To:
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
cc:
From: Allan Bordow/Commerce/UNSW/AU @ UNSW
Date: 11/30/98 11:07:23 AM
Subject: Re: Challening at the Edge
In a previous messge John Dicus quoted a flying instructor saying thus
(about how they train Top Gun jet pilots):
Anyway, an instructor made a comment that has stayed with me. And after I
share that comment with you, I would invite you to share ways in which you
do (or seek to do) this in your own spheres of interaction -- as
facilitators, mentors, leaders... It's something I strive for --
hopefully coming close to the mark now and again.
The instructor said:
"Our instructors are among the absolute best pilots in the entire world.
And even thought the students in this school are considered to be the best
of the best, our instructors can literally fly rings around the students.
If we're not careful, an instructor could humiliate and discourage a
student. The result usually is poor learning and disengagement.
Our challenge is to fly just beyond the edge of the student's capability --
continually stretching her or him to the next level. If we fly below them,
there is no learning. If we fly too far above the results are poor. The
skill is to know each student and to take them to their edges in an
enabling
way.
It takes considerable time, but it's best way we know."
Sounds like the instructor is taping into the concept of need
achievement--a motivational construct developed by D.C. McClelland in his
book the Achievement Motive, 1953. Among other ways of showing how the
construct operated, McClelland observed that in an experimentally arranged
ring toss game in which adolescent subjects were able to place the ring any
distance they like from the throw line prior to their turn, that those who
McClelland had previously measured (via his nAch scale) to be high in need
achievement placed the ring _not too close and yet not too far_ from the
throw line. Non-need achievers were observed to place the ring either very
close (insuring 100% success but no challenge) or very far away (providing
a big challenge but with little chance for success).
If McClelland's theory does apply here, the lesson is that it's not in the
teaching per se but in the instructor's understanding as to how to set the
_learning stage_ that will best motivate students to strive for being Top
Gun.
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Allan Bordow
School of Industrial Relations & Organisational Behaviour
University of New South Wales
Sydney, 2052
a.bordow@unsw.edu.au
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