Editorial
The text was adapted from an assignment the author wrote for Mr. Michelioudakis’ workshop “Psychology & Education” in the final year of English Literature in the University of Athens. So it’s thanks to him that the text found its way to HLT. NB. The 3Rs of Education: Relationship, Relationship, Relationship” come form Riley, 2011: page 1.
John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory and Its Implications for Education… or “the 3Rs of Education: Relationship, Relationship, Relationship”
Christos Foskinis, Greece
Christos Foskinis holds a BA in French Language & Literature and a BA in English Language & Literature, both with the University of Athens, and an MA in TESL, St. Michael’s College, Vermont, US, and has taught English as a foreign language to students of all ages and levels for more than 15 years. E-mail: christosfoskinis@hotmail.com
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Introduction (or a disclaimer)
John Bowlby (1907-1990). Attachment Theory
In the class (“the three Rs of education”)
Conclusion (or content Vs process)
References
“When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: “Man”. That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus.”
Seferis’ speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, on December 10, 1963. How timely, today.
'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?
(Hamlet, Act III, Scene ii)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to make Hamlet reveal his true intentions by pretending to care about him as friends while, in reality, they carry out orders of his uncle. Hamlet takes a recorder and insists that Guildenstern play it. Guildenstern desperately admits he doesn’t know how to play the recorder and Hamlet asks him if he thinks a man is easier to play than a piece of wood. No one should be so pretentious as to think they can ‘play’ people. And psychology is not about that.
Like Carl Rogers, I find psychology very relevant to teaching and I can’t help interpreting what is going on in the class in psychology terms (e.g. transference/counter-transference, content Vs process, the dynamics in group therapy) but I would like to point out here a possible danger. Maybe everyone who has been interested in psychology may have felt the lure of manipulating others. But, since it is not enough to do the right thing unless you do it for the right reasons too, a teacher who starts reading psychology should take some time to think what use s/he really wants to make of it. My thesis here being that Man should be at the center of our interest, the answer I have given to the previous consideration is that psychology helps us understand people, not manipulate them. You cannot help someone unless you can first understand them and since a teacher’s role is to help their students [to learn], they should try to understand them. There is an incident from a book about Milton Erickson that illustrates exactly my point most eloquently (Rosen, pp. 46-47). I tell it to some classes I teach in my own words and in first person to achieve a more direct result:
“As I walk on the country road, a horse that looks upset approaches me. Since it has its gear (bridle etc) I mount it and I let it lead me. After some miles we enter a farm and the owner approaches us and asks me: ‘How did you know it belonged here?’ I tell him that I didn’t, it led me. All I had to do was to keep it on the road.”
This story encapsulates my teaching theory.
The idea from the field of psychology that I would like to discuss in this paper and connect with teaching is the attachment theory founded by John Bowlby. Attachment theory cannot be traced directly in the literature of modern teaching theory but I consider it to be in the foundations of person-centered (in Carl Roger’s terms) education.
“If you do not love me, I shall not be loved” (Samuel Beckett)
in the movie My Old Lady (2014).
When Bowlby expressed the idea that the parents should go to the baby’s bedroom every time the baby cries the prevalent conviction was that if parents respond to the baby’s crying they will spoil it. However, over the years, important research came to support Bowlby’s theory, mainly Harry Harlow’s experiments and Mary Ainsworth’s research. “The extraordinary findings of the Harlow experiments, in which he claimed to have found the nature of love, were that the baby Rhesus monkeys preferred to cling to a fur-covered wire “mother” that could not feed them rather than a lactating wire mother without fur” (Riley, p. 123). Mary Ainsworth’s contribution was equally important. She experimented with infants in room full of toys and studied their behavior when their mother was present or when the infants were alone or with a stranger. What is interesting here and relevant to teaching is how those infants felt more secure and bold as to explore the room in their mother’s presence. “The child who has to fend for herself too much through lack of forethought or empathy by the caregiver, whose explorations from the carer are unfulfilling, dangerous or worse, soon learns not to venture out and loses curiosity about the environment in which she finds herself. This has serious implications for the child and her teachers when she reaches school age” (Riley, p. 14).
