Category Archives: Theory

Student zone: Take note(s)… a skilful art!

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People climbing books. isolated on white background. Vector illustration. Eps 10

What is at the root of academic success.

As a lecturer in Social Work at Sunderland University I get to talk to, listen to, and observe students going about their business. I watch them in my lectures writing copious notes generally thinking, ‘my goodness! Don’t write down and rely on anything I say!’ Self deprecating humour is my go to place! Such things lead me to consider note taking and academic success. I myself often take notes and having read the wonderful book ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ by Sonke Ahrens, I realise there’s more to it than meets the eye. My musings here are largely from or driven by that book. Here are some things to consider.

IQ does not drive academic success – what drives academic success is what you do day in day out

In order to learn you must strategise your learning – it’s not something that happens by chance. What leads to success is how you go about your everyday work and what you do day in day out will affect the quality of your assignments, rather than just what you do when you’re writing the assignment.

Success depends on the environment you create externally and internally

Where you work and how you work – and how you feel about work – will dictate the quality of the work. There’s a well researched phenomena which goes that if you work in a cluttered environment you will think in a ‘cluttered’, messy, way. This applies not only to your desk but also to where you store your files, how you structure your folders on your computer, and generally how you go about storing all manner of things that you need to support your success. Your internal environment is also important. How you feel on the inside. Do you feel alert or tired, sluggish or enthusiastic? Have you set an effective approach goal? Approach goals are about setting positive thoughts in motion. Students who set avoidance goals – ‘I just don’t want to fail’ – rather than positive approach goals – ‘I want to do my best’ – actually do worse in assignments research has shown as a consequence of this avoidance thinking. Positive mental attitude isn’t a silver bullet but it sets out a pathway.

Learning is cumulative and connected

When we’re taking notes and reading books and generally going about our business of studying we need to connect our ideas in some sort of system so that we can see what links to what because, as you may have noticed, ideas are connected and build on each other. Theory influences practice, practice helps us consider methods, methods are influenced by theory – and so it goes. If you watch University Challenge you’ll spot that sometimes they know the answer but often they don’t but they work it out from other things they know.

Insight only comes from exposing yourself to volume of material

I often say at induction events and during lectures that those who do the best are those that read the most. You have to expose yourself to a range of ideas and often to the same idea in different places until you hit a light bulb moment. You have to put the graft in. If you wanted to grow bigger biceps you couldn’t get someone else to go to the gym for you and do barbell curls you’d have to go to the gym yourself and you’d have to go more than once!

Notes

When it comes to taking notes there are two key places to consider

In Lectures

When Reading

In Lectures

Firstly, we can’t multitask effectively. If you are trying to write everything down then you risk missing what’s been said. Whatever you do in class or when watching a video lecture be in that moment – phone away and on silent, distractions eliminated. Don’t try to capture everything – capture only the key points. Use bullet points and short phrases to signpost yourself to further reading.

Note down things you didn’t understand (ask questions in class if you can) and then follow up with reading the things you found difficult – you will find things difficult that’s fine!

Do these things:

  • Arrive in time to be settled
  • Title and date your notes
  • Be ready to focus completely – set a positive attitude – a positive approach goal
  • Develop abbreviations for yourself that you always use to speed things up when note taking
  • Highlight, underline, and capitalise to add emphasis to key points etc. I use arrows to connect points a lot
  • Use headings and sub headings. Have one point per line and leave gaps to add things in

Then, crucially, return to your notes    

The important thing to do is to go back to them as soon after class as possible and review and re-write them adding in other things you remember and then using the guided reading (where there is some),or relevant texts you find yourself, to embellish and enhance what you have noted down. You should undertake this review within 24 hours – sooner if you can. So plan this time into your calendar. This cements learning. Repetition is everything.

Review your notes periodically. When you type up the next notes look through all of the previous notes – this establishes those connections – write the connections down!

When Reading

Read with pen in hand and note or underline (not on the library books obs! Maybe use post-it notes). Once you’ve done this you must do something with these notes and underlines

Be aware that reading is a skill. Different texts require different approaches, some take longer to read, some can be scanned through, and when reading some you need to go off and look things up that you don’t understand. This is completely normal. Don’t panic.

Write up your notes and underlines
Your on-going understanding is reliant on external scaffolding. If you want to really understand something turn it into your own words. Just copying down quotes can risk stripping them of their context and therefore their meaning (and can risk plagiarism). Always write down the outcome of your thinking. This is about having a meaningful personal dialogue with the text.

Writing down is not a record of your thinking it is your thinking
“I’m never sure what I think until I see what I write” Carol Loomis (American Journalist)

Take notes…. consolidate notes…. read your notes… connect your notes…. tell it to yourself (I do this when I’m walking the dog! In my head not out loud!)

Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing. To be good at writing you don’t just write when you have an assignment to do – you need to practice writing, and you can do that when sorting out your notes into a meaningful system!

