesson-component’s learning objective.
Excessive scaffolding of this process can be avoided by tutor-attention to the precision and the adaptability with which he — the tutor — positions and shifts the student's cues and clues in relation to that student’s progress and effort.
Finally, and almost as crucially, the tutor must be ready with prompts and priming for optimisation of the student’s experience of emotional attention at their moment of epiphany (see chapter, Mêtis and Growth Mêtis, below). Quality of emotional attention accompanying consequent reflections and deeper processing can be just as important.
Clearly, this exemplar process of Strategic Rapport requires insightful observation, empathetic evaluation, constant analysis and suppleness of ego on the part of the tutor. Equally plainly, especially in order to avoid excessive scaffolding, the process would necessitate student and tutor to have achieved an exacting quality of mutual faith and comprehension. In more jargonistic, theoretical terms, this means that the student’s zone of scaffolded development — despite it being pushed far into what would otherwise be the territory beyond the student's reach at that time — is kept tight by constant expansion of its neighbouring zone, namely, the zone of what can be done securely and independently.
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Tone Of Strategic Rapport
Strategic Rapport of course requires structure to the connection between tutor, or academic coach, and minor, as would be natural and necessary to any teaching relationship; nevertheless, to this neutral palette, Strategic Rapport adds a sense of collegiality, of measured compassion and together with a clear sincerity of purpose, adapted fittingly for setting, student age and student percipience.
An academic coach with a coaching rather than teaching background, on the other hand, if thereby accustomed to less formal and less hierarchical working structure, may or may not need to nudge their accustomed manner a little in the contrary direction, toward a bit of teacherly formality.
Either way, there’s no way that Strategic Rapport will work if the student isn’t happy to present an edifice of their personality (which may partly or quite differ from their usual school persona). Not only is this necessary so that the tutor may properly understand the student, it is also important for helping the learner buy-into and personally identify with the approach. To enable all this, the teacher/coach must also allow at least some of their own true personality to present itself. I am of course assuming that without a kindly and reassuring aspect to an adult’s personality, they surely would not be interested in helping young people in this way.
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Tone: Teaching That Models The Skills of Academic Independence
Although intuitive by nature, Strategic Rapport does need to be consciously and continually modelled for the student in relation to ideas, to implicit skills and to behaviours which become increasingly demanded of a person as they mature. So much needs to be, if not taught, then instilled, by stages, age-appropriately, sometimes from a very young starting point.
By way of general example, let us imagine some sort of composited emergent property (necessarily a suite of skills) of deep self-regulation — the sort of thing sometimes prematurely needed (for example in the UK system) in relation to age-inappropriate levels of merely personal (non-academic) independence sometimes required for excellence by some composite tasks of complex analysis and self-direction: in such cases, students who specifically throw themselves into the activity, far from profiting thereby, make matters worse for themselves, as you will see. One of the key skills in any such complex situation will be to make a composite of prediction (imagination, mental experiment, application of experience) and management of the push / pull dynamics of the process: thus, success will require the student functioning in a balanced, adaptive manner, which is quite impossible in conjunction with truly throwing yourself at any activity.— especially one in which the individual is supposed to work out much of some riddle for themselves (see sub-title “Incompletely Discussed Aspects of Enquiry-Based Learning And Spiral Curriculum”, under chapter, Beyond Mêtis and M.I.D.A.S., below).
As you can imagine, lecturing the young person in this situation on balancing their push and pull factors really isn't going to work, even where the core subject-specific concepts and skills are well within their level of maturity, intelligence and preparatory attainment. Instructing the school age student as to how to proceed in, but doing so in a manner that is kept quite abstracted and theoretical — with reference to their own work — is unlikely to be of accessible help to the school-age student (stronger A-Level student excepted); however, the tutor absolutely can (assuming a non-assessed project!) deliver age-adapted theory in support of explicitly task-relevant commentary, as the tutor themself models the balancing of ideas, decisions and actions for their student directly required for a task that the student will find recognisable. Most likely, the coach or tutor would then have the student undertake a similar task semi-independently, supported by tutor-repetition of the commentary process as the student does so.
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Tone: ‘Struggle’?
In response to this suggestion, we may be asked, ‘Is not the whole point of such a task precisely that the student must struggle in order to learn?’ This statement, especially in terms of its deployment of the word struggle, contains an uncomfortable mix of idealism, practicality, negligence and abrogation. I am most certainly not suggesting that this was actually authored, with brilliant manipulation, by some cunningly devious rhetorician. I’m quite sure that we are speaking of a turn of phrase naturally selected ahead of other words and phrases for reuse and replication for reason, mainly, of it seeming to satisfy so many memes.
Pausing to examine the effect of this word and phrasing, in something like a small case study, will have two benefits. Firstly, it will help further my general claim that one-to-one teaching and academic coaching is more likely to benefit the student as opportunity for considering all options, including those that require some awkward complexity and effortful decision making. The second benefit will comprise illustration of the ease by which unquestioned group behaviour (in our case, educational establishment behaviour) can assume the guise of ‘the wisdom of crowds”, when in fact representing little more than the trade winds of meaningless collective behaviour.
The word struggle, used in this rhetorical way, claiming, as it does so, the necessity of passage, or progress, through required phases in human progress, takes on the aroma of the role of struggle in Marxist dialectic. Simultaneously, the argumentation will appeal to social conservatives, implying as it does that students should not be given their outcomes on a plate. Finally, it appeals generally to those who feel that common sense invariably demands Occam’s razor, not only in the world of theory, but in the world of practical tasks, also. The result is an argument that smacks of a seductive religiosity, discouraging those concerned from challenging its black and white, status quo tone, and, very often, distracting us from noticing the false dichotomy it proposes between, on the one hand, ‘leave ‘em to it’ arguments and, on the other, whatever straw man is being set up as the allegedly only alternative. It invalidly implies that it can be the only option for wise folk. The actual range of ways in which the tutor could choose to structure and scaffold or to not structure or scaffold, will always in fact be as capable of nuance, adaptiveness and complexity as you like.
There is no reality-anchored, authentic depth to any theory claiming to support the oft heard, seductively paradoxical, faith-mystery that, though ‘hard for the caring teacher to accept, students just have to be left to struggle, full stop’. There are plenty of secure students for whom some important phase of maturation brings the ability for them to organise and leap forward on their own, which no doubt they will find a usefully bittersweet experience. That would not illustrate the assertion — an assertion is widespread and, at least in its all too common blanket-form, generally cited without justification. Of course, were a class teacher to point out the time management problems associated with integration of lesson and project-time devoted even to some sensibly partial targeting of skill-compositing that would be a completely different point, and in most classrooms, most likely quite undeniable. The point of interest to us is robustly to refute claims that it may be improper, ineffective or harmful for the tutor to be provide suitably tailored and adaptive, systematic help by means of the well-managed presentation of the kind of realistic complex situation that really is repeated demanded of students. Speaking of ‘struggle' like a rite without which the student will not have become worthy of progress, isn’t a counter-argument.
Again, remember, I am not speaking of assessed work. Any tutor failing in their moral duty to refuse all requested help directly in relation to assessed work, regardless of what barrack room lawyer argument they feel they may employ, isn’t just defrauding and infecting the entire nation, they are clearly harming the young person they are claiming to assist.
Authentic Strategic Rapport takes very seriously the teaching of academic independence, including ensuring that the student indeed has or will self-discover as realistically much of their own personal and composited skills as possible. It’s just that Strategic Rapport declines participation in the ritual sacrifice of the student who can’t.
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Tone: Not so Maverick as You May Think
Approaches such as Strategic Formative Assessment (SFA) seem to share with Strategic Rapport more than a similar name, especially perhaps given SFA’s call for short cycle formative assessment, the shortness of the cycle possessing as tight a granularity as ‘minute-by-minute’. However, I would contend that much of SFA’s promise of minute-by-minute formative assessment comes down to re-promulgations of standard enquiry-based learning, made more beguiling by fashionable turns of phrase such as the promise to ‘create circumstances that help students assess their peers’. Given the 1984-style dystopian allusions should really should raise in the imagination, I am almost relieved by how variants on this promise typically manifest in nothing more than the typical, highly choreographed set-piece of group-learning ritual generally known as the — incorrectly termed — plenary, more likely to result in the chaos of unscheduled concluding misconception than the inception of tomorrow’s police state.
I know. I went off topic. This guide is not about classroom teaching. Nevertheless, by reflecting the nature of things which may seem to antecede Strategic Rapport in order to see how in fact they quite differ does further complete our portrait of Strategic Rapport.
SFA has misleading antecedence, too. At outermost surface level, SFA seems somehow to develop and carry the torch for aspects of more conspicuously non-ideological, measurable and practical initiatives (in this case a technique with excellent suitability to single-student scenarios) such as Strategic Instructional Model (SIM) which had its origins in the 1980s, that being the time of educational reforms in many parts of the world, arguably beginning decades of push-back against radical and unsuccessful changes in education of the 50s, 60s and 70s. An example of SIM grappling with practical methods for maximisation of accurate content-acquisition would be its Content Enhancement Routines. SIM deserves credit, among other things, for the humility with which it shapes itself around the realities of what we know about cognition, feeling and development, without concluding curricular discretion being the better part of valour. Speaking, as it does, in terms of things that can certainly be known, one is unsurprised by SIM’s simple transparency of motive, namely, good old, straight-forward, human compassion.
For a well-developed, modern model of pedagogical judgement — including directions shared by Strategic Rapport — I would recommend Visible Learning. Visible Learning’s thinking and conclusions are deeply considered, and practical rather than dogmatic, and, of course, famously and conspicuously well-evidenced, almost as its raison d’etre. Visible Learning, SFA, mainstream Enquiry-Based Learning and Strategic Rapport all call for students to be taught that they should learn how to teach themselves. As far as I can tell, however, of the four, only Visible Learning and Strategic Rapport actually concern themselves with the problem of exactly how any one actual teacher, in the flesh, achieves this, for any one, specific, actual (class or) student.
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Tone: Preaching Independence Requires Teaching Independence
So many proposals for reaching, inspiring and launching students disappoint the hope and expectation of substance — substance, at any rate, more specific and realistically complex then a bed of platitudes. Visible Learning passes that test with flying colours; nevertheless, I won’t attempt to summarise anything of Visible Learning’s research findings and specific proposals. I’ll just point out that, for one thing, both Visible Learning and Strategic Rapport are profoundly concerned that assessment ought to include substantive interactions between individual students and their teacher, so that personalised advice and instruction (so-called feedback) can be adapted in response to what that one student says about what they think they are doing and what they think they need (actual feedback). Teacher feedback by means of rune-filled homework margins, summated into the image of a good round number, and concluded by means of some sedulously Delphic benediction, does nothing positive for student morale, let along student education.
As already clear, I completely embrace the fact of the power and the necessity of students learning to take pride in puzzles, formulating and assessing their own questions and processes. I completely understand and endorse that demanding anything remotely like mastery of every step, before moving on, as though teaching a student were like programming a computer, would constitute a staggering naivety. Furthermore, I completely see that teaching by spiral curriculum is not only necessary to the practicalities of progress (for instance, to allow for developmental pace variance between students) but is genuinely a vital experience for building academic independence and foresight: some sink-or-swim is necessary, good and even a pleasure! Initial instruction should be engaging but minimal (whether that be verbal or otherwise). The only question is how much splashing around they should experience before, and after, throwing them a buoyancy aid, before you step in, initiating real support. Neurology and Exams ‘wait for no man’: support at that point should escalate rapidly and robustly precisely because you don’t want dependency to develop.
Rapid, Robust escalation and completion, requires object focused tuition. Principles and theory? Yes! But keep relating it to how they it will help them, or if it just isn’t that kind of thing, why and how it truly matters. There is nothing wrong, age-appropriately, to explain the indirect nature of a connection. Strategic Rapport distils and clarifies, extracting simplicities, but doing so without misrepresenting that complex things are not complex. It is amazing how much student misconception and frustration boils down to their having taken figurative explanatory simplifications quite literally. On the one hand it has a clearly curiosity-driven character; on the other, as an approach that helps young people build cohesively while getting stuff done, it is also very deliberately objective-focused and rationally adaptive in approach.
Good luck explaining that without also modelling its operation to the student — again and again. A practical example which gets away from the emphasis of recent paragraphs upon secondary (and tertiary) settings might show how, assuming appropriately stepped objectives, this approach can help a frustrated four, five or six year old trying to scribe his graphemes.
Given that we speak of a frustrated (as opposed to disinterested or distractedly confused) child, we can help notice (in stages) how the lateral movements, themselves, of the hand are not the most but the least important thing to think about – they are not flourishes. We can help him to notice that several very different things need to be literally simultaneous. We can help him see that each one can be practiced with the next one until they all happen together: pencil pinch with arm and seating posture, for example (remember, this is a frustrated pupil, not a distracted one). Then, (importantly) without contradicting his classroom method of executing all grapheme parts in certain directions and in a certain sequences, we re-conceptualise what he thinks he is being asked to do in terms, not of how his hand moves in-the-moment, but of where the pencil tip itself will be just ahead of where it is now: he needs to imagine the letter as already there plus imagine that his pencil is chasing a spot just ahead of where it actually is, keeping his eye on the spot he is chasing.
This has to be shown through practice as he traces a huge version of one grapheme filling a sheet of A4, drawn right to the edges. In this way execution of the grapheme becomes a prediction-of-sequence and a prediction-of-shape (which is actually how the brain works) and not the product of an artistic flourish, like a flourish traced into the ice by a figure skater, which often is what the frustrated student is try to do. At some point in this sequence you also overlay the original teacher-executed A4 size grapheme with some other similar or contrasting grapheme, which which opens there eyes as to what it is about their shapes that really are different and how they different relate the outer shape of the A4 sheet itself.
That means a lot of direct intervention! That level of precise, intensive instruction, in a classroom, would be a massive no-no. The point is, the student is left not only with the real independence to reproduce the skill at will, but with a template, not just for analysis and automation of other problem-graphemes, but of all kinds of other problems.
This examples has a great many steps and aspects. You don’t roll them all out according to a lesson-plan-within-a-lesson-plan which you then perform like an actor. You use them if they seem to help, and only for as long as each seems necessary, and in the sequence that is suggested by the student’s progress and engagement.
In other words, Strategic Rapport is a ‘considerate workman:’ it takes its own scaffolding down, without needing to be asked to do so, in a timely and thoughtfully stepped manner. As soon as any small part can come down, Strategic Rapport takes that bit down, double-quick time! Strategic Rapport will prepare and leave a structure that has now proven to its own self its own ability both to self-diagnose and self-repair as well as to plan and to manage its own future necessities and dreams.
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Strategic Rapport seeks to install a sense of excellence and responsibility into the student’s growing sense of self-identification: achieving this requires both modelling and selling a good deal of well-choreographed opportunity for properly deserved success. Thus, Strategic Rapport needs to sail as close to being advisory, celebratory and collegial as possible without sacrificing the more structured, planned and hierarchically supportive chassis and engine of its more teacherly fundamental basis.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
Variable Aperture Questioning
My concept of Variable Aperture Questioning is envisaged as a component of Strategic Rapport.
It makes perfect sense that the balance of pressure across classroom teaching practice should be in favour of open questioning; however, pressure has created the misimpression that teachers should fear and be ashamed to employ that instrument of ‘teacher control’ known as the ‘closed’ question, except as unavoidably necessary evil. The fact is, any prejudice toward closed or open questioning, as a matter of principle, is going to back-fire, not least given the absurdity of open vs closed as deserving its privileged taxonomic status. ‘Higher-order’ vs ‘lower-order’, ‘convergent’ vs ‘divergent’, ‘focal’ vs‘brainstorm’ vs ‘funnel’ — these all are powerful, compelling taxonomies, and there are so many more, too. Click here to read an excellent definitive discussion.
