The subject of this material is the psychological factors that affect learning and behaviour. The teachability factor constitutes a significant part of the learning equation, much more so than does intelligence, but it has largely been taken for granted. Traditional educational methods and curriculum assume teachability, setting teachers up for considerable frustration when this assumption is mistaken. Our efforts in upgrading our information technology, fine-tuning our curriculum and honing our teaching skills are likely to be in vain if the underlying problem is a lack of motivation and receptiveness on the part of a student.

According to Dr. Neufeld, the teachability factor is undoubtedly the most overlooked, the least understood and potentially the most promising of all the factors in the learning equation. In this seminar or course, Dr. Neufeld examines the factors that constitute a student’s teachability and offers suggestions for how to enhance it. He also reveals a common root to both learning and behaviour. The seminars and courses on teachability have been the most requested of Dr. Neufeld’s offerings from those in educational circles.

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Course description

The teachability factor refers to those determinants of learning that are psychological in nature, that is, developmental, relational and emotional. There are signs that the teachability of students is on the wane. The implications for education are profound. To the degree that this is true, teaching is becoming harder, despite our being the best equipped and most educated ever. Furthermore, the gap between our students’ potential and their achievement will be widening. Teaching ‘harder’ is not the answer; enhancing teachability is.

What drives the engine of learning are the two basic psychological processes of attachment and maturation. There would be no reason to lift the hood on this engine if everything was working as it should. For an increasing number of students, this is not the case. For the sake of these students, it is necessary to become acquainted with these basic driving forces and their involvement in learning and behaviour.

The maturing processes play a critical role in learning and behaviour. Instead of one singular growth force as was formerly believed, there appear to be three distinct maturing processes. Another misconception, previously held, was that these maturing processes were active in all children and could be engaged by developmentally-friendly teaching. For example, all children were assumed to be interested and curious about their world; the teachers challenge was to tap into it. This optimistic view has turned out to be hopelessly naive. It is true that all children possess the potential to mature, but these processes need to be active in the child BEFORE they can be engaged for the purposes of education. When children are missing these processes, teachability is restricted accordingly.

For example, it is the maturing process of integration that enables a child to experience inner conflict and that equips a child with self-control. Students who lack integrative functioning are impulsive in behaviour, black and white in their thinking, egocentric in their relating, know better than they behave and are unable to benefit from confrontation. Teachers are handicapped severely when dealing with a nonintegrative child.

Likewise, it is the adaptive process that enables a child to learn from negative experience including failure and mistakes. If this process is missing, the student will not learn by trial-and-error or benefit from correction. These children make the same mistakes over and over again, failing to learn from the error of their ways. One of the primary instructional tools of any teacher is correction and over eighty percent of learning is believed to be through trial-and-error. Furthermore, when it comes to teaching lessons in behaviour, consequences are lost on these students. The implications of being nonadaptive are ominous for both teacher and student.

Unfortunately, our curriculum and pedagogy assume adaptive, emergent and integrative functioning, setting us up to trip all over the students who are deficient in these processes. These students require an alternate approach, both to engage them as learners and to deal with their behaviour.

Students who are not maturing psychologically are rendered creatures of attachment by default. In other words, these children, regardless of age, are only equipped to learn from those they are attached to or about that which serves their attachment needs. Anything else is psychologically irrelevant. This would not be a problem for education given that these children were attaching spontaneously to their teachers or using their teachers as their compass points. There have always been children who failed to grow up and still are very capable of learning. In fact, attachment-based learners are highly motivated in ways that other students are not. For example, attachment-based students are much more predisposed to learn through imitation, modeling, memorizing, cue-taking, mapping, orienting and classification. Attachment-based students are also more likely to be motivated to measure up and to compete as well as to learn for reasons of recognition and status.

The problem is that our current culture does not facilitate adult-orientation or student-teacher relationships. Recent societal change is eroding the traditional adult-orientation of students and making connection to teachers much less automatic. When saddled with students who are not maturing, we are left only with attachment to motivate yet often without the prerequisite relationships to do so. When children who are failing to mature are also failing to attach to their teachers, it renders them virtually unteachable.

The answer to the waning teachability of students is not to teach harder but to teach differently. It is more important than ever to become conscious of what renders a student teachable and to use this knowledge to create a context within which to teach. There is no doubt that attachment is the most powerful motivating force of all but it must be harnessed to be used for teaching purposes. In a culture that is failing to keep attachments aligned, we must compensate by taking the initiative to collect these attachment-based students and render them teachable. Unless we win the hearts of these stuck students, we are unlikely to have much influence on their minds.