Stephen is a Lecturer in Social Work at University of Sunderland. He’s a bit obsessed with self-care, well-being and productivity and writes about those things on here in the productivity section and on our sister site Self Care Shorts

Getting to grips with theory: Transactional analysis

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I honestly don’t know why but I’m a huge fan of ideas and theories that emerged in the late 50’s and 60’s. It was certainly a time when ideas about the importance of ‘self’ took hold with people like Rogers and Maslow exploring how to be our best selves – scaling the dizzy heights of self-actualisation! One such idea to come out of that same era was Transactional Analysis which is a way of examining the interactions between people.

It was developed by Eric Berne (1910-70) in the late 1950’s as a basis for understanding behavior through communication. Its origins are in groupwork where the transactions – the communication interactions – were analysed to develop understanding. It draws on a range of theoretical perspectives and considers ideas about the subconscious mind and its influence, so, is psychoanalytical. It is humanist in that sees the individual as important, and cognitive as it considers cognitive processes and seeks when necessary to attempt to adapt cognitive processes.

It can be used to explore the Individual, two person relationships and group interaction. Let’s explore its components.

Using Transactional Analysis in the Workplace - ReadyToManageStrokes

‘Strokes’ is a motivational concept where a ‘stroke’ is an act of recognition from one person to another. The communication of acceptance or ‘liking’, is referred to as positive stroking, whereas criticism and ‘discounting’ are negative stroking. There are parallels here with the concept of reinforcing in behaviorism and also ideas of affirmation and validation

Positive strokes would be things like praise, compliments, recognition, affection, rewards, sympathy, consolation, and even self-satisfaction from a job well done. Negative strokes would be put downs, criticism, ridicule, scolding, or punishment. Strokes can be ‘Conditional’ that is they relate to what you do and are not directly about you as a person – ‘you did  that task very  well’. Whereas unconditional strokes are not about what you do but are about you – ‘I really like you’. There is no condition just a statement.

Strokes can have ulterior motives where people say things to gain favor. I remember one student I taught used to say things like, ‘You’re looking good today Stephen – lovely shirt’, usually around assignment marking time!

Life positions - I'm okay, you're okay - GP-Training.netOk-ness

This idea refers to a basic attitude of acceptance towards self and others and states that people adopt one of four positions.

  • I’m Ok – You’re not Ok – this is rejection and belittling of the other. Maybe it’s ‘I don’t like you’ or ‘I don’t like what you represent’. It could be because the other person is constructively challenging and the person doesn’t like being challenged.
  • I’m Ok – You’re Ok – the preferred position – acceptance of self and others. This is the state we need to try and establish when working with people. Such a position can generate forward momentum.
  • I’m not Ok – You’re Ok – reflects avoidance of the other and maybe suggests things to be explored with the person. At least if the person thinks ‘you’re ok’ then this may give you a starting position as they may trust what you are saying.
  • I’m not Ok – You’re not Ok – Berne suggests reflects a depressive hopeless attitude to life. The question is how to create forward momentum and change in such a position.
A history of Eric Berne
Eric Berne

Ego states

Berne suggest there are three ego states – the parent, the adult, and the child. We can all, whether we are adults, parents or children adopt these ego states.

The Parent Ego state is when we adopt behaviours, thoughts and feelings copied from parents or parent figures so is a ‘taught’ ego state. The Adult Ego state is found in behaviours, thoughts and feelings which are a direct response to the here and now and are a ‘thought’ ego state. The Child Ego state is where we replay behaviours, thoughts, and feelings from childhood and is a ‘felt’ state.

Parent (“exteropsyche”): is a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted, or how they interpreted their parent’s actions. For example, a person may shout at someone out of frustration because they witnessed that as a response, a way of being, in a parent or important person.

Adult (“neopsyche”): a state of the ego, which is very pragmatic and practical, thinking things through logically to make predictions and maybe absent of major emotions that could affect success. Learning to strengthen the Adult is a goal of Transactional Analysis. While a person is in the Adult ego state, they are directed towards an objective appraisal of reality. This resonates so much with me in terms of my writing about productivity and being organised. Developing this ego state means we can relate to people and events in a structured way. Not lacking emotions necessarily but being in control of them.

Child (“archaeopsyche”): a state in which people behave, feel and think similarly to how they did in childhood. The Child is the source of emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity and intimacy. We need to spend some time in this state I’d argue but it needs to be carefully managed.

Transactions that are complimentary sustain and lead to smooth conversation

So, Adult to Adult could result in solving a problem, whereas Parent to Parent could lead to critical gossip (something lots of people enjoy! We are only human!). Child to Child or Parent to Child could be about playing together.

Banning Small Talk From Your Conversations Makes You Happier, Says Science (Ask Any of These 12 Questions for a Change) | Inc.com

Crossed transactions cause communication to be broken and give us what is sometimes referred to as ‘a bumpy conversation ride’. Where the stimulus in the conversation originates in Adult and is directed to Adult but the respondent returns conversation from say Child directing it to Parent, or equally, Parent to Child, we may see a problem. I’m wanting to have a serious productive conversation, but I get a petulant child response, or a critical parent response and I’m left on the back foot not knowing quite what happened. Or indeed I’m after a bit of jovial childlike banter and I make a joke that falls flat on its face when someone responds from Adult and I’m left deflated. This happens a lot with my jokes…I need to think about that…. 😉

Within each of these ego states are subdivisions. Parental figures are often either more nurturing or more criticising. Childhood behaviours are either more natural (free) or more adapted to others. These subdivisions categorise individuals’ patterns of behaviour, feelings, and ways of thinking, that can be functional, beneficial, and positive, or dysfunctional, counterproductive, and negative.