My invention of the term Variable Aperture Questioning is as much a petulant protest (I find the virtue-word allusion to ‘closed’ mindedness vs ‘open’ mindedness to be would-be concealed and therefore manipulative), as is it a genuine recommendation of technique; yet, genuine recommendation of technique it certainly is, too! Obviously, as coach or teacher, you plan your sessions, making sure that your planning is no mere window-dressing. At the same time, if, as it can be in one-to-one teaching, the object is to reach out and help the student achieve real progress, remember that in finding ways to help them forward, everything must be customised to their actual, real circumstance: circumstance that changes in the course of a session.
Photography is all about the light. If the lighting it is wrong, a photographer knows to adapt. You can change lens, f-stop, sensitivity, framing — you can change the lighting itself. You can even drop the shot altogether and go for some new opportunity. As a photographer with a creative mind, some experience and a bit of kit, the tools at your disposal will let you create magic out of any situation you find yourself in, just so long as you don’t get precious about aperture!
I repeat: I like open questioning. So does my ego. What educator’s ego doesn’t? It feels so grand, so epic, so sweeping and seductively abstract. It’s also pretty much the obvious place for getting trainee teachers started with broadly good habits under their belt; it’s just that:
1. purity of open questioning is no sine qua non for student academic independence;
2. as discussed, the open/closed dichotomy is not the only dynamic in town;
3. closed questioning is not merely for heightening ‘teacher control’;
4. a student may need help better identifying the levels of rigour and challenge appropriate to character development;
5. the crafting of a carefully closed questions can actually open doors, for example when doing so for compassion and confidence building, for reducing barriers and for delivering activation and motivation;
6. Closed question can be necessary and effective for successful targeting of misconceptions.
Having said all that, if the idea of Variable Aperture Questioning amounts to anything, it must amount to a statement about balance and about honesty in relation to actual circumstances, so allow me to finish by balancing my protestations against the admission that closed questioning is great, also, for another effect, that of promoting, surely not bone idleness, but ossification of thought, in both teacher and student!
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Afterword — False Open-Questioning and the Awe-Intrigued Question
As a related aside, may I rail against that teacher, tutor or trainer who, mistaking the concept of open question for some anti-intellectual instrument of humiliation and suppression, presents their students with some paradox, tautology or thought-terminating cliché, inviting one or two students to make humbling fools of themselves in response, before moving on, leaving the matter, unelucidated, as object lesson in what happens when 'learners' presume to verify, and not just receive, received wisdom. Gaslighting likes to moonlight in many form; don’t let it moonlight as the open question.
Similarly, we find the occasional teacher positing to a child some enigmatic question — that ‘question’ being thus just an enigma masquerading as an open question, while in fact comprising an act of punitive snubbing, the child having just dared to ask their own awe-intrigued question, that question of theirs not being with reference to anything they were supposed to know or find out, nor having carried this out disruptively. When will people embrace that the asking of youthful awe-intrigued questions does not indicate or risk laziness in the pupil — it indicates a logical and laudable combining of intellectual curiosity with a prosocial wish to be, for one thing, productively confraternal with someone they respect and, for another, productively active as an accepted and integrated part of that collegial context. Nor will such an incident comprise some kind of convoluted rejection of that teacher’s hailing of an independent Spirit of Enquiry.
It is so very blindingly obvious that reaching out like this indicates neither insolence nor disingenuousness, and certainly not closed-mindedness, indicating, rather, a sense of collegiality. So obvious is it, that one realises there must be additional complex reasons explaining the emotionality and firmness of this corrosive meme of occasional teacher-behaviour. Indeed, I can discern multiple explanations for it, a couple of which even having laudable origins (for example, anti-familiarity practices necessary for prevention of institutional corruption appropriate to the police or armed forces, but misplaced in education), and which are not philosophically related, but which have been allowed over the last century to grow unchallenged in education, like weeds in a garden; however, these thoughts are not specific to the present question of questioning, thus not belonging to this place, which is why they are instead presently distilling into some future blog form.
Though brought to it by motives and misperceptions various and unrelated, there are so many people presently trained to discourage generous-spirited, prosocial and collegial dynamics within institutions generally (we being interested in its effect on schools, universities and other formal learning scenarios), instead encouraging or enforcing mentor/mentee behaviours that are more suspicious or fearful in character — behaviours of most deleterious effect upon the culture of question formation and solution — that we are left with a disappointing verdict upon the spirit of our times.
It upsets me to find it is necessary to say that it is always an outrage for an experienced teacher not merely, coolly, to decline, but actively to rebuff a student for their enthusiastically sharing (by posing) of some awe-intrigued question.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor ,and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
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MÊTIS
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Incidental Teaching And Mêtis
Incidental Teaching, though offering little to mainstream classroom teaching, can be a powerful tool for SEN teachers and for therapists, and brings much, also, to educational mentoring, especially when Incidental Teaching reveals strategic opportunities for scaling advantage within restricted time-frames, primarily by identification of obstructive bottlenecks in skills and in knowledge. A systems engineer would call this clearing congestion. An ancient Athenian strategist might call it mêtis (μῆτις). Without inclusion of some technique like this, an hour’s tutoring per week will but throw pebbles at the tide.
This mêtis approach is further invaluable for students working solo, assimilating any large or complex task. The ancient concept in question refers to an astuteness to a tactical situation in which one spies some concrete opportunity that is remarkable, not only for affording the dramatic up-scaling of outcome, but remarkable also for the opportunity having been found, inspiringly, where only adversity had been making itself obvious. No student will identify and clarify and verify misconceptions, finally fashioning them into successful learning, without something like it.
This is clearly a powerful and, to some extent, necessary ingredient for resilience and for independence too, which means we are addressing a two part phenomenon.
The first part relates to the fact of thorough and insightful situational assessment leading to creative problem solving and transformational advance — which is the part I am referring to as mêtis.
The phenomena's second aspect is an outgrowth of the first. This second aspect foregrounds the inspirational value to the problem solving student. This is especially so, the inspiration having been derived from the student themself having taken control of assessment (knowingly so, to some age-appropriate extent) for searching out the means of innovating their advance: they will not merely be blinded by the shiny new result; they will understand that it was their reflective evaluation upon their material and their situation, in preference to stampeding through something reassuringly answer-like, that rendered them their victory, and, hopefully (eventually), they have also been impressed by the very generalisable nature of the approach. This second aspect, therefore, is all about the compounding of the experience into a self-perpetuating practical philosophy of success.
Mêtis must be used to used to show problem solving for the fun, exciting and substantive thing that it is, and for the profit to be had from cultivating enjoyment in problem solving. It shows that problem solving isn’t some nuisance to be got out of the way before the body of the task can be addressed; problem solving. Mêtis demonstrates that pausing to analyse deeply and systematically both improves quality of output and saves time. Some inspiration for mêtis is taken from Social Problem Solving Therapy (SPS) in that mêtis helps the student adapt to the reality of a situation, foresee and forestall negative framing, thence proceeding to practical, beneficial solutions — the word ‘beneficial’ being key to the insight and precedent offered by SPS to mêtis, in that the ideal sought by SPS is always to find solutions to problems that actually create benefits in addition to whatever problem has been neutralised; furthermore, like mêtis, SPS acts without recourse to fashionable, confusing, unconvincing and unnecessarily relativist denial of the human percept known as ‘the problem’, for example, as demanded by the ever-popular Growth Mindset movement.
Accordingly, mêtis, itself,is a practical, task-specific nut-cracker — a tool for thinking your way through any resistance as posed by complexity or opacity — but it can have another function, that of birthing and comprising a practical philosophical approach to the self-motivatingly inspirational component of the mêtis cycle already discussed and contextualised. As a philosophical approach — a ‘mindset’, if we must! — I term this outgrowth, or aspect, of mêtis, Growth Mêtis.
Does that make Growth Mêtis a common-sensical and everyday sort of ‘growth mindset’? It certainly should make it so; however, even used most informally, the term growth mindset has great difficulty shaking its uppercase-Growth-Mindset baggage — baggage with problematic premises of ideology and outdated psychologies and of the practical realities they risk.
We now go on to examining Growth Mêtis more carefully.
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GROWTH MÊTIS
As a methodological and philosophical approach for a student, I like to think of Growth Mêtis as an alternative to mainstream Growth Mindset. Growth Mêtis places less focus on the self, and more focus on the adventure. As an approach or philosophy, Growth Mêtis views puzzles both as adventures and as practical and realistic opportunities for ‘switching things up’, doing so by means of discovering opportunities naturally hidden until viewed from some new vantage point, or revealing themselves as their parts are assembled in a meaningful way. Put another way, organising and examining your material experimentally allows you to prospect for step-change opportunities for profit and speed, thereby achieving mastery of understanding and accelerated progress while giving rise to a virtuous circle of philosophy and practical habit cycling through ambition, prospection, solution with elevation, inspiration returning you to ambition.
This is one reason why it is powerful — sometimes necessary — to help the student discover (rather than ‘accept’) that they, in actuality, really can do that thing they thought impossible, at least some foregrounded part of that success having truly come from them. This expresses the very core of the Growth Mêtis idea.
Of course, the main and serious practical benefit of the approach I am describing is that it has a real chance of actually persuading them — by means of demonstration (an ‘impossible’ achievement here, an unimagined epiphany there) — of their real and solid growth potential. Into this hard ground will the student’s new and solid pride now drive trusted foundations.
In connection with this, the passage, above, subtitled "Operation of Strategic Rapport" (Chapter 4, Strategic Rapport), offered structural bones for an example of the same, explored from the point of view of the teacher’s and student’s relationship with the process. The next example, here directly below, probably could represent whatever specifics your imagination furnished you with upon reading the earlier example, only, this time the telling will re-focus mainly upon the character of the mechanisms for assessment and adjustment at the one-to-one teacher’s disposal.
To wit, let us take the idea of the teacher engineering the student’s self-demonstration of surprising ability that we were introducing just two paragraphs above this. To engineer this demonstration, you, the one-to-one teacher, find something they truly thought they could not do. Of course, you avoid merely giving them the steps to do it. First, you must, yourself, find that particular problem-causing bottleneck, that systems congestion, that informational choke-point, that brilliant opportunity for using mêtis to transform fortunes by means of the exercise of intuitive, innovative thinking. If the challenge is well pitched for the student, and the rapport unflawed in any serious way, then the puzzle presented by the opportunity-problem that the teacher has identified for the student should itself provide any necessary stimulus to the application of energetic creativity. At this moment, the teacher’s objective is not to give the student the opportunity to fail; the objective at this point, is to enable the student to solve the problem and discover the value of their break-through.
This is not the same as another idea, sometimes described by gateway success, which seeks to find just the right practical success for the client which directly enables further specific, related successes. Nor less is this the same as the (excellent) idea of a lead domino, whereby picking the right task as your initial task, can substantially help, as an example, inattentive students not just getting started (start their day, start their homework, start their exam revision) but to do so with flow. The identity of the success does not matter in Growth Mêtis, and really one likely needs to help the student achieve at least a few ‘impossible’ (from their initial perspective) problems to make a realistic difference to their outlook and method. It is also necessary that the student feels involved in their ‘discovery’ of the problem, and that they feel dominant in finding their solution to the problem, and that they spot for themselves at least some of what makes this problem an especially profitable one to solve. You’ve heard of putting a crack in someone’s confidence? Growth Mêtis puts cracks in their unconfidence, causing the student to doubt their inability!
If you have judged the state of their developing mental and emotional strengths correctly, they will make the desired breakthrough or breakthroughs themselves. Then they will know — no need for beliefs; they will actually know — that they can do it. It is the growing experience of evidence, experience of that evidence deriving from their own experimental and intuitive processes, that results in the desired paradigm shift. They really will have a victorious mindset. An engineering mindset. A creator’s mindset. A mindset which feels that the best way forward is to plan, and to analyse, and methodically understand, and to enjoy doing so, and which has learned to trust that the generation and application of creativity, emotional intelligence and problem solving success naturally arises out of that process, and, finally, that where problem solving success is to be found, real step-changes in progress can also be looked for.
Keeping it real in the course of supporting the student also allows them to discover that originality and thinking for oneself doesn’t have to mean — and usually must not mean — thinking all by yourself, entirely a priori. Especially among students with impulsivity, executive function challenges and high conscientiousness, helping them to distinguish creative autonomy from reinventing the wheel can be surprisingly beneficial for them. Here’s a general example from one of my main specialisms, tutoring young people learning with ADHD, and with reference to a teaching opportunity I always really look forward to: teaching essay writing.
People with ADHD, unfortunately, love to reinvent the wheel, to incinerate their precious time in heroically intended defiance of any and all big picture realities (contributing, incidentally, to some of the many misunderstandings about procrastination and ADHD). Every day, hundreds of highly motivated, hard working students with ADHD throw their heart and soul into an essay, filling it with wonderful things, and handing it in, full of self-belief and reasonable pride; yet — Having. Nowhere. Answered. The question. One thing that Growth Mêtis teaches the student is to assess every situation, not out of fear, but hungrily, for advantages and opportunities for creative alchemy, but also methodically to uncover all that is just plain necessary, before they wish upon that star. Then, with the confidence of having looked first, they really will leap. Growth Mêtis says, you know ‘you can do it’ because you have a cunning plan, and the reason you have a cunning plan is that proper planning itself, IS the real, the substantive, ‘doing it’.
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GROWTH MÊTIS — HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLES IN APPLICATION
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Upper Secondary Example
In practice, for an older student, Growth Mêtis may involve the tutor helping the student correctly to understand the idea of coherence in essay writing, then challenging that student to reverse engineer the complete essay plan that could have been used to create a sample outstanding essay. The hardest and most important part of specific relevance to this task would to be sure to organise their essay plan, at various scales, in a way that would result in the sample essay’s demonstration of outstanding coherence. That is a bigger ‘ask’ for the young than may seem evident, so some carefully imagined scaffolding would help ensure that the exercise is a rewarding experience. Assuming the tutor to have a correct and relevantly complex assessment of that tutee’s level, this exercise dramatically advances the student’s view of essay writing, not to mention of themselves.
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Upper Primary Example
A practical example of Growth Mêtis for an upper primary level student may involve catechism-like Socratic dialogue guiding their attention as they work through creating (or correcting) their understanding (not just rehearsal) of adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers, including creating understanding of the language used by maths teachers to express arithmetic concepts, assuming this to be an area which the child feared they would never faultlessly understand and command.
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Lower Primary Example
For an Early Years writing (scribing) pupil, upset that they cannot form their single-letter or numeral graphemes the way that the teacher can, Growth Mêtis could mean this. The child is given a sheet of A4 which has been almost filled by the teacher with a rectangle in a colour. The child is asked to scribe, in different colours, two graphemes that they have been conflating and which do indeed have similarities. The child is asked to draft them as big as they can so that both letters are on top of each other (in their two different colours) and so that they will touch the A4 sized rectangle in as many places as possible. Just the right amount of scaffolding and perhaps fresh attempts will be required to ensure that the letters are written sufficiently close to successfully for the next part to be possible. The child is then asked to use words (to explain themselves, verbally, with support) and their fingers to explore and identify the differences between how the two letters sit contrastingly and similarly to each other. You also ask the child (they find this much harder) to notice some differences between the way the two graphemes interact with the rectangle which they are supposed to fill. This provides the pupil with numerous landmarks, some of which they will be able to build into their schema of visio-spatial knowledge, thereby enabling what for them will be a substantial paradigm shift, and a step-change forward in their ability to draw the difficult grapheme, with inspirational result.
