When the Director General of UNESCO, Frederico Mayor, said that, there is only one pedagogy… the pedagogy of love(1), many educators must have thought that this education for all "thing" is just a bunch of do-gooders who have no idea about the tintacks of practical education. A recent experience left me profoundly lifted to the point where "I got what Mayor was talking about". I hope to describe how I discovered that good teaching is indeed linked to love.
We attended what was at first a fairly typical, planning meeting of high school teachers and the mother of a boy who we were told was having a number of typical problems (completing work, doing homework, producing acceptable work in class, getting organised with materials and getting to class.) The teachers were unsure about both what they could and should expect of this boy in these regards. Last year's portfolios and reports of the previous year appeared of no use in their discernment of his actual learning levels. They sought help in mapping an appropriate course of action.
As we began inquiring, the uncertainty seemed to stem from the fact that this boy has a disability label. Uncertainty came in questions: "Can we have the same expectations for this student? Will we do harm in having typical expectations?" Otherwise confident teachers hesitated in their thoughts of encountering "someone special".
The boy's year 7 teacher beamed with an assured confidence that indeed, treading a typical path was not only suggested, but also critical, if her colleagues were to be helpful. She recounted how she too had been reduced to tears as she grappled with how to teach this boy in the previous year.
She spoke in words of enlightenment when introduced to the notion of learned helplessness. She told how she had been duped by the boy into believing that he was almost totally incapable.
The discussion had moved to the core of the main issue – learned helplessness.
She spoke about how the notion of learned helplessness helped open her eyes to be able to address the boy developmentally: - how to ensure that the same expectations were given, with the same consequences and how she taught the student to own the consequences for the choices he made.
She candidly told us how she addressed his need for a new image of "can do" to replace the fraudulent old habit of helplessness. She emphasized that these habits were so strong that his new teachers needed to re-establish and build upon these learnings for him as well as his peers' view of him. She was passionate about the importance for this boy as being seen as "one of us" and not the "disabled student".
The teacher spoke fervently about her duty of care to this boy – saying that he would one day have to seek a job, be able to speak at an interview and meet responsibilities to others or employers. She reinforced that these developmental issues needed to be addressed now otherwise the school would only add to the maladaptive facade. She then spoke of something we rarely hear about in a case conference. She told us of her love for this boy. She told us how her learning about the need for "tough love" had not only changed her relationship with this boy but had made a profound impact on her personal life.
Of course, by this stage of the meeting we were all at the point of tears. We were witnessing the profundity of understanding the developmental nature of inclusion in a manner that had a powerful ripple across the ponds of typically demarcated professional and personal lives. Inclusion has a big purpose – and that purpose is development. We were privileged to experience how powerful such simple lessons can be. The inclusion of children with disability labels is more than, (and possibly not even) about "niceness". It is about what is developmental and relevant: - delivered within a pedagogy of love.
Postscript:
It may be appropriate to relay a few comments about how this teacher moved from tears to her confident path of tough love in taking the inclusive journey. She told the meeting how our colleague and friend of inclusion for so many years(2) had been called to answer her tears. As is too typical, he had less than an hour and so began by explaining the notion of learned helpless and how to understand and interpret this within her feelings of love for the boy. She "got it"(3), built upon it for a year, and "passed her pedagogy of love forward to her colleagues" and we hope, onto you.
Endnotes
- UNESCO. What Makes a Good Teacher: Children Speak Their Minds
- Darrell Wills
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The student had spent 6 years "coming and going" from a mainstream to a segregated class where he had developed a range of strategies to provide the impression to teachers and others that he could not cope. Wills discovered that this student was very bright and that his brightness was actually his major "impairment" (as he had learned quickly how to use his label to get out of typical requirements.)
In social science we refer to this phenomenon as social role circularity. Social role circularity is when a person is cast into a role (i.e. "disabled"); this is then recognised and labelled by society (i.e., teachers); differential treatment based on that role is then extended (i.e. allowed not to follow rules and expectations of others); the person then responds or conforms to the treatment and "becomes" the label and so performs the role, which then reinforces the original role. The continual repetition of this circularity over time answers the question we all ask in defining ourselves: -Who am I?
The student in this instance had been cast into the "disabled student" role by an early medical label. The role was confirmed to self and others by placement in a special education setting. In this environment, expectations were low and errors were rarely corrected. The student simply learned this role very quickly and very well, conforming to the role and differential treatment over a critical period of development in the primary school years. The result being what we call maladaptive learning.
In the field of psychology we refer to the phenomenon as learned helplessness; (i.e.
Seligman demonstrated that how we interpret our experience will shape the questions of: - who am I and what can I do?). Lessons of learned helplessness and maladaptive learning have been known in the literature of institutionalisation and segregation since the middle of the twentieth century, however these are fields our generic colleagues will have had little exposure to. For further readings in these specific fields we suggest as a starting point: Wolfensberger, W. (1975). The Origins and Nature of Our Institutional Models. Human Policy Press: New York; and Witmer and Kotinsky. (1952). Personality in the Making. Harper and Brothers: New York.
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