Student and Teacher Relationship and Learning
Motivation to Learn and Relationships within the Classroom
Mar 20, 2009
Eric Berne the founder of transactional analysis, wrote an important book entitled Games People Play [Penguin Books Ltd, 1973]. Berne’s theory suggests that people play life games in order to gain some sort of recognition, acknowledgment or some other kind of payoff as a substitute for physical stroking in childhood. Berne continues to use the term "stroking" to describe this payoff.
Development of Behavioural Patterns in the Student
Berne begins his theory with Seymour Levine’s research, Stimulation in Infancy [Scientific American, 1960]. Levine discovered from his experiments on rats that sensory deprivation (for example from being handled), was detrimental to health to all living things, including humans. This forced Berne to ask the question what happens when the infant grows up and is separated from its carer? In the complex adult world, the individual must find some other way of obtaining satisfaction.
Why People Play Life Games
Berne came to the conclusion that individuals continued to find a way of being stroked, whether socially, emotionally or physically. However, some of the means chosen may be the result of negative programming from parents and siblings, and continue into adulthood. Berne refers to these strategies as "life games".
Behavioural Habits and Barriers to Learning
The games Berne describes are not the games of enjoyment that the word brings to mind, but life games. These consist of hidden motives on the part of the main participant who possesses a ‘wooden leg’, or in other words, an apparent burden, for example, of being helpless or being taken advantage of.
Berne identifies various life games in his book, such as If It Weren’t for You, ‘I’m Only Trying to Help You, and See What You Have Done. From these labels, one can imagine how the story goes in real life situations.
Life Games in the Classroom
The participation of life games continues within the educational sector via relationships with fellow students, teachers and staff. In many cases, these life games are likely to create a barrier to learning, and also upon the teaching.
In the scenario of the classroom, the life games prevent autonomy in the student and therefore could be very detrimental to the learning. In one such game, Why Don’t You, Yes But, the script might go thus:
- Student: "I haven’t had time to do my homework because my computer’s not working."
- Teacher: “Why don’t you use the college computers?”
- Student: “Yes but I don’t have a password.”
- Teacher: “Why don’t you get one from IT?"
- Student: “Yes but IT is closed by the end of my lectures.”
- Teacher: “Why don’t you go to IT at break time?”
- Student: “Yes but I can’t go at break time because it’s the only time I can eat my lunch.”
And so forth. The student fuels the game; the teacher is an unwitting participant. The payoff to this game is stroking of the student in the form of reassurance, and of the student looking helpless.
Breaking the Cycle of Negative Behaviour
Berne’s book suggests antitheses to the games, bringing the game to a collapse. In the Why Don’t You, Yes But scenario described above, for example, the teacher might break the spell by saying, ‘Well what are you going to do about it?" which forces the "powerless" student, into a position of responsibility and (ideally) autonomy.
Developing Autonomy in the Student
The life games Berne describes provide the individual with a means of gaining some sort of acknowldedgment or payoff as a substitute for stroking in childhood. Unfortunately, the strategy might be a result of negative programming from childhood. Increased awareness of these life games force the individual into questioning this destructive behaviour and to enhance autonomy in learning.
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