Critical Parent can be lecturing or judging – all about what you should do or shouldn’t do. Remember this is not just ‘real’ parent to ‘real’ child – you can be ‘in’ Critical Parent in adult conversations. ‘I don’t know what you do with your time. I need the report now!’

Nurturing Parent on the other hand is sympathetic, advising, and takes care. ‘You seem to be missing deadlines can we talk about what we can maybe do to help?’

In the same problem above Adult may be objective, rational, and problem solving. ‘Let’s reach an agreement on giving you a little longer but it must be done by then. Let’s see what work we can take off you to give you time’.

The Adapted Child may then play the game (Berne loves game playing ideas) and may manipulate the situation trying to drive Adult into Nurturing Parent. ‘I’ve just found everything so hard lately’. Or maybe will be submissive and conform to Adult expectations. ‘Yes, whatever you want me to do’.

The Natural Child might be playful or impulsive and may rebel. ‘Sorry but I can’t I’m taking today off – nobody bothers about the dates things are due anyway!’

Strengths-based conversations: quick tips for practiceHow is this relevant to SW?

  • It helps us understand the other person
  • It gives us opportunity to consider how to respond in a helpful way to build rapport.
  • It helps communication by trying to shift the other persons ego state to Adult to establish an Adult to Adult conversation.
  • TA tells us you can have considerable impact on modifying behaviour by how you communicate. The Adult ego state seeks to ‘control’ the other ego states.

Using TA for effective communication

For effective communication you need to keep the transaction complementary i.e. focus on sender to receiver and receiver to sender where the message is sent to the ego state from which you expect a reply. Using ego states we can look at how others communicate and how we communicate with others.  It’s possible to identify which ego state we are in and which ego state we are expecting a reply from.

We can also use TA to help us plan transactions. For example, we can identify which ego state would be most valuable for us to send the message from and which ego state it would be better for it to be received by. If we receive a reply from the wrong (non expected) ego state then we can either try to shift the other person’s ego state or if we cannot do this it may be better to stop the communication and try again another time when the person may be in a different ego state.

We can listen to people’s communication to identify if they are habitually in one ego state and then decide if communication to that ego state would be appropriate or not. TA therefore can be used to elicit the reactions you want from other people (and this will happen consciously or unconsciously).  We are trying to achieve Adult to Adult

We can help communication if we need to by trying to shift the other person’s ego state by inviting people to move into a different ego state. They may not always move into it though, particularly if someone is habitually in one ego state. Do this by acknowledging their current ego state (by the appropriate message or response) and then invite them into another ego state by the words (and body language) which you use.

Transactional Analysis implies that you can have considerable impact by the way you communicate with others.

You can use your Adult ego state to think about what behaviour is appropriate and then engage in that way to facilitate helpful conversations. 

Solution Focused Gorillas

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In 2006 Cadburys poisoned 37 people with Salmonella and the treasured British company was brought to it knees. Fined millions, reputation in the trash, hostile take over talk, how could it ever recover…………….

Cadbury’s response was marketing genius they ran one of the most famous adverts of the past twenty years.

[You really should watch it (below) –  it’s amazing! It’s 4 and half minutes long (this link is a shorter version – but if you have the time watch the long one – it is sooooo worth it!]


The advert features no humans (Phil Collins excepted) and no chocolate, it just creates a warm positive enjoyable feeling exactly the feeling that Cadburys wants associated to their brand.

By honing down to base psychology Cadburys have distanced themselves from their Salmonella existential crisis.  The advert was entirely positive, feel good and very importantly simple. Cadburys chocolate will make you feel like the advert does.

The next video….. well…. watch it then I’ll tell you….


It features the very same gorilla as in the Cadbury advert (honest!) in the now famous experiment by Simon and Chabris (2009). In the experiment the focus of the viewer is requested to be entirely on the white team passing the ball, the human brain squarely focuses on its target to the deletion of everything else.

Nearly all test subjects fail to spot the gorilla but can count accurately the number of passes of the ball, as soon as you are told of the gorilla it is 100% obvious, as gorillas always are.

Before the gorilla starred in adverts and experiments, he used to live in the jungle where he met famous primatologist (monkey expert) Diane Fosse.

The male gorilla before Fosse (and others Sigourney Weaver etc) had always been considered to be totally dominant in sexual situations with the female subservient and vulnerable.

As Matthew Syed points out in his excellent Rebel Ideas (2019) however, primatology was full of stuffy bearded men in the Charles Darwin mould who had a massive blind spot about female activity. They accepted the dominant view and importantly had no interest in challenging it creating a jaundiced perceived wisdom. Syed observes that it was not until a critical mass of female scientists entered the field that the frame of reference shifted and female gorillas were found to have agency and power, and, could select a range of sexual partners.