According to Bowlby’s theory the problems that adults have derive from a disruption in the bond between the mother (actually, the caregiver) and the baby, which bond seems to be a most powerful motive (Riley, p. 123). This theory constitutes an important departure from the classic psychoanalysis, in the tradition of Freud, in that the human infant does not evolve due to internal drives (as classic psychoanalysis holds) but due to environmental influences (Riley, p. 124).
Bowlby has defined the types of attachment with the secure attachment as the healthy type of attachment and the other types as problematic. In the secure attachment the caregiver constitutes for the infant a secure base from which the baby, feeling safe, can part and explore the environment around it. The relational patterns of the adult life depend on this first stage of the relation between the mother and her baby. And this is what the epigraph of this section means.
“So, of the three subjects of this book, Memory is a by-product of Meaning, and Method should be the servant of Meaning, and Meaning depends on what happens inside and between people.”
Earl W. Stevick, Memory, Meaning & Method (1976)
Philip Riley begins his book asserting the importance of relationships for the educational process. The main subject-matters, reading, writing and arithmetic, cannot be successfully dealt with without the catalyst of education, which is human relationship: “This book essentially rests on two premises: the first is that the traditionally conceived foundations of education, the 3Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic), are not the foundations at all. In fact, they can only be built on an even more fundamental set of 3Rs: relationships (Relationship from the student’s perspective, Relationship from the teacher’s perspective, and the priority given to Relationship formation and maintenance from school leadership). For a school to function effectively and for students to learn effectively both sets of 3Rs must be in place. The second premise that underlies this book is that too little attention has been paid to the fundamental 3Rs by educators. The aim of this book is therefore to address this by applying what we have learned about how relationships are formed and maintained to the very specific context of the classroom. So, to begin at the beginning…” (Riley, p. 1).
I think there are three main points that we teachers could keep from the theory above. First, it is the need for true, honest and positive relationship with the student (of all ages –children, adolescents and adults). In Thinking Through Teaching, Susan Hart reports a case in which a young teacher was faced with one little student in her class who was very undisciplined and ruined everything she was trying to do. However, she kept being very calm and kind with the kids until one day she exploded with anger because she couldn’t take it anymore. All the kids, and Thomas, looked shocked because they would never expect their teacher who was always so calm to behave like this. Unexpectedly though, her relationship with Thomas improved after the incident. The bottom line of the story is that Thomas was experimenting with the limits of his teacher. He couldn’t accept that there was a person who never got angry; it seemed unnatural because everyone he knew got angry from time to time. The point is that kids want real people for teachers, not robots. And real people express all the range of feelings.
“Janice explained how after she had shouted at Thomas, she had felt deflated, guilty, manipulated, dissatisfied with herself. And yet, in a sense, she felt she had answered Thomas with a new honesty. In the past, she had responded to Thomas’ attempts to explore the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour with professional self-restraint. […] Seeing Thomas not just more accurately, but more justly and lovingly…, entailed re-defining his non-compliance as systematic enquiry. Thomas did not share his teacher’s interest in classroom rules and routines; his interest was in more volatile and immediate areas of experience –his personal relationships with adults and children. As a result of this internal act of re-definition, Janice Brown’s own relationship with Thomas was radically changed” (Hart, pp. 77-79).
As for positive relationship, it has to do with our response to students and it is related with the secure base we saw in the previous section. It is very important to remember that kids with a secure base tend to be more inquisitive and uninhibited in their exploration beyond their comfort zone. We certainly don’t want our students to be afraid to participate lest they make a mistake. As we have already seen in reference to Mary Ainsworth’s research children who feel secure are less inhibited and more willing to risk and explore. “Companionable interaction and the capacity for mutual pleasure, whether playful, sexual or intellectual, is central to secure base capacity. Attachment theory postulates that there is a reciprocal relationship between secure base behaviour and exploration. When people feel threatened, they will seek out their secure base and, for the moment, fun and play will be correspondingly inhibited. Anxiety is the enemy of enjoyment” (Holmes, p. 12).