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GROWTH MÊTIS is Therapeutic, Too:
But Isn’t 'Fixing' People a No-No?
The minefield of ‘fixing people’! When to listen. When to ask. When to intervene. When to mind you own business.
A person (not a student: just anyone), who, for example, may be feeling alone in their sadness, could find themselves sharing their feelings with someone they believe will enjoy the compliment of having been turned to, so that, no longer feeling isolated, they can address their own difficulty with fortitude. Or, perhaps they need to know that someone they are close to has an accurate understanding of their feelings so that the problem does not create misunderstanding for their relationship. Another possibility is that they need to hear their own articulation of their situation before they can be sure how they feel and what to do. In all cases, the sharer may not even notice why they are sharing; but even were that not so, for the listener then to dissect and pronounce their motive or situation, in the way that I just did, let alone going on to prescribe some solution, would probably serve only to downgrade the value of the feelings that were shared, thereby disrespecting, the suzerainty and intimacy of the act of sharing. On the other hand, it could be they really were requesting advice. There could be yet other motives or expectation still. How to tell the difference!? You would really need to ere on the side of just listening and showing that you care. Some people could literally feel rejected were advice to ensue in a situation like this.
How does this help us decide the right way to help young people. Surely if they can be helped then really they should be helped? The real issue there is never to forget in the first place that it is the parents and only the parents who truly get to make any sort of decision about this. Second, when it comes to things like potentially diagnosable problems, and any associated potential fixes, even if the parents ask about it, straight up, sleep on it. Don’t dissemble; just sleep on it. It is not all that rare for parents seeking a private tutor to be in friction with one another. Seeking, as a consultant may put it, a stalking horse to present a proposal which they know will not be well received by the other, is perfectly common, unfortunately. Even more commonly, one parent may be passionately keen on tuition for the child, the other parent being firmly opposed. In such cases, luring a tutor into making specific suggestions about emotional topics, may well be about trying to cause the parent who wanted the tuition to turn against their own idea, with tutor or coach as collateral damage.
And yet, assuming various human and professional caveats, it is not at all a bad thing for the one-to-one professional (specifically drafted in by parents to work with their child, after all) to want to help in as proactively and involved a manner as possible — to help and to help 'big'. Fortunately, within the ambit of the tutor’s full, sensitive and transparent introductory discussion with the parents, proactive help that ‘fixes’ will be exactly what is expected and asked for.
The most common professional counterview would hold that tutor-help, even when deliberately drafted in, ought only be provided, either, in some form of redistribution of opportunity (money; extra time in an exam; redistribution by the haves of their time to have-nots), or by means of corrections made to their worldview (so that they no longer believe that they are needful of help).
I’m honestly not seeking to be satirical here, although the view would no doubt be argued far more circumspectly in terms of language used. This sort of counterview is, of course, primarily ideologically driven.
This, I contend, is the role most usually, if unintentionally, played by Growth Mindset (as opposed to common sense growth mindset). For example, the ‘help’ will reveal to ‘the helped’ that negative effects relating to their difficulty in fact stem from their having been denied their share of societal loot to others, and that, in addition to accepting this fact as a premise, all they need do is, one, advocate (ie demand with [political] menaces) and, two, correct their attitude by replacing the abstractly negative valence of their difficulty with an abstractly positive valence. By these measures, the annoying symptoms of their impairment (the things they requested help with) are mystically transformed into latter-day stigmata. ‘Beware the devil sent to test your new faith with promises of fixes and alleviations of holy suffering.’
In contrast to this, the tutor or coach is typically expected — ne'er least by him or herself — out of but a sliver of time each week, perhaps an hour, to transform fortunes. Failing to get in there with mindset of both teacher and engineer, would rarely result in cutting it. Further, it is rare for the question of causing dependence by 'fixing' problems even to be relevant as in such cases the problem usually is the fundamental lack of skill-independence. In other words, it is rare to find something 'fixable' not comprising precisely that schematic and conceptual machinery that, when functioning, renders that person self-repairing and functionally independent anyway!
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‘Fixing’ People: Quo Vadimus?
In a situation where years in classrooms just hasn't resulted in the student fixing their own clearly self-identified problems, a philosophy that says that one just mustn't ever help them actually fix anything, would seem to me to be an extremist philosophy, and one constituting an abrogation of responsibility to the young. People who just haven't had lots of repetitive suffering, even if they have had plentiful and due, external cause for suffering, are rarely equipped (I don't mean in a blameworthy way) to understand how others can be really deeply unhappy for 'merely' internal causes of suffering, such as are merely inflamed or fed by external circumstances. In particular, it can be very hard, for the unacquainted, to understand the unrelenting and harmful quality that this sort of suffering can have, for example in cases of unrelenting shame arising despite no observable, instrumental, external loci. Furthermore, precisely because, in such cases, there is no meaningful external cause, it is extremely common that such individuals will have become very good at masking the suffering and the harm. In such (heart-breakingly common) invisible cases, giving them proven hope, not dogma, by fundamentally disassembling and rebuilding their understanding of, say, fractions, or Assessment Objectives, or essay coherence, from the ground up, and then letting them discover what they can do with that, invariably 'fixes' as much of the more serious invisibles as it will their capacity for the tutored content.
You have seen, I certainly don’t propose doing things ‘for’ the student-child, although for a few children, they really will need a great deal of scaffolding to attain the place whence they can reach new challenges themselves. But a young person known as unable to move forward, or who asks not to evade work, but to become capable of work, having demonstrably tried to understand, or demonstrably shown sincere bafflement at how even to begin to understand, should be helped in any case where the appropriate manpower is available.
If you are driven by the imperative to help young people in such situations, then you should be confidently proud of yourself. Equally, if you are driven to help whole group organisms (such as classes!) to function together, happy in its component and collective parts, but flourishing by means of the environment you create for them — then from my point of view, though I hope you will also see the virtue in the former, you should be even more proud of yourself! Class teachers clearly provide not just the essential service (for the majority), but the more valuable, and impressive societal service; that fact has no inverse, negative reality in the person of the one-to-one professional — the latter’s contribution is not improper as a function of the worthy propriety of the classroom teacher’s contribution. If a student has a difficulty, nothing great perhaps but something they cannot shift on their own and which prevents some further avenue, should access to those with the talent deeply to customise their investigation and to systemise their solution to that individual, then be discouraged?
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
From the Ancient Greek, εἰδός, modern English acquires the word eidos. The best online dictionary definition seems to belong to Merriam Webster which defines the English word eidos (accessed 19:50, Sunday, 29th September 2024, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eidos) as:
- 2 : the cognitive part of cultural structure made up of the criteria of credibility, the logic used in thinking and acting, and the basic ideas by which the members of a culture organize and interpret experience : logical structure
The approaches recommended in this book have an eidos, and this chapter tries to express that eidos in five principles, hence the acronym E.I.D.O.S..
The other point of note at this stage is that this chapter is presently under revision! The acronym and label M.I.D.A.S. is being replaced by E.I.D.O.S. Its parts (Map It, Invert It, Divine It, Assess It, Sense It) are also being renamed. The remainder of this chapter has not yet been changed to reflect these updates.
MIDAS, as a method, is a guide that explains, structures and draws attention to those opportunities for reaching and enabling the student's mind which, though not systematically available to classroom teaching, can be ideally suited to the single-student scenario. This means that despite having a nomenclature (Map It, Invert It, Divine It, Assess It, Sense It) that identifies itself in terms of the kinds of student mental activity most likely to benefit depth of student learning of a complex thing, and in the sequence most likely to be of benefit to the student, MIDAS is in fact more a tool for the teacher; out of its parts, all manner of specific personalised learning tools can be crafted for any specific student, on a case-by-case basis, but MIDAS is definitely a system of advanced instruction for tutors, not directly for students, despite being organised according to different ways for students to get their minds (and personalities) around their learning. MIDAS is made of reasonably low-order composites, which, except when the student is having a spot of bother (or reaching beyond what is reasonably easy for them) is not normally the authentic manner of engaging with a subject discipline. MIDAS is about understanding or avoiding misconceptions and missteps, such as may have arisen before or during one-to-one tuition, while understanding and even maximising one-to-one focused opportunities.
Thus, it is purely for clarity and memorability that its major parts are indeed ordered in more or less how-to sequence, despite MIDAS not being a how-to system! It is a system for increasing the sensitivity, depth and reflexivity of the tutor's powers of empathetic comprehension and prediction, especially in those situations wherein (whether for student ambition or for some obstructive imbalance between talents and challenges within the student) the student finds their own inability with regard to some particular thing, a mystery. MIDAS will advance any tutor’s skills in understanding and dexterously guiding any student, but its raison d'etre is as a thinking tool-box especially for more interesting teaching challenges.
For comparison, we may consider the five pedagogical steps as recommended by ‘The Father of Pedagogy’, Johann Friedrich Herbart, at the start of the 19th century. Allow me to quote, verbatim, the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s summary of Herbart’s five steps:
(1) PREPARATION, a process of relating new material to be learned to relevant past ideas or memories in order to give the pupil a vital interest in the topic under consideration;
(2) PRESENTATION, presenting new material by means of concrete objects or actual experience;
(3) ASSOCIATION, thorough assimilation of the new idea through comparison with former ideas and consideration of their similarities and differences in order to implant the new idea in the mind;
(4) GENERALIZATION, a procedure especially important to the instruction of adolescents and designed to develop the mind beyond the level of perception and the concrete; and
(5) APPLICATION, using acquired knowledge not in a purely utilitarian way, but so that every learned idea becomes a part of the functional mind and an aid to a clear, vital interpretation of life. This step is presumed possible only if the student immediately applies the new idea, making it his own.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Friedrich-Herbart
Seven years experience as a full-time tutor place me in awe of these five steps, for their humanity, their coherency, concision and completeness, their basis being so palpably not in ideology, and not in marketing but in exquisite observation and experiment, and in their obviously practical applicability. They’re just so real.
So what is the point of MIDAS?
Herbart’s five steps are the gold standard, to be rolled out, in sequence, with any well-rounded, reasonably curious, reasonably conscientious student, whether average or exceptional, assuming only that their spread of learned, of cognitive and of emotional/evaluative tools and capacities (including social and executive function) do not possess any particular impairments: I’ve often wondered if the brilliant but obviously flawed Alexander the Great may have suffered from a spot of ADHD or ASD. I wonder if Aristotle found it possible to proceed with Alexander’s tuition in an orderly Herbartian manner, or whether, to ensure that he gave Alexander full access to opportunities, he found it necessary to dissect the sort of higher order steps that Herbart uses, into more psychological components, resequencing those more according to what worked for Alexander. Upon reflection, I think a helpful way to look at it would be to see MIDAS as a higher granularity, lower order, more directly psychological look at Herbartian ingredients.
You may wish further to compare MIDAS and the Five Herbartian Steps with the four Æs, half-way through Chapter 9, Learning by Experimental Method and the four Æs.
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MIDAS stands for
Map It, Invert It, Divine It, Assess It, Sense It.
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Map It
‘Map It’ refers to successful methods for helping students not just understand but make use of the ideas of structure, coherence, time, of taking in what’s been said to them, of working out how to work out what they need to know, but not as bits and pieces. ‘Map It’ covers just about everything that the student needs to do and know, how do it and how to know that they are under control. Being organised, knowing how to plan and what to track, is all about overview. ‘Map It’ means make sure you can see the wood for the trees, because you’re going to need to map that wood, in every imaginable way possible, or else you wont be able to do anything clever with the trees. It’s no good using someone else’s excellent maps. You must create, develop and maintain your own maps, as they aren’t primarily for looking things up; they are for structuring and guiding your analysis and mastery of how everything that matters fits together. Typical manifestations of such ‘maps’ include timetabling exercises as analyses of priorities and processes; truly thorough processual planning of essays or stories; ultra-large topical floor maps of subject matter including comparative compound-timelines; logic-gated revision planning-charts; and explorations of literary or essay cohesion represented as flow-chart or cytoarchitecture
One of the most effective ‘Map It’ tactics is for children who cant accurately remember questions or other statements: you teach to notice that everything can be broken into just a number of parts. Sometimes one of more of the first division also sub-divides; however doing no more than dividing the sentence into a small a number of parts as usefully possible, and then remembering that number, can dramatically change their ability to place questions and task statements into their minds (it being on paper is no good: it needs also to be in their head for them to undertake any mental operations with regard to it) and of course the subsequent ability to retrieve it.
Don’t be misled by how little I have written about ‘Map It’. Among students who need and want help, encouraging and empowering them to play cartographer can be transformative. Every subject discipline, curriculum, project, timetable, essay plan, step, sub-step, and so on, can be structured, cross-sectioned, sub-divided, flattened, given additional dimensions, colour coded, cross-referenced, subitised or just counted. You may note that ‘Map It’ is, thus, powerful whether used in ways too obvious easily to notice, or in ways that stretch to the limit the imagination’s ability to transform, contort, contrast or invert anything.
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Invert It
Human intelligence makes huge use of analogy and metaphor, verbal, sensate, emotional, procedural, visio-spatial — everything. Any time your student expresses actual desire for understanding, fear not to paint in purely abstract terms and purely expressive language, as you will see at once if there is going to be any mileage in it. Evolution has re-tasked so many neural tools and processes to so many new and odd purposes that we know not whether to taste our success, feel our defeat or just be glad to break even. Break even!? I mean, how would you even do that? Remarkably, Break Even has a purely procedural imagery of abstract feeling — one that is strange but clear, and that makes itself more than idiomatically known, being perfectly and precisely sensible to the mind somehow entirely by expressive means. Very little of what your student needs explaining will be explainable in literal terms any way.
Whether dividing by fractions, evaluating by effectiveness, discerning classical liberalism from progressive liberalism, or distinguishing types of force from types of energy, no confusion ever devised by man, could withstand the universal solvent of figurative thought. Get stretching your posterior cingulate cortex. Warm that angular gyrus up. Prepare to mix your metaphors. Your apples with your pears, compare. Humour, be it disarmingly failed, distractingly witty, demure or just tonal, is of great value in the single-student setting, assuming a genuinely confident tutor with some sense of control and purpose. Use the force of figurative thought— these are the ploys you are looking for: vantage point and perspective; subjective and empathetic consciousness; contrastive opposites and absences; concretisation of the abstract and vice versa; meaningfully topsy-turvy spoof (strictly absent of repulsive or unkind elements); mental experiments that run things backwards, inside out, upside down, or just ragged; and, most seriously of all, remember to be funny. OK, humour is certainly no requirement but it is a way of mining for and selling usefully deep and refreshingly perspective and analogy.
In this way, you will help your student achieve all manner of deeper and more reflective analyses; you’ll model for them how to do it, both for themselves and in cooperative endeavour; and, by introduction of creative flexibility of thought in general, you will also have contributed to the selling of the sheer attractiveness and enjoyability of their deliberate exploitation of the thought experiment. Virtuous circle!
Obviously, classroom teaching and textbooks tend to explain things ‘the right way round’. If a student has not understood something, or tends to forget it for reason of imperfect comprehension — as opposed to having just not noticed the thing or having experienced it merely fade from their recollections — then, for the home-tutor only to re-deliver the usual explanation, the same ‘right way round’ the student receives it each week in school, yet expecting home-tuition thereby a different result to achieve, would be pointless.