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Alternative formats

This material can be presented in a number of different formats. It can be introduced in a plenary session or a conference seminar or be used for school-based professional development. Anything less than a day should be considered an introduction to the material and simply whets the appetite for a more in-depth treatment of the subject. If it can be arranged, a two or three-day course tends to provide a much greater level of satisfaction for those involved and a much better preparation for dealing with stuck kids in the classroom. The course holds the most promise for change when an entire educational team can be involved. A three-day summer institute on the teachability factor has been hosted by various schools and school districts.

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Applicability & suitability

This material is applicable and suitable for all those involved with students in an educational setting, from kindergarten to grade 12, teaching assistants to administrators, classroom teachers to school counselors, family workers to psychologists, mainstream educators to those in alternate education settings. The material is always prepared and presented with the specific target audience in mind.

This material is also very appropriate to homeschoolers. Homeschooling material tends to champion one pedagogical approach over another and often neglects to take into consideration the teachability factors of the individual child. Students who are not emergent will not benefit from idealistic approaches that focus on interests and put the child in the driver’s seat. Children who are not adaptive will not benefit from correction or trial-and-error learning. Defended learners are very sensitive to attachment factors and require a great deal of structure and familiarity in their learning environment. Understanding the factors that determine teachability should enable homeschooling parents to choose an approach that best suits their child.

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Versions and variations

The material is also suitable for a wide range of focuses, from working with students manifesting severe behavioural problems in pull-out programs and alternate education settings to normal classroom concerns. The material can be used to make sense of the more difficult students or to enhance the teachability of any student. Depending upon the focus, the target audience and the educational settings involved, the material may be alternately entitled:

• The Teachability Factor
  
  
• The Teachability Problem
  
  
• Teaching the Unteachable
  
  
• Reaching Troubled Kids

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Distinctives and overlap

The content and outline of the teachability material parallels the material on stuckness but looks at the problem of stuckness within the school setting and focuses on learning as well as behaviour. Counselors and teaching assistants who wish to focus more exclusively on behaviour may elect to have the material organized specifically around the concept of stuckness.

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Course outline

The course is usually divided into four parts. If time is insufficient, the third part will be sacrificed. Handouts are provided for note taking and review.

Part I The maturation factor in teachability

Not all children grow up as they get older. The reality is that there are a large number of students who are failing to mature psychologically, rendering them deficient in adaptive, emergent and integrative functioning and much less teachable as a result. The three maturing processes and their role in learning and behaviour is introduced. Also discussed is the underlying condition that arrests development and its impact on learning and behaviour.

Part II The attachment factor in teachability

Attachment is the most powerful psychological force in existence and plays a critical role in learning and teaching. Non-maturing students are creatures of attachment by default and can best be understood by making sense of this dynamic. The current cultural chaos is changing the attachment patterns of children, with adults being prematurely replaced by peers. The teachability of students is being adversely affected as a result.

Part III Behavioural manifestations of stuckness

As time allows, the roots of aggression and counterwill are introduced as well as the dynamics of those that continually get into trouble.

Part IV Teaching stuck kids

Stuck kids require an alternate approach: to problems, to teaching and to remediation. Suggestions are given for working around the problem of stuckness and for compensating for their restricted teachability. Cultivating connection is the greatest challenge with students who cannot be engaged otherwise and suggestions will be given for an attachment-based pedagogy. As time permits, suggestions will also be given for getting students unstuck and rendering them much more teachable.

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Course objectives

• to elucidate the common root of both behaviour and learning problems in children
  
  
• to make sense of why teachability varies from child to child and from situation to situation
  
  
• to foster an appreciation of the attachment and maturing processes in learning and behaviour
  
  
• to provide an explanation for why children are getting harder to teach generally
  
  
• to cultivate an appreciation of the emotional factors in learning and behaviour
  
  
• to provide an explanation and affirmation of a teacher’s experience when up against a lack of teachability in a student
  
  
• to equip educators with the conceptual tools to assess teachability
  
  
• to provide suggestions for matching teaching to teachability
  
  
• to cultivate an appreciation of the need for an alternate approach to stuck kids or defended learners
  
  
• to equip educators with strategies for reaching those students who lack a natural and consistent teachability
  
  
• to make sense of why some children fail to learn from correction, consequences, mistakes or failure
  
  
• to facilitate an appreciation of the developmental roots of interest and curiosity as well as a sense of agency in the learning process
  
  
• to recognize when it is futile to try to teach a lesson, impose consequences or attempt to make accountable
  
  
• to enable participants to recognize stuckness when it exists and be able to work around the problem
  
  
• to provide suggestions for getting kids unstuck

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