The second point is the remedial action that classroom activity can have. Although this requires further investigation, there is evidence that attachment disruption at an early age can be reversed: “a consistent and dependable teacher can be a secure base at school, a home away from home. […] The insecure child is also unconsciously searching for a corrective emotional experience from school through peers and teachers” (Riley, p. 15). Students –as well as teachers—tend to look for a corrective experience later on in their life and they do so especially in the class (Riley, ibid.). As I see it, to a considerable degree, the teacher’s role in the class is to present the students with an image of the world which is more objective than this they get in their families, and as a consequence to even shock them. “If the inner working model decrees ‘I am not worthy of praise’ then praise offered by a friend or colleague creates emotional dissonance within the person who must reduce it by either changing her inner working model to include positive judgments of self by others, or by rejecting the praise of others as incorrect” (Riley, p. 21).
Third, and to me most important, is the importance of the social aspect of the class. We define ourselves in social context. “In order for any learning to take place, as has already been noted in Carl Roger’s model, what is first needed is for the members to interact in an interpersonal relationship in which students and teacher join together to facilitate learning in a context of valuing and prizing each individual in the group” (Brown, p. 59).
Hamlet or Don Quixote?
Ivan Turgenev, Hamlet & Don Quixote, 1860
Let us suppose you are determined to deal with little John who is negligent in doing his homework and absent-minded in the class. You tell him that if he doesn’t study he won’t learn new things and he replies that he doesn’t care to learn new things; he’s quite satisfied with what he already knows. You tell him that he won’t get into the University and he won’t find a good job in the future. He tells you that he doesn’t want to find a good job; he’s just fine as he is. You go on to tell him that if he doesn’t get a good job he won’t make money and he won’t be able to do what he wants in life, to buy the things he likes or make his own family and so on. He tells you (not surprisingly enough) that he’s just fine as he is. During all this dialog you start getting angry because you speak to him with such understanding and patience and you use such logical arguments, using persuasion and not coercion, and –look at him, he responds to your logic with childish stubbornness! The problem with the situation above is that you think only in terms of content. The content is what you and your little student are saying. In everyday life communication, content is not always so important. There is another factor that can be extremely important in human interactions: the process. Taking the process into consideration in the situation above would mean that you would realize that at that time your student is defensive and there is no way to convince him about anything whatsoever. In fact, considering the process (which is a much more dynamic and interactive notion than content) practically means trying to see the other person’s point of view… in relation to yours.
In his lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, in 1860, Turgenev made the point that these two heroes are the two extremes of a continuum: Hamlet is exclusively concerned with what is going on within him and Don Quixote is motivated by an external ideal. It is impossible for Hamlet to love or to be loved because his only point of reference is himself.
In the Renaissance, people turned again towards Man as the measure of things («Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος») by rediscovering the classical texts. As a consequence of this turn, literature and arts blossomed. Hence my use of the epigraphs. The form cannot but comply with the content. And this is process becoming content.
Brown, H. Douglas, (1994) Teaching by Principles (An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy).
Hart, Susan, (2000) Thinking Through Teaching; A framework for enhancing participation and learning.
Holmes, Jeremy, (2001) The Search for the Secure Base_ Attachment theory and psychotherapy, Routledge.
My Old Lady (2014), movie.
Riley, Philip, (2011) Attachment Theory and the Teacher-Student Relationship: A practical guide for teachers, teacher educators and school leaders, Routledge.
Rosen, Sidney, (1991) My Voice Will Go with You.
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet.
Stevick, Earl W., (1976) Memory, Meaning & Method, some psychological perspectives on language learning.
Turgenev, Ivan, (1860) Hamlet & Don Quixote, translated by Moshe Spiegel in Chicago Review, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1965), pp 92-109.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I, For Harry Harlow’s experiments with rhesus monkeys and the surrogate mothers.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU, for Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation.
Please check the NLP & Coaching for Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
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