The story of this gorilla I feel is useful to solution focused work as it makes clear a very important point.

“You see what you aim at”

This quote by, at times controversial, psychologist Jordan Peterson I feel holds a lot of weight for social care. The power, and indeed ‘blindness’, that can be achieved by a clear focus is both useful and dangerous.

Here are some examples –

The social worker whose main focus is the assessment rather than supporting lasting and client led change, or the family whose only focus is to seek the end to the intervention never questioning or considering possible future directions or opportunities.

Conversely the focus on one particular issue for a period of time can yield results as nobody can deal with many problems all at the same time (I’m sure many of us have all been to child protection or adult safeguarding meetings where the list of identified issues is long).

To balance this I feel as social workers we need a wide lens to be open to risky ideas that will reverse challenging situations (Cadburys),  we must be brave not to fall under the cloak of perceived and dominant thinking (Dianne Fosse) and to be focused on the detail but not to miss the gorilla in the room (Simon and Chabris).

George Bull

George is a Social Worker at the Connected Carers Team South Tyneside. He has been a social worker for 10 years working mainly in child protection and Early Help. He has lectured with Jamie Scorer at New College Durham, University of Sunderland and University of Northumbria in solution focused practice.

References:

Simon and Chabris (2009) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/p281059

Rebel Ideas, Syed (2019) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rebel-Ideas-Power-Diverse-Thinking/dp/1473613914

Getting to grips with theory: Social Constructionism

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In order to explore Social Constructionism, I feel we need to take a step back and we’ll do that by having a think about how we know what we know.

Let’s start with positivism. Positivism is a Philosophical position about knowledge – the how we know what we know bit. It’s a belief that it is possible to establish ‘objective truths’ – facts – about things. In social sciences it would be an attempt to apply the same approach as you would to the ‘natural sciences’ and some would argue that that is not possible or even helpful. Positivism would search for concrete causes and causal links.

But maybe it’s not that easy to do such a thing after all nature (things like physics or chemistry for example) is a set of ‘impersonal forces’ but society involves a mixture of forces (e.g. the political, or culture etc). The decisions and actions that people carry out they, in some ways, make for themselves. How human beings interpret a situation is crucial which means there’s no one answer because we all may interpret things differently. Social sciences therefore are concerned with meanings and reasons rather than causes. You might argue that Positivism looks for certainties that are not there.

This takes us to postmodernism. Postmodernism is a school of thought that rejects the notion of objective truths and natural laws and ‘grand theories’ for explaining human behaviour and the world. It is also critical of the idea that developments in science and technology will inevitably lead to improvement (modernism). This is an interesting thing to think of when you have a moment or several! Are we better off as a consequence of the modern world? Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Futureshock says that we as a human animal are colliding with the incessant change we see and that we are simply not biologically ready for the modern world – needing to be always switched on and always ready to go! Postmodernists feel there is no absolute understanding of society or reality and our sense of reality is shaped through social interactions and processes.

And this leads us to Social Constructionism. Social Constructionism is critical of the positivist approach to knowledge – that everything is knowable as an absolute fact. Our historical and cultural context is important, and knowledge and reality are constructed in our daily interactions and conversations which in turn shapes our knowledge of ‘how to go on’. Different constructions are maintained by patterns of action – ‘practices’ – the way we conduct ourselves in situations for example. There is a construction of lecturer – you expect certain things from me when I’m being one. And there is a construction of student – I expect things from you when you are being one. And others have a view on what ‘student’ is. What if my view and your view and their view are all different? Because they might be. I think you’re a vessel to be filled with knowledge. You think you’re a customer who demands what you need to know to pass the assignment. And others…. Well they could construct you and I in all manner of ways… and they do!

Language describes and defines things and as such has power. Harari in his book Sapiens explains that as the human animal we are the same, as a starting point at least, as other animals. We look at things from a subjective and objective point of view. Objectively we know that things are hard – like if we walk into them – or things are wet – if they are poured over us. We also have a subjective point of view – I’m afraid of heights! It makes me feal fear – and I have a physical reaction to it – my legs turn to jelly.

Harari goes on to say though that unlike animals we tell ourselves stories about things that are imposed on top of these objective and subjective realities. We tell ourselves stories called our family, or our culture, or my job. We tell ourselves stories about what ‘parent’ means or what ‘school’ means, or what ‘student’ means. We have an idea for ourselves sometimes, but that idea is born out of stories we have been told by others – maybe by our cultural position, or through what we have read, or the media. So those stories both describe and define something that will have some similarities with others but will also be nuanced – slightly different – and in some cases, possibly across culture for example, very different. Wetherell and Maybin (in Stevens – Understanding the Self 1996 Sage London) says that this also extends to feelings – quoting Rosaldo (1984) ‘Feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood, but social practices organized by stories that we both enact and tell”

In terms of this construction of self the person and social context merge because the boundaries of both can’t be easily separated from each other. Psychology, it could be argued, seeks to switch off the social context and the influence of others so that the picture of an individual’s psychological make up is not complicated by such things. Social constructionists say this is simply not doable.