That is not to say that ensuring differentness of tuition from classwork is always appropriate. The one-to-one teacher must pay attention to how the student is being taught a particular skill at school for all manner of reasons. There are all sorts of common sense ways in which the tutor can and must avoid becoming the cause of confusion in settings outside of the private tuition, for example, avoiding either contradiction or misleading similarity in terminologies and procedures causing conflation, over-writing and other confusions. This is but one reason teachers are rarely eager to recommend generic private tuition to parents!
In particular, there is one really glaringly specific and important exception to any ‘Invert It’ advice at all.
Pretty much every UK-schooled parent there is learned to read using some variant of Whole Word method. This makes it an approach that feels traditional and ‘normal’ and ‘tried and tested’ to them. I hesitate to sound disrespectful of any parental viewpoint, especially as I am particularly strongly opposed to trends that weaken parental authority, autonomy and the paramountcy of family structure and bonds; however, if I am ‘speaking’, now, to someone reading this for reason of their being a parent, allow me to pay you the courtesy of only speaking the truth. Strict Whole Word technique was enforced by radical educational ideologues for a shockingly long half-century despite little else but a stream of extremely solid evidence of its failure as an effective method. Despite so many — apparently — happy childhood memories of the approach, it is in fact responsible for decades of poor progress and poor youth and adult literacy. The only reason it took such complete hold is that it was part of greater package of Brave New World faith and enthusiasm which, rising in the 1930s and reaching a peak in the 1950s, was used to sweep away so much that really had become tried and tested.
As a result, it is very common for parents to be sceptical — sometimes almost furious — about the application of this technique to their children’s early reading instruction. In fact, the current system is not one of pure synthetic phonics. Whole Word method is indeed still included (as it always used to be, in fact) as a blended element. It is used for the bits that suit it — and require it — as a method, namely for those high frequency words whose spelling defies phonics guidance but which children require early on. Most parents know them as the words on the red flashcards that teachers often send home with children. I’m now off-topic, but if you have young tutees or young children, allow me just two more sentences on this please! I have noticed that many parents haven’t really noticed those cards’ high value to children. In addition to mixed practice (usually that means doing them all randomly), I recommend alternating between the particular words that your tutee or child often conflates, and to keep practicing those particular cards for a time even after they ‘seem’ to have got those ones: quite a few children who had difficulty to start with, experience some skill attrition with regard to some unpredictable subset of those words, that can persistent literally years after learning them.
Now back to “Phonics + Some Whole Word versus Whole-Word-Only”.
Regardless of your views on Phonics versus Whole Word, learning to read in the classroom is so extremely technical in its nature and so dependent on repeated drilling of practice, that no matter what system your child’s school is using, if you actively use some other system at home, or, actively, some clearly other set of sounds for articulating individual phonic sounds at home, then, with truly sincere apologies for how insensitive to your feelings this will surely sound, far from helping, or even just making no difference, if one of these scenarios really is the situation in your home, then you will be actually undoing (only to some small extent, I’m sure) the progress that your child is making at school with regard to learning to read. Indeed, merely referring to ‘letters’ (rather than as sounds or other of the school’s terminology) can cause confusion. Also, until children have been introduced to all the grapheme-phoneme-correspondences, you should also avoid referring to letters by their ‘alphabet’ names, or even referring to the alphabet at all.
The only good and sincere advice for helping a young child practice their early reading skills at home is do so marching in lock-step with the system they use at school. Doing exactly that should dramatically help. To many parents this advice will sound ghastly, if not downright violating, but I’m afraid to say that the hard and statistically robust evidence in favour of the current system is just completely overwhelming.
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Divine It and
Assess It
Moving on from the power of figurative thought and metaphorical analysis, we navigate to the next feature of consciousness of importance to us, namely the conscious human mind’s ceaseless cycle of complex prediction (‘Divine It’) and complex error correction (‘Assess It’).
The very fabric of the physical and narrative realities of all that you are perceiving, right now (the feel of a chair, the emotion perceived in another, the scale of the space between you and the wall that you can see), comprise entirely of complex sequences of predictions — predictions already freshly updated with corrections cross-checked against your senses, and your memories, even before those same prediction filled your consciousness. Simplistically, the psychosis of hallucination isn’t just error in reality prediction; it’s error in prediction correction, a fact which points to why it is that Mother Nature so assumes of us the reflex of disliking error! Dislike, distrust and even disgust, perhaps very slight, perhaps strong: these are hardwired, very normal ways to respond to the profoundly human (by which I mean anchored and driven from the biology that we hold in common as a species) need to see in terms of, among other things, error, meaning, not the word as sound and etymology, but the innate association of inaccuracy with negative valence.
In order to prevent this point from functioning as little more a nugget of persuasive, sci-fi hyperbole, with no more perceived relevance than some entirely decorative rhetorical device, we need to face and accept an unspoken thing, that would otherwise prevent us from
The elephant in the room here is that in any era of history, it will either be those personalities which can but favour moral relativism, or those naturally tending toward moralism (sometimes measured, for example, by self-scoring one’s value judgement toward stimuli bearing features causative of disgust) who will tend, usually quite securely, toward possession of the socio-political upper hand across a given arena of community. This balance goes back and forth through history, and, for a great many decades now, the moral relativists happen to be fielding their team. Thus, in the UK, we live in a civilisation which is far more libertarian (for instance) than was in the 1914. the What this means is that discussions about whether children should be told (for example) that errors are bad or not end up hopelessly simplistic in any era, half of those with a stake in the argument in perpetual struggle with the other half. I shan’t win friends and influence people be doing so, but I will try to address this by going into a good deal more detail, out of which I shall develop various further suggestions. I hope that by declaring my natural prejudice (by personality) in favour of the moralist end of the spectrum, I make a good start keeping clear of hypocrisy. I undertake this rite of self-mortification, partly here, but mainly in a chapter of its own, Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs.
Without throwing open the shutters and windows, in this way, so that we may all pause to acknowledge the visceral realities behind ‘caring’, graduation to considered judgements upon the role of the concept of error in learning would be flawed indeed.
Young people who feel helpless will not infrequently feel overwhelmed by the very thought of how ridiculous it seems to them that anyone would think that they could know what they are supposed to do or say next, no one having expressly told them. Helping them understand that, so long as they have an actually reasonable reason for predicting a given solution, and so long as they keep that reason firmly in mind as they discover the effect of employing their proposed solution, then, upon discovering their proposed solution to produce error, they will in fact discover their process to have been bountifully successful.
As they discover this, they will also see that their proposed solution, or ‘answer’, itself, was never desired as some sort of good in itself, or as powerful secret password or holy catechism. The ‘answer’ was never the point; remember: our hypothesised student deliberately held their original reason for their particular response carefully in mind. Given their having actually done that. the experimental negative response now allows them to learn the correct emotional alignment with successfully eliminated meaning: that will produce one very successful memory connection — one that will stick around long enough for the ‘doing it right’ corollary-perception to the initial ‘not doing it wrong’ perception to become soundly embedded and prioritised.
However much we may wish to pretend to the contrary, prediction-error-correction is neurally inalienable to the learning of any content that had to be held in consciousness. It is inalienable to the learning of consciously noted content for the simple reason that prediction-error-correction is also neurally inalienable to all of conscious experience, itself. I’m not talking about how to explain things. I’m talking about how to experience things, including the experience of explanation.
Embracing experimental method and, in particular, embracing the value of the moment of negative (or positive) experimental result, operates to delay the key emotional response until confirmation of correct emotional alignment (emotional punishment or emotional reward) with revelation of experimental result (often true/false, effective/ineffective, but there is some scope for this to work with more analogue outcomes). This really isn't the same thing as ‘embracing error’ — not that anyone has ever revealed or explained the mystery that is meant to await us on the other side of the ‘embracing error’ event horizon. ‘Embracing error’ seems to represent the use of moral relativism as some sort of emotional anaesthetic. Given the role of emotion in learning (and morality, compassion, duty, sacrifice, love, evaluative judgement, social learning, consciousness …) it sounds a bit like trying to guarantee amnesia (or, at least, amnesia of everything unaffected by the moral relativism).
Needless to say, for a classroom teacher to focus on this as their everyday conceptual model of learning would take precious bandwidth away from the many other models of teaching, learning and interaction that classroom teachers must maintain in mind and operate by; it’s when dropping down to focus upon a student’s skill proficiency that awareness of learning by experimental result advances in priority, under which circumstance, I argue, it should be continually maintained in live awareness until skill change is secure or until it is found that the student needs another method, or just a break!
Persuading a student that he is expected to ‘embrace error’ might silence his complaining requests for assistance, while generally reassuring him not to fear punishment (hence the return of the smile that you noticed and that we all want to see reappearing on his face) but it simply isn’t in the real world to suggest that telling him to feel differently about the errors themselves will cause him to do so, without his becoming enabled with some actual path to their avoidance, or of course to their use — a path whose efficacy can be demonstrated to him. Deeming this otherwise (pretending!) just abandons him.
‘Divine It’ says that it is just plain boringly normal and healthy to want only accurate predictions of the future, to despise and mistrust the human perception that we call ‘error’, and to prefer useful outcomes over wasteful ones, perhaps especially those that insult our, literal, sense of reality.
People like discerning error. We want to eliminate error. ‘Embracing error’ is a paradoxism, and as such is, I guess, kind of fun. But I’m really not seeing the point of teaching kids in paradoxisms. Teach them what a paradoxism is, by all means. Teach them that they can be fun, or poetical, or interesting or historically popular with extremist dictators and disturbing, messianic cult leaders. But not teach them actually in paradoxisms.
An adequately-reasoned and watched-for negative result, together with embrace (or observation) of emotion — not of error — is ten times more useful to resilient and enthusiastic learning than any unreasoned, positive result, and a hundred times more useful than any sort of emotionally anaesthetised result. The academic coach would never ignore how students feel, nor misrepresent how logic, learning and even consciousness works, and nor ever should the teacher.
From maladapted fear preventing a child knowing how to stop and assess what went wrong with a maths answer, to maladapted fear preventing a teen fully planning and predicting their essay, these issues are central to all student progress. See more on this under subtitle Pedagogy, Learning and Discrimination of Emotion, below.
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Sense It
Above, I finished my comments on ‘Divine It’ and ‘Assess It’ with references to problems associated with maladaptive fear.
‘Sense It.’ refers to this final step. ‘Sense It’ seeks to describe how this final step goes well.
At this final step of the sequence (I mean the sequence otherwise discussed above, under ‘Divine It and ‘Assess It’) the student is now ready to encode what they have learnt into the ever changing physical fabric of their brain. They should do so in a manner that will be well networked with other learning so that they have a fighting chance of re-accessing it at those future moments when they will actually need it. This must be done in conjunction with sensing and feeling the properties of the thought’s content. In adult terms, this just means you need to think something through if you want to remember and actually use it; however, it should not be underestimated how difficult the majority of school-age students find it to conceptualise what ‘thinking it through’ could realistically look like, at any given age in relation to their usual curricular level. This is the first specific problem which ‘Sense It’ draws to the academic coach or tutor’s attention: how to get the student to process a new idea in the right way and deeply enough, despite the need to avoid going, counter-productively, over the top.
Ideally, a student will have strong enough aptitude for keeping a memory of an idea, little processed, long enough to leave richer processing to spiral curriculum; however, as discussed, I maintain that, across too many subjects, UK spiral curriculum is designed with unrealistically strong students in mind, only.
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Accommodations That Rob Ideas of Context, Leave Those Ideas Invisible
It is an understandable mistake to assume that, because complex or slippery ideas are hard at first, they must need, initially, be kept bare-bones simple; however, the whole point is that inadequate context at the time of introduction, will doom the idea to the duration of the lesson for some, or to permanent miscomprehension for the many. It is highly relevant to us, here, because the home education teacher really can and must avoid this problem, and because remedial identification and correction of this is sort of thing is a staple of the private tutor.
If the context is too hard, or too time consuming for the student, and if the idea will be misunderstood, or not remembered, without that context, then supplying the idea without that context (as an accommodation) will be counter-productive. To avoid the cruelty of asking the impossible — while making it harder to achieve the things they should invest in — the accommodation should be to drop that idea and anything that the idea is required for. I’m not saying this should be an easy or a quick decision, but it should be considered favourably.
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Memory Formation Needs Emotion;
Memory Usefulness Needs Repeated, Purposeful Emotions (Specifically, Judgements)
We need to look in slightly more detail at what thinking and feeling through an idea is really like, doing so in a manner that is reasonably easily generalisable across ages and subjects.
In order to process and develop a new idea, the thinker holds and manipulates it in ‘chunks’ of meaning and sensation ‘in’ short-term memory. Regarding this process, science possesses growing knowledge and theory about processes — a lot of it hippocampus related — of storage and consolidation of short into long term memory.
While this does not yet constitute knowing ‘what’ short and/or working memory ‘is’, working memory is an important component of consciousness, which, we can further say, either comprises or is contributed to by multiple thinking systems. Furthermore, the great majority of consciously thinkable thoughts will only become embedded in long term memory by means of having been worked by consciousness — by working memory. Indeed, without those thoughts being arrived at, departed from, arrived at again, etc, worked back and forward between themselves and other thoughts, manipulated by conscious processes, then, even if the basic idea to be remembered does make it into long term memory, there will be nothing like an optimisation of connections between those long term memories. That optimisation, shaped and recorded into the fabric of neural connections by their experience of their actual interactions, will largely determine how usefully developed and accessibly useful that embedded, learned idea has now become.
So, clearly I am arguing that merely noticing your own awareness of an idea isn't going to produce useful and developed memory (of learning). Am I further arguing that it is with the next step — when you deliberately seek to move between logically connected ideas, zig-zagging about as it were — that powerfully usable memory (of the learning) is established? Not quite. I am not referring to mere recognition of logic, or even of as it were muscle-memory operation (thinking by schema) of logical function. Nor will addition of generic exertion of effort make the difference — and yes I did try converting the noun 'effort' into a verb, and that didn't help either. I am arguing that processing must be by means of, or in association with, feeling-dependent decision-making — that is to say, by processes of value or evaluative judgement that are by nature always sensed or felt, regardless of how verified, calculated and disciplined according to logic they may also be. For example, a student may be helped toward asking:
· —‘Which of my solutions was most useful?’ The meaning of useful can be objectively envisaged and yet this question would normally also draw on value judgement. As such, to be truly full of meaning, the question may be perceived as drawing on some subjectively human aspiration — conceived as desirability or calibre, perhaps — or upon some means of auxiliary processing, such as the thinker's faculty for imagining sensate feelings, boosting sensitivity of control and feedback as they ‘weigh’ their judgement.
· —‘Which literary device was more effective and why?’ Reasons must be expressed with objective justifications, but an answer will also be value judgement-based as effectiveness can’t be entirely separate from the idea of success, which in turn cannot be separated from its positive valence. Also, effectiveness must include sense of the theorised reader’s perception of valence judgement.
· —‘Which hand-drawn grapheme best matched the printed sample?’ This comparison sounds entirely objective but clearly this question is actually going to be about to evaluating and encouraging progress, as well as the idea that the printed sample will further possess a more abstract yet replicable quality of ‘looking good’ that teacher and four year old will probably not identically identify anyway. The five year old tackling this question will be full of emotion about it: the tutor just needs to keep attracting all that critical attention onto just the right blend of successes and opportunities.
As you can see from these examples, most emotional / critical feelings are so quiet and so complex as to have their effect without making themselves the subject of observation. They comprise the raw sparks of inception to all critical or value judgement; consider: pain only ‘hurts’ because of its neural connections from sensate systems to emotional systems in the brain.
