Educational Transactional Analysis

An international guide to theory and practice

Giles Barrow, Trudi Newton, Giles Barrow, Trudi Newton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317416142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

While there are a small number of titles exploring Transactional Analysis in specific educational settings, there is no comprehensive account of this practical psychology for learning. Educational Transactional Analysis draws together a team of contributors from the international educational TA community, offering perspectives from Europe, India, South Africa, Australia, Japan and the United States to explain and illustrate the practice of this exciting development in education.

Establishing a seminal overview that will make it the 'go to' text, the book covers four key sections:

• 
  
  

• Philosophy, Politics, Principles & Educational Transactional Analysis

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• The Identity of the Teacher

• 
  
  

• Educational Transactional Analysis and Schooling

• 
  
  

• Educational Transactional Analysis: Adult learning and community development

Aimed at educators in all contexts, researchers, students and trainers, this book will be an essential resource for those that wish to deepen their understanding of educational TA or are involved in formal TA training.

Part 1
Philosophy, politics, principles and educational transactional analysis

Introducing Part 1

Giles Barrow, UK

Our opening part comprises a series of short chapters providing an initial statement of intent, and an over-arching framework for the contributions that follow through the rest of the book. The relational method and pedagogical objective of educational transactional analysis is freedom, whether it is the freedom from life-script that comes through the educational partnership, or the freeing up of power, options and creativity generated because of the learning endeavour. This intrinsic renewal, gifted by and through educational processes, is the focus of our opening chapter on philosophy, assumptions and principles, in which I share some observations on what Parker Palmer describes as ‘the integration of soul and role’ (Palmer 1998), and how that underpins professional identity and educational practice.

My intention is to take hold of the spirit that some identify in educational transactional analysis; to explain an aspect of what is often experienced in the process. By drawing on the concepts of liminality, natality and regeneration, the chapter explores the sense of awakening embodied in the potential of a teaching and learning relationship. In doing so, options as to the purpose of educational transactional analysis emerge, and my objective is not to oblige readers or trainees to adopt my views, but to consider how, as individual educators, we create encounters in learning.

The idea of ‘encounter’ runs across each of our three opening chapters: Pete Shotton considers the political and power implications of educational partnerships. Those familiar with his work will not be disappointed in Shotton’s close scrutiny of how power unfolds between those charged with the role of teacher and others as learners. He introduces a subtle revision of the totemic TA reference to ‘OK-ness’, and ventures into contextualizing the learning relationship. One of the limitations in some of early TA literature was the emphasis on individual autonomy, with the consequent risk of separating off from belonging to the collective whole. Tied in with this was a tendency to discount the impact of the political perspective – the complex issues of social, cultural and economic power – as well as its influence on the capacity for, and engagement in, personal autonomy. Running alongside this theme in early TA were the efforts of many practitioners who pursued social activism, promoted radical psychiatry and community empowerment. Shotton revisits this territory from the perspective of the classroom, and opens a theme that is implicit in many of the contributions to subsequent parts.

The third chapter, by Trudi, is an essential contribution for those interested in understanding how educators do something additional in establishing educational transactional analysis. If my opening chapter speaks to the spirit of the encounter, and Shotton explores its power dynamic, Trudi explains its theoretical framework. Extending her previous work on the importance of metaphor, this chapter situates educational transactional analysis as being both distinct and familiar within the broader context of TA theory and practice. It is in many respects a demonstration of what Shotton describes as ‘we count – you count – context counts’, in the sense that both the clinical and educational perspectives of TA have significant value within their respective contexts of application. TA practitioners are often more familiar with the former, and here Trudi expands on the latter.

In reading her account of the importance of symbolic metaphors, I am reminded of an incident a few years ago: I was training nursery practitioners in the same south London area where Trudi and I first met in the 1990s; it was the second day of training on supporting good practice in Early Years provision. Most of the group were living and working locally. At some point, I introduced the ego-state model and drew on the board the three-stacked circles. As I did so, one of the women in the group – Cheryl – immediately called out that she had come across the image in the past. She explained that she had attended a local secondary school when she was younger, very troubled by her home circumstances, and also very troublesome at school. She was frequently at risk of being excluded and was eventually referred for additional support.

