Steering

Posted by: "Jeffery Rubin" jrubin@stny.rr.com jeffrey_rubin2000 Date: Wed Jun 17, 2009 NASP - Listserv Here's a new section from the book I'm working on that talks about the technique of steering. As you will see, to describe a specific technique that can help requires a rather lenghty post that usually is not suited for the list serve. But, here goes: I learned about steering from Connecticut professor, Richard deCharms, at a conference back in 1977. He spoke about how most teachers treat their students like pawns, rather than origins. When people feel like pawns, they feel pushed around, and they feel that they are like puppets with someone else pulling the strings. Feeling like a pawn may be contrasted with feeling like I influence what I do-that I have played at least a part in originating my behavior. Such a feeling, Professor deCharms told the audience, is what he called, "feeling like an origin." Outside of the University of Connecticut circle, the idea Professor deCharms had been discussing is frequently spoken of as the powerless versus empowerment spectrum. People who perceive themselves powerless often experience alienation or reactance against those perceived as the bosses. To see what happens when teachers act in ways that are designed to lead students to feel like origins, Professor deCharms and his colleagues designed a project that provided a unique training program to inner-city teachers. His findings are dramatic. Academic achievement as measured by standardized tests was significantly better in the classrooms after the teachers received the training. In fifth grade, the children in this inner-city district were typically more than one-half year behind national norms in grade equivalent scores. This downward trend continued in the children who had teachers who did not receive the training so that by eighth grade they were a year behind national norms. The trend was reversed for the children who had the trained teachers to the point that they gained on average more than a full year between the end of sixth grade and the end of seventh grade and maintained their advantage through eighth grade. · School attendance and punctuality were positively affected in the classes with trained teachers. · Students rated classrooms of trained teachers as significantly more encouraging of origin behavior. One of the main skills the teachers learned in the study was to avoid making their students feel like pawns by using steering. This technique is designed to provide students the adult structure they surely need, while still providing them some sense that the teacher is willing to steer in directions students feel as more comfortable.
 * Background**

One thing teachers who have learned to steer do is to put fifteen minutes aside once a week to ask students' to criticize how things are going during the week. The teachers in the study didn't actually use the word "criticize." The students were asked to provide "suggestions" about how the class can run better. Suggestions, however, are, in a sense, criticism, because suggestions indicate that someone does not like a particular act and would prefer that another act occur in its place. The teachers were taught to listen to the suggestions in a respectful manner. When teachers who use steering feel a suggestion does not make sense, however, they do not merely attempt to disagree without being disagreeable; instead, they try to use some aspect of the suggestion so the student feels the suggestion has been taken seriously. For example, let's say a student suggests that if the class works hard all day, the last hour should be free time. Suppose the teacher, let's call her Mrs. Jones, feels that a daily hour of free time would waste too much learning time. Mrs. Jones can still steer in the direction of the suggestion. That is, she can explain her concern about wasting too much time; then she can propose that if by the end of the week the students had done a spectacular job the last hour on Fridays they will be given the freedom to chose either to get a head start on homework, write in their journal, or read a library book; then, after proposing this, Mrs. Jones asks the class if they want to give this a try. Notice that she is using the student's suggestion of free time to influence where she steers the activities for the week. Steering always ends up with the criticized person offering some type of choice. But there is a difference between providing a choice using a steering model and offering a choice in general. A teacher who offers a choice to a student might say, "Either you do the assignment or fail the course, those are your choices." Or a teacher might say, "I'm giving you a choice between playing 'Math Blaster' or 'Race to the Moon.' Hurry up and pick one, I don't have all day!" Neither of these are examples of steering. A teacher who is using steering would be more likely to say something like, "Here are two games that teach some math skills. Which one do you think would be best for you?" Notice the difference in attitude between the approaches. In the first two examples, the choice may not be perceived as a genuine choice, but more of a demand to pick either one or the other. Steering by teachers demonstrates a degree of respect in that the teacher is genuinely interesting in the student's opinion, and is willing to have that opinion count in deciding what will be done. In Professor deCharms study, not all of the choices that the teachers provided to students came about as a result of the 15 minutes a week for student suggestions. Teachers learned to provide choices in various ways throughout the day. For example, let's say a teacher, Mr. Rodriguez, tells his students that next month they are going on a field trip to a museum. His class begins to criticize the trip. "Whenever we go on field trips we always go boring places," says Nick. "Why can't we pick a place to go on a field trip?" says Jody. "How do the rest of you feel about this?" asks Mr. Rodriguez. Clearly the other students in the class are behind Nick and Jody's criticisms. Mr. Rodriguez thinks about this, and, at first, he says to himself, "The principal will never go along with letting the students pick a place to go on a field trip." With this in mind, he prepares to turn down, as pleasantly as possible, the suggestions that the students are tossing out to him. But then he thinks about trying to come up with a way to steer in the direction of the students' criticism. He comes up with an idea. "Field trips are for learning," he tells the class, "and the principal chose this trip to the museum. I understand that you want to have some say as to what field trip we go on. What if I ask the principal to provide to me three field trips he would be willing to approve, and then I ask you to chose one from the three she came up with-would that be better?" If the students agree with this plan, Mr. Rodriguez would have successfully steered in the direction of his students' criticism. Steering not only improves learning and behavior, but health outcomes as well. In a remarkable series of studies at a nursing home, elderly residents were each given a choice of houseplants to care for and were asked to make a number of small decisions about their daily routines. Nurses were taught to steer in the directions the residents requested. For example, residents requested a movie be provided each evening in the community room. Although there was inadequate funds for this, the nurses did increase the number of movies that were shown from occasionally, to once per week. A year and a half later, not only were the residents who had nurses that learned to steer more cheerful, active, and alert than a similar group in the same institution who were not given these choices and responsibilities, but many more of them were still alive. In fact, less than half as many of the decision-making, plant-minding residents had died as had those in the other group (Langer & Rodin, 1976; Rodin & Langer, 1977). Jeff, sp
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