Language is not just a way of describing something that already exists. Words do things as well as having meaning. Language is not a mirror reflecting the objects in our world, but a tool that constructs our world. This brings us to the idea of discourse. Discourse, as defined by Foucault, refers to ways of constituting knowledge that together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity, and power relations, form more than ways of thinking but actually produce meaning.

So, discourse is a systematic ordering of language involving certain rules, terminology and conventions, such as the legal or medical discourse – or indeed social work. Social work has a whole language of its own – Assessment, Care Plan, Safeguarding, Capacity – all things that have very specific meetings within social work discourse and may have other meanings elsewhere. It is a group of statements which provide a language for talking about a particular kind of knowledge about a topic.

Knowledge is flexible, not necessarily concrete, it moves and shifts. The particular ‘common sense’ view of the world prevailing in a culture at any point in time is bound up with power- these are referred to as normalising truths – we normalise or accept as given a particular truth or version of something. Think about the construction of gender or ethnicity over the last 200 years where certain versions were accepted or tolerated by many. This leads to social practices or ‘sites of practice’ that perpetuate that view of the world and marginalise alternatives. It gives us a particular way to look at things that may prove hard to shift because they create opportunities for power that can be used to maintain a position. Powerful ‘knowledges’ keep us in order and get us to control ourselves through the acceptance of the status quo.

So how we construct our reality, the things around us, is influenced by others like family, friends, and colleagues, and by things like media and government. These constructs have a power that is found in them and in the language that describes and defines them.

Social Constructionism recognises ‘the importance of a much more fluid and artistic form of knowledge’. It also suggests that there are complex uncertainties which fits with what we know in social work. How we construct things is fluid and needs to be constantly refined, explored, and challenged I’d argue. Social Constructionism suggests that practices should resist accepted and powerful forms of knowledge.

Social Work is not merely the exercise of ‘technical rationality’. Technical Rationality uses measurements, and empirical research, applies theory, uses instruments and frameworks to collect information, and works towards a ‘truth’ about individual needs. It helps the worker, in the role of expert, generate the ‘right’ answers.  As a contrast ‘Practice moral’ offers an interpretation of need based on values, empathy, and experience. It uses reasoning and accepts a variety of perceptions from within the service user’s life (Lishman 2014). It acknowledges that real world problems are ‘messy and indeterminate’ (Parton 2003 p2).

To develop understanding Service users and practitioners should emphasise the centrality of ‘talk’. This forges meanings and relationships. It underpins some key social work ideas like strengths-based approaches (seeing the world the way the service user does to draw on what they bring), and solution focused approaches which seek to achieve the same. A narrative approach helps social workers explore people lives through having them tell their story. The ideas of Social Constructionism suggest that engagement in conversations and interactions, and the patterns of practice these create offers the opportunity to generate new meanings – to become ‘poetic activists’ (Gergen, 1999 p.43 in Parton 2003)

Taking a such an approach from this theoretical position helps practitioners identify the significance of complexity, context, and process and considers where power is at play in those areas. It considers the notion of reflexivity – the ability to examine our own beliefs and practices and adjust them as we go. It emphasises and recognises a range of possibilities for understanding a situation and developing possible responses. It creates a collaborative approach to creating meanings.

There is a sense we are wanting to know ‘how’ rather than knowing ‘that’. We want to know how someone thinks about something rather than simply knowing that they simply think about it in a particular way – a search for meaning and its root, if you like. Such understanding is crucial so that we understand that people are constructing their own version of reality out of their experiences and that they are building and constructing their own world.

References

Burr, V. (2003) Social Constructionism 3rd Ed Sussex: Routledge
Gergen, K. (1999) An Invitation to Social Constructionism Sage

Parton, N. (2003 Rethinking Professional Practice: The contributions of Social Constructionism and the Feminist ‘Ethics of Care’ The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 33, Issue 1, 1 January 2003, Pages 1–16

Lishman, J., Yuill, C., Brannan, J. & Gibson, A. (2014 Social Work: An Introduction London: Sage (Paragraph on pg. 66 on Social Interactionism)

O’Brien, E.Z. (2020 Psychology, Human Growth and Development for Social Work (2nd ed.) London: Palgrave
Payne, M. (1997) Modern Social Work Theory London: Macmillan

Getting to grips with theory: Social Learning Theory

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I can’t help but think of this poem when I think about Social Learning Theory because I think it says what it is perfectly…. From the immense poet Philip Larkin – This Be The Verse (That’s the name of the poem – I haven’t just turned into a pirate!!)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had 
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Social Learning Theory is a Psychological theory despite the insistence of it having ‘social’ in the title just to confuse everyone! I’m sure you intuitively get how it works from the poem! You may well have picked up traits and ideas, and all manner of things from your parents, your family, your peers… the list goes on. You learn how to go on and what to do from others.

Usually when we talk about this theory, we think of negative things that we pick up from others possibly because the behaviour learnt in Bandura’s famous (and in my view highly dubious in terms of the ethics!) experiment was negative (more later). So, remember we can learn positive things as well! Role modelling… that’s what it is.