Cheryl went on to talk about a woman called Lesley who would meet with her, help her make sense of her experiences, and explore ways in which she might be able to settle at school, continue with her education and take her exams. During one of these meetings, Lesley drew the ego-state stacked circles diagram, and Cheryl began to connect its meaning with what was going on, both at home and in the classroom. Needless to say, Cheryl managed to keep her place at school, sit her exams, and was successful enough to open her own nursery.

A nice tale in itself; but what made it more so was that, over a decade beforehand, Lesley had been one of the first members of my staff team to attend basic TA training with Trudi. Unbeknown to me, Cheryl had been one of the young people Lesley had supported during that period; and here I was, hearing the impact of that encounter, fifteen years afterwards.

Educators rarely witness the full implications of their joint efforts with the learner.

We cannot organize the educational event in advance. Certainly we can plan and prepare, but we cannot characterize it until we are in it and the students themselves have brought their own contributions. And there is a point beyond which our tendency to characterize becomes inimical to experience, inimical to teaching . . . yet this tendency to characterize and to elevate the gratifications of the profession – the status of expertise, the pleasures of jargon, the pride of method – is composed of two things, both inescapably human and hard to transcend: anxiety and vanity; here again, a difficult spiritual task.

(Dennison 1969: 258)

As educational transactional analysts, we step into the arena uncertain of (and also reluctant to ‘fix’) what happens next. It is, at its best, an act of faith.

1
Educational Transactional Analysis

Underpinning assumptions, principles and philosophy

Giles Barrow, UK

This chapter offers a personal theoretical perspective on educational transactional analysis, bringing together a series of related themes and concepts. The objective is to establish a position from which educational transactional analysts might choose to ground their practice, principles and philosophy. For readers at the outset of their training, the discussion will indicate the kind of theoretical territory worthwhile considering when developing a sense of professional identity. Those readers further engaged in training as educational transactional analysts, and those close to certification – they may find the material illustrative of how philosophy, theory and practice can be integrated to form a coherent model of education.

The discussion pursues a path that begins with the concept of natality and its links with the function of education. By exploring the work of Hannah Arendt and others, I propose that learning is an essential component of individual experience and collective human endeavour. The second part of the discussion leads to considering the role of the educator in a natality-orientated learning process. To explore this I draw attention to the role of imaginal cells in the process of metamorphosis and the idea of liminality. The discussion concludes with an account of how the educator might increase a sense of groundedness in undertaking their role. This aspect is expanded through considering the work of Parker J. Palmer and the integration of soul and role in the teaching and learning process.

Natality and education

The concept of ‘natality’ is relatively unfamiliar, despite its relevance to every single living organism. Referring to both the physical and metaphorical act of birth and the subsequent processes of becoming, beginning and belonging, natality is an idea that has significant potential for educators, much of which is yet to be realized. In the limited range of material available on natality, Hannah Arendt is one of the first and significant thinkers. Arendt formed several theses about society and human purpose. For the focus of this discussion, it is her essay ‘Crisis in Education’, in the collected work Between Past and Future (Arendt 1961) that warrants most attention. Arendt presents the purpose of education as establishing a cross-generational transaction through which the old world is renewed by the becoming generation. The ‘essence of education is natality, the fact that human beings are born into the world’ (Arendt 1961: 174). This reflects a different emphasis on a human-liberalist view of education that prizes the dissemination of information as crucial to learners’ liberation from ignorance. Instead it is the promise presented by the existence of a new generation that underwrites the need to share knowledge and understanding. The role of the educator in this model is to take care and ensure the safe passage of what is already known, and which will fuel new development by the next generation.

Arendt’s focus in her essay was the schooling of children and young people. At the time, she expressed concerns of the failure to honour the promise and potency of a new generation. Specifically, her observation was that by discounting the significance of this learning transaction, new generations were left stranded, at risk of infantilization, and at the mercy of totalitarianism. Her personal experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany had convinced her of the need of effective, good quality education as a means of combating a tendency to fundamentalism. Arguably, her approach to a natality-based model of learning applies to adult learning processes as well as children’s, where individuals regardless of age are coming fresh to new arenas of experience and learning. This might be in regard to specific skills: craftwork, technical or administrative tasks; or professional training, for example in becoming a transactional analyst.

