Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:883] Re: Response to Barry Kort's query
From: Graeme Faulkner (Graeme@mail.nu)
Date: Fri 12 Jan 2001 - 06:40:51 MET
From: "Graeme Faulkner" <Graeme@mail.nu> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:883] Re: Response to Barry Kort's query Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 18:40:51 +1300
Regarding Barry Kort's statement "that fear seems
to be a significant factor in arrested learning",
yes,
it has been a significant factor amongst some
classes of students, and a very major factor for a
few students in my experience.
This is particularly the case when the fear
involves imagined humiliation related to possible
failure.
At the risk of being accused of supporting this
statement by singular examples, rather than
carefully designed double-blind experiments, let me
illustrate this assertion via some examples from my
teaching experience, after making the comment that
it may be difficult to design ethically acceptable
experiments to validate the claimed effect of fear
in some of the cases given.
1) Adult Education students.
Over a decade ago I taught several daytime Adult
Education classes designed as an introduction to
computers for adult learners, the majority being
Mums who had children doing computer subjects at
secondary school, and who wanted to be still able
to talk to their kids...
I rapidly found that progress in the first few
lessons was being held up be an adult fear of
making errors. Kids aren't like that. Typically
they explore computers without fear, trying
everything they can think of. Adults don't; they
seem "in the real world" to be taught that it is
better to do nothing than to make an error. I
actually had to start by getting the adults to make
deliberate errors, and learn that the machine did
not ignite or collapse, giving verbal praise for
the most ingenious errors! (Taught me a lot about
interface design!) After their fear had been
removed, the classes progressed really well,
compared with those where the fear had not been
dealt with.
2) Scared adult education students.
This led to the Adult Ed. board asking me to run a
couple of experimental classes entitled
"Introduction to computers for people who hate
computers". Amazingly (to me) we filled several
classes with students who had emotions ranging from
strong dislike/fear to almost a phobic reaction. It
was not a normal adult education experience for me
to cheerily start a class & notice that many
participants looked strained and one or two were
looking at the computers with ashen faces and
fingers that were actually trembling! I ran
relaxation/soothing sessions at the start and end
of each class (I have a psychology degree &
experience in counseling as well as my computing
qualifications) and this seemed to help a lot. The
dropout rate was higher than for the other courses,
but the students who remained were grateful.
However I did take a deep breath when I discovered
that in one of my classes I had been giving
relaxation sessions to one of the most prominent &
distinguished psychiatrists in town. Ulp. I hope I
had done it right.
3) An instance of the effect of fear removal.
I was congratulating one of my third-year
University computing students on an excellent
assignment, when she made the comment "Of course
you know it's only because of you I'm here". I must
have looked completely blank. She then explained
that her father had been a participant in one of
"my" (actually their) adult ed. classes. When a
computer was later dumped in his office & the clerks
were told to "make it work", all the other clerks were
scared, and he was the only one who had the
confidence to pick up the manual & learn to use it.
She commented he did the work for the other clerks,
was later placed in change of the section, and
later again gained another promotion because of his
computer expertise. The resulting higher salary was
the only reason he could afford to send his
daughter to University. She further commented that
her family were "really proud of me", because she
was the first person in the history of their entire
extended family not only to get to year 12, but
even to get as far as University...
All those adult ed. courses really did, (in my
opinion), was remove the participant's fear of
computing, and give them experiential permission to
take the same fear-free experimental approach that
children take. To say I was startled at this level
of spectacular outcome from a humble 10 session 20
hour adult ed. course was a gross understatement, I
felt humbled.
4) Darker fear in tertiary students.
In practice, not all fear is dealt with.
Fortunately (touch wood), instances like the
following have not happened with one of my students
so far, but with increasing class sizes and the
resultant loss of personal contact, it probably
will at some stage :-(
An overseas University student jumped off a high
bridge, committing suicide.
When his bloated body was later recovered,
we held a service for him. The Engineering students
(I'm an Engineer) told me he had been supported
by his family in his home country,
and feared facing them after a failure.
This sort of self-sacrificing family support was a
common and necessary feature for some of our fee-
paying overseas students. The Australian dollar is
not all that strong, but some of the S.E. Asian and
Oceanic currencies are even weaker, and the
relative purchasing power of money remitted from
home can shrink (in some cases by an order of
magnitude) to a pitifully small amount when changed
into Australian dollars, and often the entire
extended family, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles,
cousins etc. are working to support the student.
The same evening, we also had a Management student
borrow a friend's car. He was discovered next day
with a rubber hose running from the exhaust pipe in
to the car. I was informed that his fellow students
told a similar background story. To these two students,
apparently the fear of the imagined humiliation of
facing their family was so strong that they
preferred death. To say, for these students, "that
fear seems to be a significant factor in arrested
learning" would seem to be a tragic understatement.
Graeme.
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