Without at least some sliver of a feeling or sensation being associated directly with the data, your brain simply won’t waste resources recording thoughts, thus uncritiqued, into longer term memory, not even badly. In other words, it’s not a question of the student having a particular mood, or being calm, or not bored, or excited, or feeling safe, or anxious. Even the elaborate technique of getting the student to discuss the target idea with their partner will backfire if they do so while ‘going through the motions’ as it would, in that circumstance, be more likely for their emotional and critical anxieties to be railroaded by the interpersonal interaction itself. It is also not a question of intensity of feeling. It is a question of stimulating spontaneous (so, natural and automatic) critical / emotional reactions between the idea (the one that you wish to become easily accessible over long term) and as many existingly established ideas as possible. Only then will there be a good chance of the student conjuring the target idea, in a usefully reflexive manner, at moments of relevant need.
Finally, to ensure actually long term availability of the now potentially long-term memory, the student will of course need to continue revisiting the idea or else the brain will decide all this to have been an unprofitable investment, allowing it to fade long before needing it at exam time.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to the Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
‘SENSE IT’— Practical Advice
This chapter offers supplementary advice for the application of MIDAS element, 'Sense It', to students with moderate to high conscientiousness together with ADHD, ASD or similar
Continue to bear in mind that MIDAS, although ordered according to a logically chronological, potential sequence through of student learning, in fact comprises advice for the tutor, the content of MIDAS therefore to be understood more thematically than sequentially.
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CATEGORY ONE:
Using ‘Sense It’ for Students with ADHD or Similar
‘Sense It’ and Student Category One: some people have great difficulty preventing their mind from jumping around, quite involuntarily, affecting thoughts, emotions, often sensations and sometimes even some high granularity movement control. This category is intended to represent those this category, either who would, or who would be likely to obtain an ADHD diagnosis.
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Category One – Part A – How The Student’s Perspective May Affect This:
This category of student might be able to hold all the parts, one by one, in mind, maybe even write them all down from memory as an aid to deeper memorisation, but only with excessively exhausting self-control. They will be most disillusioned when the process therefore fails to put targeted information into memory, and it should be noted that their difficulty accessing successfully encoded long term memories is usually far greater still; yet, some days and with some very particular sub-types of pleasurable information and task, they will exhibit little memory difficult at all: as though they are faking it now or were not exerting themselves on the other occasions.
They’re definitely not faking their difficulty.
Ironically, they might indeed be, shall we speculate, 70% likely to be ‘faking’ the exact opposite (!) circumstance — faking that they are not in great distress and desperation over their, in fact most undoubtable, mysteriously presented difficulties.
If you can find a way to get them to feel through, or judge through, each item needing recall — patiently and having focused for a moment on emotional relaxation — that usually helps.
Sometimes just imagining important features of an idea as somehow being visible or having an unusual, manifested feel — perhaps or perhaps not symbolic of the idea’s critical or moral cadences — can help make the thought less slippery, and more concrete, assisting them the hold the memory in mind long enough to examine and respond to it.
In other words, when they force their mind merely to load a thing into working memory, afterward further forcing that same working memory merely to acknowledge the factuality of the information’s presence therein, that process is very unlikely to let them keep the memory from simply, spontaneously vanishing from their mind as soon as they loosen their grip on the idea, probably to redirect some focus onto using or processing that same thought. Upon this moment of disappearance, the student will, absolutely literally, remember nothing but the pain associated with having conjured and gripped the thought before it slipped away. The experience is incredibly demoralising for the individual not to mention it being downright spooky.
Obviously they are not about to announce what has just happened, any less than being about to explain the disturbing experience of what it felt like to happen. Instead they feel they have no choice but to cover the whole thing up — to mask. Girls are often very good at masking; boys, much more situationally.
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Category One — Part B — A Few Simplistic Tips for Coach or Tutor
— For this category of student, it is additionally important to focus on helping them feel through the targeted information, at every stage of its usage.
— It is also additionally important that you get them to process, critically and emotionally, the information from different angles, even though you might have to suggest a smaller number of angles from which to work and revisit those angles more often and more clearly than might seem sensible.
— Use lots of metaphor, humour (purposeful and opportunistic) and perhaps a very driven sort of excitement.
— Apply huge quantities of compassion and be ultra- or hyper- clear when defining ideas, instructions, expectations.
— Explaining and Instructing. Do not supply less explanation than normal for a general and situationally specific aptitude: Explanation should instead be done even more carefully and completely by comparison with normal, and you should repeat yourself to an extent that you will certainly feel excessive. Bear in mind that this advice is specific, among other things, to students with High Conscientiousness personality traits. That type of student, if they don’t seem to want to hear the instructions, they may:
- be experiencing fluctuations in emotion, in which case you should calm them, rather than give them inadequate instructions,
- have drifted into vivid-daydreaming (an involuntary state possibly layering hyperfocus onto default network activation in a combination that is rarely possible in people without ADHD) which high-conscientiousness vivid-daydreamer actually dislike, to the point of feeling creeped-out or slightly afraid by it, and certainly ashamed by it, regardless how fast their emotions spring back after release, after all, they’ll be glad to have been released from it) in which case you pull them out of the vivid-daydream, rather than giving them inadequate instructions,
- be dancing around, or playing with their hands, or pulling faces, etc, actually in response to the emotional stimulation of receiving the information and being interacted with attentively by the teacher, in which case you calm them down and sent to them, rather than giving them inadequate instructions,
- be doing much the same as the above, but more in the vein of:
- .........looking at the ceiling
- .........or into the corner of the room
- .........or at the floor just by your shoes
- .........or at your shoulder (down and a little off from looking at your face)
- .........in a slightly intent manner:
- .........they may be denying their visual cortex anything to shout about,
- .........or denying their audio cortex the same,
- .........or they may be turning their ear toward the place that compromises as much reduction of background noise, against as little reduction of your speech sounds, possibly also allowing for some echo or sound absorption effect. So they may be looking in some seriously strange direction! ADHD can make it very hard to separate the speech sound from other sounds.
- .........in other words, this may indicate that they are trying super hard to focus on what you’re saying. In such a case you may be able to adjust where you are standing and how you are speaking, in order to assist them, rather than giving them inadequate instructions.
- .........finally, the other really obvious scenario is when they really are trying to listen, but they’re just exhausted so that there is nothing you can do to help them take in the necessary complexity of instruction. In such a case you probably need to simplify the task itself and then still give them careful, patient instruction. It is therefore best not to assume that this is what is happening until you’ve made a bit of an attempt to see if one of the other techniques will help.
— Generally, it is important to try to enable the student to take in the instructions verbally as only then can you be reasonably certain that they will process the instructions in their mind. Reading does not give the brain a more direct route from the words on the page to consciousness, and therefore you cannot assume that by giving them the instructions on paper that they will have less problem using those instructions fully and correctly. However, if they don’t have it on paper as well they will normally be doomed anyway, because even having done a good job of processing the verbal instructions, the probability is that they will have difficulty recalling them correctly.
— So if you can (given time and other constraints), you need to help the student in this situation to process the instructions verbally, and then help them to practice processing the written version of the instructions as well (which can indeed be as laborious as it sounds) with a smile and stating that you’re helping not testing them (unless you are testing them!), get them to repeat a lot of what you say, adjusted for age and severity of focus problem, but to some extent and in some way, doing so with all ages.
— With lots of friendliness, force them to take their time with open questions, which will probably require blending some humour, being most careful not to demean by the substance or style of the humour. Ere a little to the contrary direction when their responses are designed for massed practice.
— If they give up when asked a question, they are most likely experiencing inattention or brain-fog: scaffold by repeatedly hinting at necessary phrasing and necessary dry facts as you encourage them to focus on the evaluative or emotional or critical step. In this sort of case, at the time as they are trying to think, go ahead and punctuate the silence, in a sotto voce and metronome-like manner, with those word or words they’ll need to use, but which are just dry facts to them so far. Fade out from doing that. That may help their earlier thoughts drown out impulsive irrelevancy (ie, forgetting what they are doing but out of responsively enthusiastic wanderlust) while establishing a sense of time and energy.
— Do all this in a manner that, frankly, is qualitatively joyful (even if quantitatively mild), regardless of how loony that sounds to you, is usually somewhere between wise and necessary.
— Cajoling is sometimes fine, once you are sure of the rapport, if done in a simple and coach-like or generally friendly manner.
— Rebuking, also, once you are sure of the rapport, and doing in a good humoured manner (not humorous: just in good humour), coupled with compassion and even commiseration, is usually absolutely fine, unless of course they also suffer from oppositionality.
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CATEGORY TWO:
Using ‘Sense It’ for Students with
a Pattern Spotting Approach that is
Occasionally Seen with ASD and Similar Characteristics:
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Category Two — Part A — How The Student’s Perspective May Affect This:
‘Sense It’ and Category Two: this category relates to students who frequently experience the perception that:
- — EITHER other people seem to be claiming the existence of a collocation/phenomenon which seems to that one student not to exist, (when in fact the pattern that makes it visible does exist),
- — OR (assuming, this time, the student can discern the pattern which makes the collocation/phenomenon visible), that other people seem to be claiming the existence of a subjective meaning (an implied feeling / value / significance / association) that can be palpably sensed from mere observation of pattern, this being a meaning that the student has great difficulty discerning.
Helping Them See What You Mean:
Note that, in such a case, upon talking to the student about their perceptions of this, they are unlikely clearly to disagree with you, or to agree, since, assuming this is the case, they will have as much difficulty seeing that you are in fact referring to anything meaningful in particular as they have in discerning, the phenomena themselves. This means that it can seem to them that they are confirming, in a casual and disengaged manner, that they have seen the patterns you refer to after all, when, in fact, they are just thinking that the teacher has started to waffle in a pointless manner about nothing, so that the politest thing to do is is to be seen to go along with it in a reassuring manner. That does not mean that I am referring to a student who does not perceive that they need help. That student can be actively asking you for help and still think that your discussion of the phenomena (the ones they cannot discern) so patently absent of meaning that you are effectively avoiding giving them help. You will almost certainly need, in such a case, to make clever use analogy (though maybe not metaphor) even so that the student can be reassured that you are talking with reference to the help that he has requested.
Helping Them See The Learning:
They may or may not find this puzzling and perhaps frustrating, but the point is that, utterly, invisibly neutral in terms of emotional, functional or organisation colouring. I don’t mean boring, or chaotic, or condemnable, or disliked. I mean that it seems like absolutely raw data to them, organised but not usefully so, and with no credibly or persuasively useful or purposeful meaning — like you’ve given them a page with many columns of random 4 digit numbers to read but without telling them why, or a grey box with grey marbles which you ask them to count. In such a case in the real world, you’d need to get creative with ‘Map It’ just to make a start, but you will certainly also need to find some way of tricking some emotional or sensual or judgement-related discernible definition into your and their process to prevent the subject materials’ lack, as it seems to them, of sensate landmarks from generating general error and irritation.
To young people, perhaps if they suffer from inattention, or perhaps, if their Aspergers is rendering the point and pattern of an exercise hard to feel as well as to know, they may experience many situations in some way similarly to this idea.
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Category Two — Part B — A Few Simplistic Tips for Coach or Tutor—
Tips that may be of use working with this category of student, whether in the (above) hypothesised situation or not:
- · If your student has ASD / is Aspie, or seems not to see all social aspects of communication and / or other social premises and assumptions or doesn’t seem confident in their recognition of or allocation of significance to the same patterns which they are being told are important, then some of this advice MIGHT be relevant.
- · Use masses of thoroughly explained, very solid and grounded analogy (as opposed to metaphor) when the student expresses concern at difficulty understanding something, after which, as much as they will willingly tolerate, ask them, in a relaxed manner, to explain aspects of what you said back to you or ask them to use it in some thought exercise, there and then, but without haste. Emphasise that taking their time is splendid.
- · Don’t assume they are good at theory of mind / empathetic comprehension just because they got one metaphor or mood reading correct: perhaps surreptitiously over time, or perhaps grabbed quite quickly, you should seize upon several opportunities — sensitively yet confidently — for assessing this.
- · Possibly you will find that you’d best flag up all anthropomorphisations, but possibly not.
- · Typically an extra-patient, extra-relaxed (but clear and upright) and thoughtfully reflective tone (body language too) is welcome and effective. Probably ere a little on the side of styling your manner as though you are chatting to a very clever adult with whom you feel very comfortable but in a nicely clear and formal sort of way.
- · If they give up when asked a question there is a risk they are feeling shame and fear: scaffold, especially with kindness.
- · Usually better not to cajole or rebuke robustly, emotionally, figuratively or idiomatically in situations lacking urgency and gravity (given elevated risk of that being incorrectly understood). More than an off-hand chance that sympathetic, patient explanation would be more effective than a rebuke (Unless doing so would itself be downright puzzlingly out of character with context!).
- · Very often in this category, the student loves having stuff explained to them, quite patiently, including what they did wrong (sensitively!!), unless they also experience oppositionality (I don’t mean anger), but that is not as common as it is with ADHD but without ASD.
- · Having said all that, even more so than for the highly varied presentations of ADHD (quite a lot more actually), personality range and diagnostic range among people with ASDs is just staggeringly wide and open, so all of this be taken particularly tentatively for your purposes.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
Why You Should Reframe ‘Method,’ Not ‘Error’
This chapter concerns MIDAS components, ‘Divine It’, ‘Assess It’ and ‘Sense It’.
I have said above that this chapter will be an important part of this book’s mission, among other things, to increase the role, not just of deep and accurate empathetic understanding in assessment, but of deep compassion for individual students as a key components in judgement of planning and execution.
There are many well-meant, deep simplifications in teaching theory that suppress discussion as to whether the young should be told that ‘errors’ are for embracing, for eradicating, or for something altogether more complex. Indeed, the question as to whether errors should be ‘embraced’ is almost never posed. I have only ever heard it rhetorically promulgated as an approach not to tinkered with. This is partly because deep simplifications in general are how consensus operates but partly also because this is how ideological battles are waged.
So the question ends up as little more than a proxy ideological battlefield between professors, activists and other political actors — not students!
Here is an all too real situation in which teachers can unwittingly supply the driving dynamic, and which can cause suffering and reduction of access to learning. It is worth spending a moment on as it illustrates my argument that a focus on reframing error isn’t wrong so much as problematically simplistic.
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Group Dynamics: Errors of Answer and Errors of Synchrony
It is valuable to note that teachers often are excellent systematisers, and that excellent systemisation is a pretty critical tool, among others, for the incredibly hard thing of getting modern lessons, with all their professionally required complexities, and populated with real children, to run smoothly at all. It is further true that this systemisation can, without training push-back, lead some teachers accidentally to ‘garden’ in a style that only lets a certain style of answer or verbal contribution flourish, and that this will certainly inhibit answers perceived by the contributor as being at risk of error.
After all the human dynamics of the situation means that, as in any human group, most of the children would, half-unconsciously, view such a situation more as one in which the intuitive group-behavioural moral hygiene imperative (and therefore the emotional purpose of the exercise) is to show empathetic and behavioural conformity with the group. In such a milieu, given this result, the teacher would believe that they have the main body of students showing excellent understanding of the topic being discussed and amazing engagement in the topic (and that must, to an extent, be happening for the socially most capable students) whereas in fact the dynamics are almost entirely one of group intelligence and group empathy. Children of the centre of that bell-curve will seem only to benefit but in fact they will be mis-learning the lesson as teaching avoidance of flexibility of thought and avoidance of non-conformity (as evidenced, so it seems to them, by an incorrect answer) as acts of social disharmony and social disloyalty. Impulsive and inattentive children, Children with difficulties identifying popular patterns and other social phenomena, children with verbal language difficulties and so on, would not just be left out, but feel ashamed as they know they would likely get it wrong. In fact, as the identifier pattern belonging to the correct sort of answer may well be a thing that can be sensed emotionally, children with healthy self-regulation and social instinct, but evenly lower aptitude, may also be able to participate, tending to convince the teacher further still that all is well with his or her method. Worse still, the teacher themselves may misrecognise those not participating or participating incorrectly as doing so out of disinterest or disrespect. Thus, when a child gets the answer wrong in thus milieu, the reason they will feel the other children rile (real or imagined) and even perhaps feel the teacher suppressing (or displaying!) their irritation will have nothing to do with a lack of tolerant or a failure to embrace, error.