Importantly, natality is crucial in terms of combating a natural tendency to decline and entropy, which results in death and is ultimately expressed in the concept of mortality. All living things eventually decay and die. The purpose of birth is to ensure continual renewal. The process of learning is one way in which this act of renewal is carried out at a collective, societal level. In TA terms, the desire to grow and renew is represented by ‘physis’ (Berne 1957), and this in turn is at the heart of educational transactional analysis. The educator is essentially attending to, and accounting for, the physis of the learner and the collective physis of the learning community – which is carried out as part of humanity’s push for growth.

There are clearly links to other learning models that amplify and elaborate the natal core of Arendt’s initial work. The radical pedagogy of Jack Mezirow’s transformational learning, for example, describes a process in which adult learners experience a ‘new birth’ through a systematic shift in their personal frame of reference in which empowerment and insight are key objectives (Mezirow 1991). ‘De-schooling’ advocates seek to free learners from archaic and utilitarian mass-schooling entrapment (Holt 1976; Illich 1972). However, it is Arendt’s work that explicitly connects the purpose of learning with natality.

My objective is to position educational TA within a theoretical base that combines radical theory with the flourishing that is inherent in natality. I suggest that the concept of cultivation best describes the natal influence on radical learning theory. I have written elsewhere of the links between cultivation and the role of the educator (Barrow 2011), and my purpose in re-introducing the idea here is to foreground the process of cultivating the physis of the learner as fundamental to educational transactional analysis. In my view, this extends the desire for social change – and especially in terms of re-focusing personal power – advocated by radical theorists. I see the emphasis on cultivation as referring to the further beauty and blossom that is realized through radical learning. Educational TA is about more than instigating social change; it is in support of the renewing human spirit fulfilling itself beyond what it has so far accomplished. Each step made by individuals towards greater insight, closeness and achievement contributes to collective cultivation.

The imaginal cell, metamorphosis and liminality

The role of the educator in this landscape combines both privilege and challenge. To explore this duality I want to draw on a metaphor based on the biological process of metamorphosis. Biologists have known for many years that organisms subject to metamorphosis have a peculiar feature; the imaginal cell. Present from the very beginning of the process, the imaginal cells present a fascinating illustration of agents of change. While the organism is in the form of pupa, these cells are few in number and have no apparent function. As the organism grows into the familiar shape of a caterpillar the quantity of imaginal cells increases. At the point when metamorphosis begins the organism in effect collapses within the carapace of the chrysalis into a ‘gloop’, an unstructured mass, but with the imaginal cells intact. This is a point of significant vulnerability for the organism, as any young child knows who has been warned not to break the chrysalis shell.

It is at this stage of total collapse that the function of the imaginal cells becomes clear. Within the gloop, the cells that have been the source of such resistance and inertia are revealed as the blueprint for the constituent elements of the butterfly. From the earliest stages of metamorphosis these cells ‘held’ the form that was not possible to envisage at the beginning. As the cells continue to multiply and connect, so the butterfly takes shape and eventually emerges from the encasement; metamorphosis is compete and the organism is renewed. I have found this process a powerful metaphor for exploring the roles of the educator, learner and purpose of education.

Transformational learning provides a liminal experience. Developed by Victor Turner (1974), liminality refers to the ‘in-between’ spaces, phases and experiences that we come across throughout our lifetime. Whether it is the universal periods of weaning, adolescence and ageing, or specific rites of passage, Turner proposes that the individual crosses a threshold (limen) from one concrete state and into a period of ambiguity. During this phase a previous sense of identity, social position, frame of reference and personal narrative undergo disintegration. Talking of liminality and rites of passage, Turner explains its potential:

I meant by it not a structural reversal [. . .] but the liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity etc., from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses, enacting a multiplicity of social roles.

(Turner 1974: 75)

Liminal phases offer a dynamic opportuni...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: Philosophy, politics, principles and educational transactional analysis
• Part 2: The identity of the teacher
• Part 3: Educational transactional analysis and schooling
• Part 4: Educational transactional analysis: adult learning and community development
• Afterword
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index