The theory is rooted in behaviorism. The fundamental idea of behaviourism is that behaviours that are reinforced will tend to continue, while behaviours that are punished will eventually end – referred to as conditioned responses. We develop learned responses to external stimuli – conditioning.

Social Learning Theory also draws on cognitive psychology because what is also important is what happens after stimulation but before reaction – the thinking bit – the flow of information in your mind before you decide what you are going to do. Our view of the world is self-constructed inside our minds so interpretation of what we observe is also at play. Our brains have a plasticity so although we do learn behaviours, we can modify them – so this is not a fatalistic position. You are not stuck with behaviour you learn but you might decide to stick with it even if it’s not good for you or you might stick with it because you don’t know any other way.

Albert Bandura was an American/Canadian Psychologist working in the early part of the 20th Century on observational learning theory. He observed that conditioning occurs not just from internalising behaviour we are exposed to but from our conscious observation of others.

He suggested that individuals that are observed are called models. These models provide examples of behaviour to observe and imitate so we figure out how to behave from what we see. If someone imitates a model’s behaviour and the consequences are rewarding, then they are likely to continue performing that behaviour. This is reinforcement and can be external or internal and can be positive or negative. For example, if a child wants approval from her parents and such approval is given and reinforces behaviour then such approval is an external reinforcement – it comes from outside herself. But if she is feeling happy about being approved of, and that reinforces her behaviour then that is an internal reinforcement.

If you want to know how Bandura discovered this then this video below will do the job! Save me telling you 😉

Context also plays a role. I suspect you can think of different ways you would act in different places and when with different people. You may well be different when eating out with your parents than you are when you eat out with the boys for a curry. We learn how to behave in different settings – if you want the fancy words around this it’s – cross-situational variability of behaviour. Children are great at it! Those of you who have children know they behave very differently at Grandma’s than they do at home because they know they get away with more and they behave differently at school because they know they get away with nothing – conniving little monkeys!

Bandura says there are four mediational processes at play in Social Learning Theory. These are mental processes that mediate between the stimulus and response. Individuals do not automatically observe the behaviour of a model and imitate it. There is some thought prior to imitation and this consideration is the mediational process. This occurs between observing the behaviour (stimulus) and imitating it or not (response)… so like I said earlier – the thinking bit.

The first is Attention. This is the extent to which we are exposed to, or notice, the behaviour. More exposure or more noticing could lead to more learning. Then Retention. This is how well the behaviour is remembered. Much learning in this way is not immediate. Even if the behaviour is reproduced shortly after seeing it, there needs to be a memory to refer to. We then get to Reproduction. This is the ability to perform the behaviour that the model has just demonstrated. And finally, Motivation – the will to perform the behaviour. Once the behaviour is initiated the rewards and punishment that follow will be considered by the observer. If the perceived rewards outweigh the perceived costs, then the behaviour will be reinforced and will be more likely to be imitated by the observer.

Social Learning Theory may help us understand that people learn behaviour from their immediate environment, not just their past, although it comes from there too. But all is not lost because the brain has a plasticity so behaviour can be modified. If people can learn ineffective ways of being, then they can acquire, through ‘learning’, other ways and so maintain and change behaviour. I feel that social work is one of few professions that always sees the potential of people to change no matter how difficult their circumstances or ingrained and deeply rooted their behaviour is – we need to hang onto that don’t you think?

Theory? Huh!?

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There is no way to approach theory other than to be critical of it. I mean, you’ve got to understand it first before you can be critical of it. So, you have to delve into the books. But once you understand it then you should critically analyse it and ask whether it’s actually of any use. Often it feels very reductionist. It suggests the world works in a particular way as though it always does – or at least that’s sometimes how we teach it and sometimes how students grasp, and then, sometimes how practitioners apply it. A parent uses drugs, a child goes on to use drugs – oh well there you are then – learned behaviour –  missing all of the other things like poverty, housing, education and more that contribute to why people do what they do. Because people often don’t do what the theory says they will do.

Sometimes though we, as educators, we perpetuate this. In teaching people about theory I wonder if we are too simplistic, so some students fall in to the trap of thinking what we say is the sum total of it and don’t go and find out for themselves? I love Taleb’s analogy (in Antifragile) of education in Universities – we teach birds to fly. We take baby birds and educate them in the mechanics of flying and then when they fly we claim victory. We taught them to fly. They would have flown anyway. Education should be about people discovering for themselves, or at the very least we should just point them in a general direction – like the library – and leave them to it. They’ll learn to fly themselves because they have it in them.

Taleb (in the same book) says he was asked by one of his students for a rule on what to read and I applaud his view. “As little as is feasible from the last twenty years”, he says, and I agree, go back to the original text, don’t use what someone else has written about it. They won’t have the passion or nuanced understanding of the originator. You want to know about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Read what Maslow said. You want to know about Marxism, read what Marx said…. simple.