The problem turns out as being precisely those ritualised ‘student dialogics’ that have been, in this scenario, so carefully built into the lesson, as this awakens the wondrous yet dangerous human phenomenon of eusocial harmony with all its power and potential for sudden results — unfortunately, in this case, the teacher has created a lynch mob. The student who embraces error in that environment will feel, in horror, existentially self-eradicated when much of the class, literally audibly, groans in their (sincerely meant) moral disgust at the act of error, the error being judged and perceived as a moral failing that has been forced upon the group as an organism.
This moral disgust arose from the unconscious social aspects of their group mind which, faster than any conscious countermand or decision, concluded that the erring student is seeking to contaminate and harm the group organism. And the individual students who collectively work this apparent telepathy? Were they able to examine and articulate their participant-thought, they would find their judgement to be that he or she must be malevolent! The group organism has activated its immune system against that student. Even the teacher will experience have mixed reactions as the whole thing blows up, which the erring student quite possibly discerns.
I said that this would illustrate my argument that a focus on reframing error isn’t wrong so much as problematically simplistic.
The teacher who works at pardoning and beatifying the very essence of error, in itself, probably will indeed succeed in avoiding this worst of harmful situations! That, together with the valid but dehumanised logic that error really can be logically reframed as usefully unexpected data, makes it impossible for me meaningfully to classify ‘reframing error’ as just invalid: nevertheless, striving for reality to allow us the transformation and liberation of youthful perception of error valence and culpability is, at best, a wholesome but naively simplistic quest, and, at worst, a politicised and doomed fool’s errand.
That same portion of the class afraid to say the wrong thing, are not going to be liberated by this liberation.
In this way, debates over reframing error as the opposite of error — debates largely or entirely over the heads of most students below 21 any way — have offered little more additional territory for “proxy ideological battlefield between” adults referred to above.
The over-focus on whether young people can be talked into saying potentially incorrect things in front of their peers further demonstrates that the issue of opportunities for deep learning or deep changes have simply been tidied out of the conversation altogether. Plato’s class separation out of aptitudes of gold, silver and bronze is expected to do more of the heavy lifting today than almost any other period: the only real change is that the division of gold-silver and bronze (“High Ability-MA-LA” in modern educational parlance) used to align more with divisions between schools, whereas today the Bronze and the Silver must be seen to wrestle with and be humiliated by the Spartiate elite in their own classroom, everyday (albeit the split now being more one of variations in social intelligence and maturity than in measures of something broader-based). Telling children that to blush is human, but to ere is divine, cannot work.
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Solutions
There is no need to deny the negative valence of error (Assess It), even where there is demonstrable, and demonstrated, reason to be really quite excited about the usefulness of a particular error — the spectacle .
The particular negative valence that actually does require denial, is that which the student attaches to themself, excepting of course, for example, where they have instead taught themselves, maladaptively (so, requiring sensitivity and clarity from the coach, therapist or tutor), to glide over the toxic experience of some repeat error.
Nuance! They are innocent. The error, itself, need not be forgiven, even if it is worth welcoming for its usefulness. Why not, perhaps just in passing, commiserate, instead of telling the child that they are wrong (at fault!) for their laudable attitude to standards? Having made a mistake, they make the worse mistake of failing to be respectful toward their mistake? A teacher claiming to be helping a student while ‘acting so casual’ about their low scores or about all the corrections all over their homework or script will be interpreted as refusing to offer help, which may, of course, be just what the teacher is in fact doing.
More on that in a moment.
One reason not to obfuscate about error is that the actual locus or basis of the true error often is not what the student thinks, thus requiring discussion, not denial. Often what they regard as the error, is in fact just really useful data — data that is merely the result of some true error, and that error, at some level, is always an error in skill. Obfuscate that away and you have secured their inability to find and improve or correct or correctly integrate that skill. It may indeed be necessary to smooth and shift (again, not deny, which is a form of belittlement) their anxiety away from the data they believe to have been ‘the’ error so that they are not so repulsed by the perceived error as not to be able productively to interrogate it (Assess It).
So, telling a student — a student who actually would really like the help — to embrace their errors, is going to smack of fobbing them off and disrespecting their feelings and intelligence; and yet, we have just discussed how it really is more complicated than that.
Thus, this chapter argues that successful paradigm-shifting away from well-intentioned but non-productive student attitudes to more effectively pro-productive attitudes, more often derives from a philosophy that is method-embracing than one which is liberation-embracing.
I emphasise to the student, at every opportunity, the value of predicting (Divine It) when they cannot know for certain the totality of the validity, quality or effect of the outcome or product they are building. I argue (and model for them) this should cause them hunger, fascination and healthy-anxiety at what will result, fortified as they are by the true source of their pride in this matter. They derive real pride from the trouble they go to (at first with guidance) theorising, with reference to their own established discoveries and with reference to knowledge of their verified skills, to establish their exact reasoning for what they do next. Then, if a result is less that desired, that discrepancy is not itself the error, but merely the successful negative outcome of their experiment. The error will lie in the reasoning for their actions, which they took trouble to record (if only in their mind) making it easy for them to amend with pride and always with sense of certainty that they have moved toward a stronger position, and doing so under excellent personal confidence and control, using feeling, experience, recorded intuition and science. I develop this, too, a little further, very shortly.
This kind of mental experimentation (Divine It and Assess It) should become part of their method in all serious matters, tiny or huge, contributing to durable learning and a practical can-do mindset that keeps rewarding itself in a cycle of student achievement: to found such a cycle that advances their attainments beyond their natural accrual with each year of passage toward adulthood, you might help them to experience from increasingly personalised learning achievements that their successes, actually, are stemming from much more than just deserving, willing, and 'efforting' toward them. Successes must be researched, planned, adjusted and methodically assembled (Map It and Assess It). Expressed differently, most student who desire help, are students who need to be expressly taught how successes must be researched, planned, adjusted and methodically assembled.
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The Problem from The Point of View of The Academic Coach or Tutor
But despite all this empowerment and benefit, until the student has really got used to applying this, the sheer distress associated with unexpected errors (Sense It), seemingly lying in wait for the student who keeps making them, terrorising the student (yes, many tutees really are that unhappy about them), will be wearing them down, their errors’ apparently inexplicable causation and persistence even contributing a disturbingly surreal quality to their daily experience. All this pain will be mis-training their young minds, quite unknowingly, quite maladaptively, and merely reflexively, to avoid the pain and disappointment, the shame and the fear. Feeling snubbed from the few times they’ve requested personal help from a class teacher (who will know these things take time to unravel and so will have been unable to help in this way, no fault of the teachers) will not have made things better; nor will they have been helped by disillusionment with simplistic advice meant neither literally nor comprehensively despite not having been flagged to either effect. Enter the academic coach or tutor.
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Students Who Want or Need Help Are Rarely Correctly Understood
Clearly, I am arguing that an ability to assess the nature, breakdown, and depth of the student’s appertaining cares will be important for a mentor wishing to help with this. Clearly, also, I am arguing that depth of pain can be shockingly well masked. So the elephant in the room must be the fact of so many young people — rare in some settings, common in others — seeming to present, consistently and persuasively, as just not caring one way or another! Let us examine this a little.
Imagine a mentor setting out to retrain their student’s emotional perceptions of error causation and guilt. They will need to assess the student in ways that go far beyond or outside of that student’s performance across their academic subjects. Toward this end, one of the first things that our mentor will need to appreciate is that, among students for whom a faculty for independent error analysis is not inappropriately over-ambitious for reason of aptitude at that time, for a tutee to truly not care, one way or the other, is in fact very rare. Of course, young people absolutely can be supremely unconcerned with their academic duties and opportunities, despite having all the usual hopes and anxieties about other things in their life; however, if we exclude those with Intellectual Disability or anyone else being for any other reason, unable to conceptualise the cause and effect of skill and outcome at their age-appropriate educational level, then, contrary to the way it will often seem, genuine lack of concern, one way or another, is definitely a zebra. Poor (too low) fear response (ie, ability to feel anxiety) is real, but rare. Difficulty recognising risk and danger, despite typical levels of anxiety, is also real but rare.
Far more likely explanations for why a student may seem not to care include being in fact overwhelmed by their oppositionality, or by an emotional lability tending toward inappropriate elation, or toward specifically social anxiety. They may also have given up in disillusionment. Although unhelpful that some Growth Mindset enthusiasts see the category everywhere they look, of course there are students who are paralysed by their firm, but unjustified lack of belief in their own inability. For example, they may be affected by the phase of neuronal proliferation through which they are passing. There can also be what they perceive as cultural reasons why they feel they should not engage with the curriculum. It's worth mentioning that, in both such cases, formal Growth Mindset theory will not help and could make things worse.
In so far as it is realistic, and non-invasive, and not contrary to parental or school authority wishes, and free of any other potential safeguarding or professional issues, the one-to-one teacher who wishes to influence study habits, study philosophy and appropriately relevant aspects of student self awareness, needs to form a sense of how accurate their perception of the student’s situation with regard to these things is likely to be.
For example, some attentionally challenged students can get switched — suddenly, unconsciously and self-protectively — by emotional or exhausted stress, into a dreamlike state of the ‘default mode network’. Similarly, they may be prone to sudden onsets of clownish behaviour when asked to do something hard: before assuming they do not care, consider whether you have noticed that, upon becoming just momentarily enthusiastic for some diligent reason, whether in that that instant of enthusiasm, they become instantly distracted into a less conscious, and more reactive state, in which they seem to be subject to a more immature version of their self, as though having instantly become possessed by a far younger version of their self.
In such a case, on future occasions, at predictable junctions, you should probably supply more structure, more emotional assurance, more deliberate calmness and self-awareness technique, more breaking of skills and tasks down into very small sub-steps, probably also requiring the student to take very short breaks at extremely frequent intervals, breaks that involve having to walk around without seeing a computer screen, and without having any snack other than something tiny.
Another, also related but non-identical situation can be wherein the student is attending to, for example, a series of difficult questions. The student is seen to labour over the task, before incongruously and sharply accelerating completion of task-execution, possibly accompanied by some sudden physical shifting of the learning materials, as though suddenly making themselves safe with a slamming shut of the gates upon the monster, while simultaneously seeming to impose upon themselves some fractional burst of excitement, akin to that displayed when getting ‘tagged’ by a friend during a game of tag. In such a case (or the myriad of alternatives, all quite different, that perhaps you feel and taste as akin to this).
This sort of thing could be mistaken for evidence that they are seeking to work in an admirably fast manner, focusing deeply exactly when they should, then celebrating with joy exactly when they should, finally moving on as swiftly as they should. The teacher persuades himself that to interrupt this excellent process, just because they are getting everything wrong, would be wrong-headed. After all, the child doesn’t even seem defeated by the mistakes: he just keeps on going! What excellent philosophy the child must have! Teachers are only occasionally people who know, from years past, what it is to be plagued by bizarre errors for years on end, and therefore rarely know what it feels like.
Alternatively, if you feel you have recognised the scenario as, in fact, not representing so ideal an interpretation, I would advise you to hesitate before therefore concluding that they are in fact trying to get away with something in any conscious way.
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What Should the Coach or Tutor Think About This?
You should consider whether the student has maladapted to schemas of behaviour that minimise experiential awareness of the results of their labours (they don’t know they are doing it), natural selection having pruned away the behaviour sequence that felt like harm (See Supporting The Switch To Experimental Method, below).
Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it. Why would I think we should make them ‘face those errors’. They still hate the errors. The approach I suggest is one they quickly see gives them hope then power, not pain. Besides, if they are doing this as a maladaptive behaviour in whatever ‘this’ situation actually, in real life, was, then they won’t only be doing it in that situation.
It is quite possible that what you will have come across and identified, is the perfect opportunity to get working on changing their approach to thinking inquisitively and causatively about their broader skills and even their philosophical identity as a student and a future adult.
As a one-to-one teacher, when in doubt as to whether this is what is happening, assume every door you open is going to be painful for the student in ways you yourself perhaps never experienced at school, or never experienced in association with that particular sort of thing. Such students literally hate and deeply fear the wraith-like errors and other minutiae of disappointing outcomes that will not leave them alone. Telling them to befriend these errors, or literally somehow to excise pertaining emotions from themself, will just feel like expanding the surreal madness of their nightmare. Be fathomlessly compassionate of your tutee — not their mistakes! Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the hated, hateful mistakes, that hook themselves onto to the student like malevolent mosquitoes? Or, are you on the side of the student — their unwitting, unwilling author? In cases of suspected neurodevelopmental disorder or just when you think you have spotted this maladapted response, I recommend that, at least at some key and opportune moments, you actually commiserate — literally, confidently, clearly commiserate — with the student that he suffers from these undesired mistakes. They will never improve without deep-processing each incident, up until the moment when they reach the required step-change in understanding and skill.
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Supporting The Switch To Learning by Experimental Method
Then, upon the next disappointing incident (an incorrect answer; a paragraph receiving negative feedback; repeatedly starting the letter ‘j’ in the wrong place, et cetera), start by showing that you feel sorry for her that this has just ‘happened’. Don’t rush! Don't sound insincere! Your next, immediate, step, will be something quite different. At this point you switch emotional presentation away from mildly concerned but reassuring sympathy and into a slightly excited, victorious sort of celebratory spirit, This change comes synchronised with the change in your narrative as you now congratulate them for having already (you need to have read ‘Assess It’, above, to understand this) pre-noted their explicit reason for the input/decision that created the disappointing incident in question. You remind them that they achieved this by — without denying that something ‘went wrong’ — pre-identifying risk as inherent to any situation where they have to make a choice, and that the choice requires a reason. As long as they took note of their reason, that reason becomes their experimental variable, and any disappointing outcome, however painful, becomes a perfectly useful negative result, leaving them with powerful information with which to deep process the whole problem, with, even allowing for a much messier reality, at least some salvaged pride and unspoilt curiosity.
For students cursed by the fairies at birth with their very own plague of attendant errors, not proceeding by this (or some other) strategy, risks more than merely missing out on advantages. Assuming our example-student not being possessed of a low-conscientiousness personality type, then, typically, being error-prone will only inure them to error on occasions when distractibility itself is blinding them generally. In other circumstances, such a student is more likely to have become, not inured, but sensitised to the pain associated with making errors (discussed further under Well-Masked Fear And Pain, below).
Accordingly, such students are frequently unknowingly trained by circumstance to pre-avoid risk of being lunged at by each marauding error that they have the misfortune to contemplate, by training themselves — albeit more by natural selection of behaviour than consciously — quite thoroughly and specifically to not to interact with their errors at all ! After all, the pain doesn’t feel healthy. It feels like harm. It feels like ‘dwelling in the past’ rather than ‘looking to the future’. And so, carefully avoiding post mortem investigation does not seem lazy or irresponsible to them. In some concealed and buried manifestations, even A-Level students are frequently found to have built this maladapted process into many aspects of their work.