The problem with how we use theory is that we apply it in the wrong direction. I can’t for the life of me find where I’ve read this recently – so I’ll have to tell you when I find it! We take a theory and apply it to the individual. Social Learning Theory says this, so now I will go and observe the person, and oh yes look – clearly Social Learning Theory in action. Of course if you start from a premise, from an answer, you will find what you want. Explore people and their presentation the other way. What can I see, what do I observe? What might help me understand that? At least this means you start with the individual and look at things from their subjective position not simply through the lens of a favourite theory.

I have the same problem with models of practice. We use model x here! Oh right…. what if model x doesn’t help this person or fit with the way you should practice with them from their point of view, from what they need from you? Have a dominant model, maybe, but don’t be afraid not to use it.

I’m of the view that the days of big structural theories are numbered. The days of using attachment theory or social learning theory, for example, as ways to fully explain are limited. It is not by being driven by some big overarching way of being that we support people but in the individual interactions that we have with them. It’s how we treat people or how people are treated that fuels behaviour not some compliance to a particular ‘way’ born in the 60’s (often) and largely irrelevant to life in the 2020’s. If we were still using IT concepts from the days of flower power we would still be waiting for the machine to boot up. How we act towards each other individual to individual is the root of cause and effect, and everyone is different, everyone’s environment and history is different – so, one size doesn’t fit all – but it often feels like we think about theory from the assumption that it does.

Maybe it’s time for a clear out?

Forming our views; Rishi, social workers, and primates.

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In the caring professions our experiences are the cornerstone of our practice, setting our moral compass and future decision-making processes (heuristics). Despite each individual experience being important our brains are designed to weight and recall some experiences, including our practice ones, more readily than others, such as ones that trigger powerful emotions like fear, disgust, and anger.  Practice ‘stories’ can be filed in our brain inside a red binder with ‘MUST RECALL REGULARY’ in bold marker. Out of a plethora of old cases we may remember only a handful in five to ten years’ time. Put simply, as professionals, we may only use a small proportion of our past experiences to develop a way of working with all future cases – a potentially skewed schema.

To give a simple example let’s say you go fishing off a pier and you know there are only cod and mackerel in the sea. What you don’t know is that cod are ten times more common.  On the first day you catch 4 fish; 3 mackerel and 1 cod, then on the second day only 1 fish – a mackerel. If Captain Birdseye asks you about this fishing spot you will say that there are loads of mackerel and hardly any cod, having no perspective on how rare your catches were. Similarly, we would lambast a scientist for not having a large enough sample size to support their research conclusions, or for not correcting for some statistical selection bias. So, equally, we should ask ourselves, “are we asking ourselves enough questions about how our practice views and how they stack up into a working model?”

It does not take too much of a salmon leap to switch to the Social Work context here.

Let’s say in all your past experiences of working with single fathers in relation to child protection they have all been difficult to engage and show signs of physical abuse. When allocated your next similar case your past experiences will undoubtedly skew your future expectations. The question is, “how many similar cases will it take to cause a permanent belief system switch (conscious or unconscious)?”   

One particularly influential belief system is the one held by our current PM (at time of writing Mr Sunak). His family settled in East Africa from India, with this community becoming an economically dominant force in both Kenya and Uganda. Roughly Asians where 2% of the population but they owned 66% of all the wealth.

When these African countries achieved independence from the British Empire the vast majority of Asians left with many using British passports to come to enter the UK. Sunak’s family did just that with his parents settling in Southampton. His mother was a pharmacist and his father a GP.  Sunak’s parents had three children, one is our prime minister, one is the head of strategy at the UN and the other a psychologist.  Sunak when interviewed always points out that nothing was handed to his family on a plate, but it was all achieved through hard work and sacrifice.

Sunak therefore believes that the government should support and not restrict hard working families as they could achieve outcomes similar to the Sunak’s.  To use the earlier fishing analogy Sunak’s family were successful in catching some of the rarest fish in the ocean. Now their son, the prime minister, hands out rods for others expecting them to do the same.  To illustrate this point, look out for the many stories about children from poor backgrounds getting straight A’s and going to Oxbridge…… You won’t find many. The success stories that there are have the perverse effect of keeping the lid firmly on the social mobility box. A few plucky stories block out the reality that there are a majority of hard-working families who barely make ends meet.

Why could a smart man like Sunak make such an error in assuming his specific experience can be generalized to the entire population. Well, like us Sunak has a brain that is hardwired to hold a finite number of peoples’ tales. This was famously proven by Dunbar’s work on monkeys and group size. His work demonstrated a link between neo cortex size and how many individuals could be in a primate’s social group. The larger the cortex the greater the potential group size. Even though humans have a larger brain than other primates there is still a hard limit to social group size Dunbar’s work suggests. We can only integrate so much social context and so many stories when we function in such a group. Our brains are ultimately finite. Whilst modern critics have latterly ganged up on Dunbar’s work for being statistically flawed, I feel there remains some truth in the general conclusion for us humans and our relationships. The relationship as found below in the graph is made more significant when you consider that the majority of us humans live in highly selective groups – rich alongside rich, or poor alongside poor, older people, young people, or selection around race or sex. In other words, we are limited both by absolute number and by variety. Can social workers hold in mind only a finite number of case stories that are highly likely to have some selection bias in terms of their characteristics?  