Clearly, this fact alone is compelling enough of a reason for the value I have placed on re-training the student to reframe and resolve “I’m not allowed to believe in problems” mindset into a Problem Solving Mindset, with positivity for themselves and their method and open defiance for those pestilential errors. Any kind of Problem Solving Mindset? We are talking about a problem solving process that takes aim at more than the already laudable goal of fixing the problem in front of you. We are talking about using actual problem solving, specifically of a deliberately strategic kind, so that the process is both inseparable from and self-refuelling by its organic, common sense species of growth mindset; this of course, is the Growth Mêtis growth mindset.
On a more safeguarding oriented note, the mistaken approach of teaching error-prone students to view the error as being a part of their own self (as implied by the claim that error is somehow above criticism and beyond reproach) has wider implications, potentially in relation to adding fuel to internalising tendencies, and also as negative interference in the development of discernment of moral error too — such poaching of parental territory by any school-borne process is to be considered malign and unwelcome.
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Discrimination of Emotion: The Four Æs
Students do this to protect themselves from pain and harm, which is understandable; however, with no emotions, positive or negative in valence, to mark significant moments and significant thoughts about those moments, the human brain would neither act to weaken the memory of the invalid or ineffective learning, nor to deepen the memory of more validated learning. Most of us need very little experience of emotional judgement to trigger that; nevertheless, a young person finding it hard to dwell long and emotionally enough upon errors will be quite unable usefully to learn from them. They are not trying avoid learning from the errors: they simply lack processual method for doing so, and therefore ability to do so — not that there is any psychological need in the process for self-reproach, nor, theoretically, the experience of any negative judgement and emotion: it will work perfectly well just mustering pleasure and satisfaction that you spotted and swatted a ‘false result’, or, even better, being so clever as to work out the nature of the ‘false result’, just so long as the student does focus sufficiently upon that error fully to understand its cause, and to feel some valence of critique or judgement about it.
The sequence of:
Attempt & Emotion ->
Assess & Emotion->
re- Attempt & Emotion ->
Apply & Embed
(hereafter, the four Æs)
is of course, as it were intended by nature to be automatic, but even students without the anxious maladaptive behaviour above described can benefit from being taught consciousness of this natural process as technique, thereby benefiting, by example, preventatively or, as a second example, in cases of students pursuing a level of curriculum that is advanced for their age and maturity.
Making conscious use of this naturally automatic process should certainly be viewed as important to the application of a Growth Mêtis growth mindset. The four Æs are, of course, a combined aspect of MIDAS elements, ‘Assess It’ and ‘Sense It’.
Remember: by emotion, I am here referring to the fruit of emotion, namely the human sense of value judgement that is the core of all critical and evaluative judgement. More generally, the technique is all about students noticing how thinking empirically — like a scientist — truly works for them, not in theory, but in experience of their reality. It teaches them that ‘being organised’ doesn’t mean ‘trying harder’. It means finding ways of verifying everything for oneself, just like learning to notice the pause for identification of one’s rationale, also the pause for identification of one’s emotional reaction, and the pause for verification of what went wrong or disappointingly or unintentionally, plus the pause for mapping it all together, verifying everything’s place, mentally and literally, in time and, figuratively and literally, space. Without that, there is no essay success, no revision success, no group-skill success and no-exam strategy success; some very highly talented students, of course, do these things intuitively while focusing on, as they see it, the content, but even they, absolutely do, do this.
Like MIDAS (of which the four Æs is a component)and the five Herbartian steps (see start of Chapter 7, M.I.D.A.S.), the four Æsare envisaged as a tool for coaches, mentors and teachers.
Unlike MIDAS (taken as a whole), the five Herbartian steps and the four Æs are literally what (among other things) happen in the student’s mind, when learning by exploring anything new and challenging.
This makes the four Æs useful students having trouble with something, for example, if rushing through sequences not out of contempt but panic, or when having trouble making use of emotion and or group-think for learning.
The five Herbartian steps, on the other hand, are not for when something is too hard. They are for when a student is learning something challenging and rich, and wish to get the most out of it.
MIDAS and the four Æs would yield excellent insights for class teachers but they are designed for single-student teaching or coaching. The five Herbartian steps would be amazing or classroom or one-to-one teaching.
I find myself, in my own practice, using the process which I have now tidied up into the four Æs, with passion and conviction, if somewhat more subliminally that implied. So, on one level, I am simply sharing my methods with you. Further, I am recommending it, in good faith, as a system that I enthusiastically warrant could be effective and rewarding for you to use, too. the four Æs’ most pressing function, however — I mean as component within the wider purposes that comprise and compel this book — is to demonstrate that abandoning pop-psychology pedagogies for ones that do the hard work of sticking to the less intuitive, or less ideologically convenient facts and processes of reality, has been done by others to the assured benefit of real students, and so can be done by you.
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Well-Masked Fear and Pain
and the Maladapted Suppression of Emotional Discrimination:
We can all see that all of this kindness and compassion that keeps coming us is going to trigger a least a few mickey-taking liberties from, par exemple, boys of a certain age: if such diabolical things eventuate, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with teacher expression of disappointment; but honestly, that kind of thing’s just never an issue in a one-to-one setting. On the contrary, in a one-to-one setting, with successful Strategic Rapport in place, such incidents provide Incidental Teaching with the most superbly effective emotional and ethical learning opportunities.
A somewhat harder counter-argument to shake would be that the power of Occam’s Razor clearly favours the mainstream Growth Mindset solution of simply editing out — deleting, as it were — the judgementalism from the words ‘error’ and ‘mistake’. Like Plato’s rhetorical polemic, The Republic, which calls for the deletion of weak morals from the elite, by deletion of its image in the liberal arts, the Growth Mindset movement calls for deletion of weak oompf by deleting its representation in language, and, behold, the graduates of tomorrow shall be Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Leaving aside the Stalinist vibe to cleansing and redefining vocabulary, and leaving aside, also, my earlier observations that gaslighting reality just isn’t going to cut it with the young person asking for practical help, and we are left with the much less flippant and more important truth that no maladaptive behaviour or phobia was ever de-sensitised away by evading the problem.
We are talking about exaggerated yet masked, maladapted pain, or painful fear, that many error-prone children (or error-prone anyone, actually) have developed. And, yes, I am also maintaining that this is more common than many will assume.
Excessive, maladapting fear and pain cannot be ignored into non-existence. Naturally if you can help frequency of mistake heavily to reduce, that should be your priority. But if we are talking about an excessive fear of mistake making — something like a true phobia — you can and ought to help the affected child to loose their hypersensitisation to this. Without addressing this sensitisation to the shame and hostility posed by moments of error, the student will not be able adequately to experience, compare and learn from the moments before, during and after experiment and revelation.
Clearly, the tutor needs to discern and verify not only sign of excessively painful response to mistake-making but also sign of any causally distinct dysphoria that could be masking the student’s maladaptive mistake-response from the student’s own meta-awareness. Having sorted this through, the tutor now helps the tutee, in sympathetic manner, to discriminate the tutee’s experience of the threatening spectre of mistake-making from tutee's experience of competing sensations, while giving the tutee something palpably real and positively valenced (the power of the pre-declared experiment, I have proffered) to outshine the dark-light of the mistake, and, voilà, every time they roll through this declension, they will de-sensitise that little bit more to whatever maladaptively excessive pain responses are interfering with their learning and their choices.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024
Beyond Mêtis and MIDAS: Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
Let us say that academic tutoring and academic coaching may deliver on four composite areas:
- - knowledge of self and others,
- - self-regulation,
- - academics
- - and personalised educational health.
Their parts would originate in an awkwardly fragmented way out of such evidently unlike disciplines as:
- - pedagogy,
- - epistemology and philosophy
- - psychology, neuroscience, and psychoeducation
- - preventative medicine and physical education
- - while recognising, as a source in itself, the sheer weight of lateral and innovative thinking derived by analogy and metaphor to everyday life, especially as it seems to turn out, to economic, management and military thinking and the fine arts.
This diversity of origin and modality surely contributes to their rarity of occurrence as truly integrated input in teaching, coaching or curricula of study-skill and content, just as it contributes to their rarity of collective integration into students’ own personal schemas of strategy and behaviour.
It is hard enough for any teacher / mentor automating fluency both of input and output of such variety — it will be far harder for the student, even though faced only with a ready-tailored selection. Conversion of words into concepts is not enough; for fluent benefit, they must further convert into percept, and be practiced that way, before final conversion, or integration, into unified, coherent, automatic practice.
Hence, final impediment to the power of these teaching approaches lies not in the complexity involved in processing mere words through fluently joined stages and into practical lesson moments. It lies instead in the conceptual abstraction that will be required of the student to convert and synthesise a complex reversal of something like the same declension, starting with perceptual reception, and finishing with a personal approach that is automatic and coherent enough for the whole operation to escape being just another set of burdens for the student.
Thus, the final impediment lies in their epistemological heterogeneity, and not the processual complexity per se. They’re so different it’s going to sound just silly to the student that they even could somehow be assembled together, even. In order for a student to acquire comprehension of skills of different kinds, drawn from different disciplines, that comprehension will require analysis and analysis requires breaking them up into pieces, whereas, student assimilation and utilisation of the same requires putting them back together again real life usefulness in real life composite tasks. You could, according to the fashion of the day, vaguely allude to the mysteries of the required skills, then stand back and watch as the top half-percenters (and only them) work it out from such hints, but, for students learning one-to-one, you actually could show them, or, better, craft for them their own personal discovery-opportunity! The main point here is the unlikelihood of achieving this through teacher words. Success will depend, instead, on practical opportunities being created for the student wherein he will synthesise his ‘skill discoveries’ out of the parts he finds therein and into a unified experience (perceptual) of the desired balance of skills.
As you can see, we are, here, definitely not talking about a practical model for any classroom teaching, but we certainly are presenting what one should be reaching for as part of one-to-one teaching or academic coaching.
This is particularly true of any tutoring context which arises from the student themself having sought out the tutoring or having truly embraced said tutoring’s potential. For example, a student with ADHD, bedevilled as they generally are by glitch prone access to their poorly networked store of learning, are not going greatly to benefit from the above-stated techniques until they’ve practiced using them in conjunction with engagement in two or more typical or useful tasks, concerns or distractions, and that conjunction will only present itself with carefully mentalised, multi-stage, massed instruction and mixed practice that takes that student, not all the way to mastery, but certainly as far as acquiring a secure experience of how the parts fit together.
Cultivating a learning experience into something that is richer than would be typical, specifically as the modification to assist with a special learning need, would certainly constitute the inverse of whatever modification or adaptation was being fitted to that same student in a classroom scenario. And yet, despite my solution including presentation of such challenging richness, I do argue for this richness specifically because the student has difficulty in response to the higher order parts of the curriculum.
I understand this sounds, if not naive and ignorant and inexperienced, then perhaps just contrarian. Virtually all conventional teaching wisdom says you should progressively reduce either conceptual difficulty or complexity of component parts. After all — so the argument would go — reduction of conceptual difficulty could advantage the attentionally challenged student helping them acquire and retain something out of a classroom lesson without unrealistically heavy additional support (but, Oh classroom teacher, bear in mind you risk insulting and boring that student into failure if their difficulty is only, for instance, attentional or linguistic and not also intelligence and conscientiousness based). Alternatively, reduction of complexity of component parts could mean that a student whose need is characterised, for example, as being one of slow processing, could thereby hope actually to complete an assessment without unrealistically increased time allowance.
For all kinds of reason, it just isn't practicable or realistic for a classroom scenario to assess, customise and deliver the exact increases in complexity that will give that one student their greater opportunity to acquire expected mastery.
The whole point, though, is that making this miracle is exactly what the one-to-one tutor or academic coach can, and therefore, to some appertaining degree, should, attempt!
Remember, I’m talking of a student who really wants tuition, who is upset by their current attainment and must therefore be intelligent enough to be capable, one figurative way or another, of conceptualising skills that are more abstract or complex than the ones they have mastered already from within the relative confines that classroom learning will, in various very specific ways, impose on students with SEN. Were this not the case, these individuals would be suffering no sense of alarm or frustration.
Let us continue with the particular example of an attentionally challenged student, even though with appropriate re-writing, the experience below is re-castable to fit students with social or communicatory challenges.
Such students, their agile minds shackled by the chains either of their poor executive function, suffer a partly but literally isolated experience of reality around them. It is as though a special air gap around them deafens them to a random selection of those hard specifics of reality, while distorting the accuracy of their second-to-second synchronisation with the timings specific to that reality. Their consciousness reaches out to seize the facts, so that they can manipulate them in the laboratory of their mind, only to find that the more time-critical, or coldly specific, a detail is found to be, the more effortlessly it escapes from their grasp, like a slippery sliver from a disintegrating bar of soap. The experience is one of isolation from the world — and isolation, made more poignant by the slight but weird sensation that, not only the substance of external reality, but of their own deliberate cogitations seem to want to get away from them, seemingly in proportion to their wish that such percepts and concepts not flee. It isn’t just inconvenient. It can be exhausting, insulting, shaming, disturbing and crushing.
My point here is that, with this particular kind of student, the fact they will get easily lost in the face of complexity makes them seem to be the last student whom you should be ‘troubling’ with such elaborate and ambitious method, and yet, it is precisely this sort of student who — finding the processing rich chunks (chunked conceptually, perceptually, figuratively) of data easier than manipulation of numerically rich but, in purely essential terms, meaninglessly raw data — may derive the most benefit from the probable heightening of meta-skills and analytically figurative skills that a life of attentionally leaden feet will have driven to a greater degree of excellence than would have evolved within that individual.
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Incomplete Aspects of Enquiry Based Learning And Spiral Curriculum
Piecing together my recommendations, I have called for ‘practical opportunities being created for the student wherein he will synthesise his “skill discoveries” ’, this to be done ‘in conjunction with engagement with two or more typical or useful tasks, concerns or distractions,’ and all ‘with carefully mentalised, multi-stage, massed instruction and mixed practice’. Fortunately, there is a very well established teaching and learning approach out there that is seasoned and ready to go for any tutor wanting a unifying mechanism or armature for assembly of such complexity into coherence. Not that the mechanism in question, Enquiry-Based Learning, was ever specifically created as an engine of coherence, but it does very nicely, albeit with a bit of a caveat.
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The Problem With Bruner’s Spiral Curriculum
For myself, I certainly believe in Enquiry-Based Learning, even as I do reject that no legitimate alternative exists. I do also reject the way it is sometimes used, as fig leaf, to conceal that it is widely known that most children are going to flounder in frustration in UK comprehensive environments — an environment that defines mastery and independence in ridiculously mature terms relative to biological norms of maturation for a given age: after all, as a process largely confined to the black box of any one child’s conjectured Enquiry-Based Learning approach, will overwhelm many students, even as the progress of others defy testing or contesting.
Put another way, Enquiry-Based Learning isn’t intended for use with spiral curriculum.
Enquiry-Based Learning is often compounded with Jerome Bruner's politicisation of the kind of common sense spiral curriculum that has been making multi-stage liberalia studia possible since the ancient world. Bruner tried to argue, with no evidence (excepting, of course, the millennia of evidence to the contrary), that a genuine understanding of any concept, in the basics of what makes that concept distinct and significant (‘intellectually honest form’), can be taught to any child at any age. Clearly, that child should then able, with help, to express enough of what they grasped, with support, so that the adult can securely infer proof of understanding. Any child. Any age. We are told we just need to translate the concept into ideas that the child CAN work with, or so Bruner's version of spiral curriculum claims. I guess the inability of teachers, everywhere, to verify a child's acquisition of intellectually honest general relativity or intellectually honest Schopenhauer’s pessimism and art theory must show they are simply not up to the task of decoding that child's own special thinking language?
Unless Bruner forgot to tell us about just such a special thinking language (there is certainly no alternative form of thinking that only children use) then Bruner must be rejecting the idea that the juvenile human mind develops, not all skills, propensities and facilities at one common pace, but in some way prioritising development of processes in something like a succession over time, thus implicitly or accidentally maintaining that brains, at all stages after infancy, simply get bigger the whole time. In other words Bruner’s great idea of 1960 comprises rejection of at least 200 years of biology research, requiring, as it does, an 'homunculus fallacy' or something like it, effectively, re-manifesting a form of renaissance era alchemist-mysticism, albeit modernised at least to Nicolaas Hartsoeker's Preformationismof 1695.
Given how stylistically Stalinist it was of Bruner (pseudo-scientific, unfounded premises and claims promising easy, limitless potential for all, conveniently requiring no less than mass re-education of all educators), and given his self-description as left wing (sufficiently strongly that Bruner felt he'd have been at risk of falling out with his father over it), it is eye-opening indeed to learn that since several years before his 1960 book ‘The Process of Education’, Bruner had in fact been part of a large and formal Cold-War Psy-Ops initiative of the CIA for the purpose of devising effective propaganda against Soviet backed communist thinking. In light of that, one becomes curious about Bruner's position. Might he have been setting up essentially an intellectual honey-pot capable of attracting and refocusing both potential Marxian fellow travellers and American Dream enthusiasts? I suspect Bruner was, spiritually, sincerely at home with what he argued, but he must have known he was promulgating not pedogogy but mystagogy.
One actual consequence of following Bruner's interpretation of everyday spiral curriculum is that even the fraction of the fraction of those who go on (for example) to write outstanding sixth form essays — even they — rarely have any accurate understanding of what it is about their essay writing that is so outstanding. The UK custom of being made to teach yourself true essay writing out of a sort of mystery cult ordeal wherein the initiate must learn humility or submission or something, anything, except essay writing — in emulation of the unfortunate Sisyphus one must suppose. Discovering by trial (not even trial and error) which students naturally can write essays and which can't, is a denigrating ritual that is responsible for some of the most persistent, most demoralising, and most profound academic self-doubt and disillusionment many students ever experience . It is also plays no small part in the monumental collapse and implosion of intellectual integrity of purpose and literary standards in the UK and other English speaking countries.
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Spiral Curriculum and Neurodevelopmental Maturation
Too often, spiral curriculum becomes a euphemism for sink-or-swim and a license for wishful thinking with regard to human neurodevelopmental maturation: just because some students really will pick up the self-help ball and run with it does not mean that remotely the same should be expected of other students. Of course general intelligence and previous education are the main input enabling our hypothesised independence-super-star, but my point is that, given that we are not speaking of adults, another key to that one student’s apparent super-success will have been the speed with which the particular, necessary stage or degree of maturation of executive function was reached.
Neurologically speaking, late adolescence (better known as emerging adulthood) completes at ages ranging from mid-twenties through to early thirties. Executive function most commonly completes its rapid phase of development by around 15 years of age, with further slower development to between 18 and 20. This explains the timing not only of A-Levels but gap years, too. It is certainly true that working memory and fluid intelligence tend to develop largely in step with each other, however sustained attention has been shown to develop according to different trajectory. At time of writing, fluid intelligence seems to peak at ages varying massively from 18 to 40. ADHD (who likely number about 1 in 20 people, overall, but whose numbers among those undertaking one-to-one support are enormous) further complicate the picture, with both hot and cold executive function being impaired and developing according to different trajectories in childhood, but actually remaining impaired (for many with ADHD, delayed, for some, permanently impaired) even past 30 years of age.
Obviously, almost by definition, executive function is partly learned; however its developmental trajectory is mainly biological. Same goes for fluid intelligence, attention and working memory. It is understandable that schooling has everyone doing the same exams at the same ages. Nevertheless, plenty of young people have not completed rapid phase EF development by GCSE, let alone subsequent slower phase development by A-Level.
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INDEPENDENCE OR INDIVIDUALISM?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
One: A Safeguarding Caveat
Enquiry-Based Learning emphasises more than independence. It emphasises autonomy. Autonomy is a powerful card to have in your hand. It’s got fans, too: most people of existentialist, or social libertarian or nihilistic or anarchic or relativistic philosophy would regard an approach to thinking and striving that requires and prioritises autonomy to be, anyway, required; however, teaching philosophical autonomy, not as technique or capacity, but as a societal, political or ethical belief, that is firmly parental domain.
Having disambiguated autonomy as ethics and identity from functional autonomy, including academic autonomy, let us consider the relevance of academic autonomy and independence in the context of students which tutors and coaches are likely to work with.
It’s worthwhile for academic coach or one-to-one teacher to bear in mind that many people with social or attentional challenges have already steered their life out to the margins society, where they feel not just lonely but failed, aberrant and desperate. There’s no surprise in common statistics such that, for example, untreated ADHD associates with a risk of suicide attempt that is around four or five-fold as great as for the average person without ADHD (though, happily, with treatment, the risk drops to less than for neurodevelopmentally healthy background population). Just to keep going, from one daily disaster-risk to the next, ADHD sufferers depend on all kinds of idiosyncratic work-arounds, some of them deeply engrained, others snatched from the ether in the panic of a moment. Talk of work-arounds and strategies makes it sound all very clever and even exciting, and to be sure the constant imperative, by hook or by crook, somehow to get by, can lead to some genuinely brilliant ideas, but it is more common for these idiosyncratic measures to comprise further retreats into self-isolation. What’s more, this tendency can spiral, and far more easily than you may imagine, sometimes fuelled by the belief that one's isolation is tactical and brief, sometimes peer pressured by vested interests (misrepresenting themselves as ‘your new family’ or ‘the community’) to 'recognise' each other's 'superpowers' and act recklessly and ruinously accordingly, and sometimes just unknowing of the slippery slope into severed relationships, lost opportunities and isolation from love and support.
So, coaches and teachers, please drink from the cup of individualism in moderation, especially so when advising people who can in any way be classed as statistically or seen as ostensibly at increased risk of internalised illness, suicidality or reclusion, especially when that person already seems dependent upon idiosyncrasy for practical purposes.
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Two: The Collective Nature of Human Knowledge and Capability
We could be speaking of Michaelangelo, Newton or Einstein, and yet we would have to admit that no one single human intelligence, given a life of complete intellectual isolation, would ever get anywhere. Truly, we are a eusocial species. Humans assimilate great chunks and compounds of argument, especially by means of our genuinely considerable abilities to become another person, or persons, or just as easily become some entirely inorganic phenomenon, in the many empathetical and transfigurative mirrors of our mind, their to consider everything in wondrously flexible analogous ways. Every one of us is 'standing on the shoulders of giants' from the moment that we open our eyes each morning.
And yet we live in an era in which we demand, in a purist way, of children, teens and even young adults — perhaps more so the children on tracks which are or which are supposed to be more academic than technical — to puzzle out for themselves anything that is particularly compound or abstract, especially, I contend, the skill-base upon which grading systems most depend: the importance of skill-base is spoken of a great deal, of course, but it is usually presented in overly compounded and catch-phrase dependent forms (supposedly to inspire investigation and, fashionably, in a manner redolent of an epoch more concerned with signalling than realities).
Regarding information-base, some disciplines or subjects are better than others at selecting and requiring a suitable informational basis, but, especially as students grow older, acquisition and verification of information-base becomes increasingly sink-or-swim. Not least for reason of classroom management, putting students into teams for learning activities is a thing to which near near all students are accustomed: this admission that so much learning is done already in teams would seem to contradict my claim that children are being required to work too much out for themselves, were it not for the fact that these team situations are generally highly choreographed more as displays than manipulations and applications of skill. As a potential trade-off to benefits, this shortcoming is understandable; less understandable is that, as a practice placing the education of students partly into the hands of other students, this should be attended by such paucity of debate. As for efforts to encourage ability and desire with regard to self-led investigation, this process too often involves, at one extreme, teacher designed photocopies of pre-selected information or, at the other extreme, sending children off to the internet, there, in reality, to establish and reinforce every imaginable bad habit and counter-productive practice possible.
This draws our attention back to where we began: to Strategic Rapport. Strategic Rapport prioritises building independence, sure, but it does so from a place that never stops the modelling of sincere collegial cooperative progress. Interestingly, its genuinely cooperative aspect in fact enhances and is enhanced by the gradient directionalities of the relationship. The mentor/teacher serves the student. The mentor/teacher also leads the student. The student is not left to sink-or-swim. Truly flat, peer-to-peer type cooperatives place their participants perpetually alone in their crowd, lacking the structural dynamic, the gradient, and the push pull factors of more committed, less sink-or-swim, teaching philosophies.
Neither cooperative nor directive form of individualised teacher-engagement are permitted much oxygen by Modern teaching standard practices. This is partly a matter of classroom management practicality and of affordability of teacher-time, but not all of it.
Apollo possesses a weighty sheaf of forebodingly sharp imperatives ensuring no sensible teacher so much as think about compromising the timeless importance of some conventional, visible formality and deliberately structured and modulated distance that exists between staff and minors. Yet the premise — essential to any era of anarcho-nihilism of the self — that boundary, distance and formality can be no more than digital or scalar in nature, without personality, philosophy, purpose and functionality, is quite unfair. The particular flavours and dynamics of stylised, communicative and purposeful formality and distance that characterised the accent of interactive behaviours between teachers and students (as well as most everyone else in society) of some hundred-plus years ago highlighted the greater societal value that was placed, among other things, on an attention to one's duty to others and to other things; today, formality and distance, displayed in a manner authentic to the Zeitgeist, would display a blunting of attention toward others, the student more likely receiving a lesson in self-advocacy than in advocacy on behalf others. 100 years ago, the same essential and deliberate awareness and execution of distance required between student and teacher, was more likely to display a sharpening of self-regulation and consideration that actually allowed for greater precision and thoughtfulness of attention to the other person. Did this usual manner also suggest something, as we are endless reminded, strict? Sure. But calm and respectful, not sneering. More attentive, not more detached. Dickins (to fall further into the timeless past) portrayed many mean-spirited characters, not because the people of his day were generally mean-spirited, but because the people of his day, generally, so despised mean-spiritedness. It is the manner of today that is more likely to express judgement as irritation or anger (personal interest), while it is the manner of a century ago that is more likely to express judgement as disappointment (moral opprobrium): disapproval-by-disappointment requires connection. It requires something clearly positive to be at stake. Without that, a student's response to mere disapproval-by-irritability can amount to no more than fear or, more likely, no less than anger, fuelling, most likely of all, some cycle of contempt.
Consider the evidence of end-of-year school reporting. In order to achieve a strong contrast between the school report of today and of sufficiently long ago, one does not in fact have to go as far back as a century. A few decades will do. Not so very long ago, school reporting traditions were still more likely than not to paint actual portraits of individuals, truthful summations of what was important, clearly without fear or favour and in a surfeit of responsibility and duty toward the student and their parents. Their honesty, sometimes with enough wit to soften tone but not meaning, clearly indicate a sense of connection and duty to the student, not annoyance. Examination of a vintage school report, without the modern reader first casting their frame of mind back in time, could well misunderstand, or more likely misrepresent, the meticulously accurate descriptiveness of the student's prime weaknesses as being unkind, or even contemptuous in tone, but that would not reflect any deep empathetic processing of the context. Your typical vintage report, even in cases of vexatiousness of student behaviour being its main point to communicate, will clearly have been composed with the student's interest at heart, and not for the purpose of expressing any mirrored vexation on the part of the report writer — a point unfortunately lost on some.
How does this contrast against the modern school report? As a tutor, I see school reports from so many schools, for students of every age, and covering many years of their schooling. It never ceases to upset me how rare it is to come across a report that shows more than the most carefully coded of individual truths about students. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it is in fact a strictly accurate and representative description of what I find, at least given a sampling with a heavy representation of frustrated students with mild or potential SEN at competitive schools. Not only does this provide illustration of contemporary abrogation of individualised duty to student-as-scholar — every report crafted out of generic, dogmatic descriptors, each batch of phrases describing every student as nihilistic clone of the next, and only in cult-like unreal positivity — but it shouts the absurd premise that to be other that insultingly cloying must represent a kind of cruelty.
The same systemic failings can be said of the sometimes deliberately Delphic nature of some teacher-feedback to classwork and homework. In so far as such partial mysteries are deliberate, the hope is that students are nudged toward embracing a of Spirit of Enquiry. Too often, however, it isn’t a nudge so much as a conveyer belt into the deep end, and without water wings. I have referred to thus before as sink-or-swim. If there really were a way of backward-engineering from the deliberately mysterious style employed by, for example, much essay marking — even were it merely very difficult to do — that would at least make sense theoretically and so offer some hope. Tutee after tutee comes to me, pushed to personal ignominy and defeatism, alongside a strong sense of disillusionment in their school’s processes, and attending our first session eager that I should decipher the mysterious, but very specific and coherent truths they still believe must lie within these cryptic markings — markings they anxiously assume to be their only tethers to the reality of their progress.
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I look back and find the themes of spurning, patronising, and alienating plus the general abandoning of inconveniently diligent-yet-struggling students, to have the feel almost of a deliberate thing. It is a tone that is found in the background, and sometimes as a fallback. It is not deliberate, at least not in the sense of having been planned, but it is seen by too many as quite unavoidable, or as inevitable in a prophetic sense of a mystery for the faithful to accept and not analyse. And now, just to really fill young people with confidence, they are additionally taught that not only is their future so bad that their means must be, quite literally, demanded and pleaded for, but that so abandoned are they, that the very semantics and abstraction of advocacy itself no longer functions according the physics of the human mind, so that, like all good frondeurs of lutte permanente, students are now routinely and repeatedly taught the paradoxical mystery dogma of self-advocacy. So much for enabling independence.
Thus, it is that part of today's machinery of education that makes its professed love for individualism so ostensible, that abandons its children as individuals to anonymity, to luck and of course to the latter day catacombs of electronic media, its whispering tunnels filled with seductively instant answers and ‘helpful’ abetments, new ‘friends’ and so many reassuringly ‘keep-it-simple-stupid’ demagogueries.
At the very least, students looking for real help in achieving real change and real excellence, or just less fear of failure and error, should be able to count on their academic coach or tutor to have their back — helping them work things out for themselves so that by securing understanding and accessibly of skill and knowledge, they build not mere ‘learning’ but learnedness— providing the student, not with platitudes, precepts, lesson objectives by aphorism and lesson content by Rorschach imagery, but with precisely the remedial or anticipatory steps required for the student to achieve the verifiable skill, verifiable comprehension and verifiable academic independence, which in fact they truly desire.
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Clearly, in addition to enabling the one-to-one teacher or academic coach the better to lead and assist their students, I would be thrilled were my thoughts additionally to achieve any small influence upon contemporary philosophy of teaching. Truly, if one single classroom teacher found insight or inspiration among these paragraphs in relation to their whole-class teaching, that would be a spectacularly happy thing to have achieved; however, the main and true objective here has been to describe and explain an approach toward making truly sizeable contributions — effect sizes much greater than a classroom teacher would expect of a tutor or of any one lesson — as the pupil's or student's one-to-one teacher or academic coach.
- Preface — The Student, The Mentor, and The Purpose
- 'Labelling,' and Other Labels
- Introduction to The Techniques
- Strategic Rapport
- Variable Aperture Questioning
- Mêtis and Growth Mêtis
- The Eidos (formerly M.I.D.A.S.)
- ‘SENSE IT’ — Practical Advice
- Learning by Experimental Method, and The Four Æs
- Beyond Mêtis and Eidos (formerly MIDAS): Cautions, Clarifications, Concerns
- Copyright Rupert Pearson 2024