Much of what we do as social workers involves hypothesising about situations based, often, on limited information. We start to build a hypothesis at the earliest point of contact. In fact, maybe even before the first physical contact. We maybe start to make assumptions from case recording or referral information. Daniel Kahneman, author of the wonderful ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, has concluded we have two aspects to our brains. We can let our automatic brain – or ‘System 1’ as he refers to it – run riot, jumping to conclusions! This automatic system is like being on autopilot. This part of our brain likes routine things and easy solutions. It relies, when thinking about people, on stereotypes that have been constructed for us and that we have added to. Ideas that sit in our subconscious mind. He says that we don’t like using ‘System 2’, our ‘deliberate’ brain, because it’s hard work. It takes effort to get this part of our brain going so that we can consciously and logically think things through. So, his idea goes, why would we not use a ready-made ‘model’ from our automatic brain like ‘all fathers in child protection cases are like ‘this’ or ‘that’’.

This can lead to bias in our hypothesising that we might not even spot. Confirmation bias is an operational mode where we select information from that which is available to ‘confirm’ the position we want it to. We form a view early on and then select information that supports that idea. When we fall into this trap gathering more information doesn’t necessarily yield a better decision. In fact, more information means we simply have more to select from to confirm our bias. As practitioners it’s important we consider whether we are relying on archetypes we have constructed from past experiences, or whether we are seeing the reality of the situation as it truly is.

Metal anchor near river on sunny day

We can also become anchored to a first impression – called the Anchoring Effect – which leads to that first impression becoming the only one relevant. Or, we anchor ourselves to a single factor as a root cause and miss others possible causes of the presenting circumstances. A famous experiment conducted by the magazine The Economist on MIT students gave an interesting insight into this. Initially they offered their publication as Web Only at $59 and Print & Web at $125. 68% of people went for web only version and 32% went for the Print + Web option. Wise MIT students! Same information, half the price! They offered their publication again, this time at three rates – Web Only $59, Print Only $125, and Print and Web $125. What happened? Well, no one went for the Print Only option. Why would you when you can have Print and Web for the same price. However! 84% chose the Print and Web option with the rest going for Web Only. This trick apparently is often used in marketing in a range of ways. People were anchored to the Print option thinking they were getting a fabulous deal – Print and Web for the same price as Print. Without this option in play most people went for the sensible Web only option. When we become anchored to a piece of information it exerts undue influence on us and clouds our judgment

With Sunak going to elite universities and Winchester college I wonder how diverse the ‘clan’ of 150 individuals housed in his brain is. How skewed is his idea of how the world operates. Is he anchored to a particular idea born out of his emotional attachments, role models and major life events. Does he have a ‘confirmation bias’ toward things that he will share (to a significant percentage) with the striding elite class who are a tiny majority of the population but constitute the votes Sunak needs to win a General Election in two years’ time.

As social workers we work at the total opposite end of the social mobility scale. We encounter the most disadvantaged and the most vulnerable. Whilst the families we support are a growing proportion of society they still represent a minority. 95% of children do not have involvement from social care.  As social workers do we have two world views? One which is narrow based on possible biases rooted in a ‘professional world’ view and one for the people we come across in day-to-day life where we pause and suspend judgment before deciding anything about them?

The Social Work superhero skill here is reflection.

Reflection is crucial to avoid the bias trap. Critical reflective thinking is essential in relation to each family, service user, or child to avoid falling into automatic thinking. Critical thinking is deliberate thinking. Critical thinking is disciplined thinking. It needs to happen before action so we can identify any potential for bias. Then, in action, so that we don’t seek out only the information to justify a predetermined decision. And finally after action to ensure our decisions are rooted in a solid rationale devoid of bias.

This article was written by George Bull and Stephen J Mordue

George has been a social worker for 10 years working mainly in child protection and Early Help. He has lectured with Jamie Scorer at New College Durham, University of Sunderland and University of Northumbria in solution focused practice.

Stephen J. Mordue Stephen is a lecturer in social work at the University of Sunderland, in the North East of England. He was a social work practitioner for 12 years working on an Older Persons team. His particular areas of interest are communication, how organisations function, and the application of the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. He is passionate about being organised, productivity and self care – ask him about diary management and spreadsheets! 

Reconstructing Memory

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memory

The advantage that memory gives us is the ability to predict the future. When confronted with a situation we can explore what we already know and act accordingly. If we do not know the specific situation we are presented with then we can make an approximation based on similar situations. Fernyhough (2012) seeks to overturn the ‘common sense’ view of memory as being, as he calls it, a DVD of our experience or specific snapshots of time, with a view that our autobiographical memories are reconstructed every time we remember them from a combination of semantic memory (memory of facts) and episodic memory (memory of events).

Each time we remember it is a reconstruction with the potential for flaws and embellishments. These memories then become our real lived experience of the ‘remembered’ event. This means that by supporting people to combine various strands of knowledge, memory finding may be supported. One significant aspect of remembering is emotion. We are more likely to remember the emotion of the event than the detail. This also has resonance from my own practice experience when discussing the events of the day at a day centre with a man with dementia. I found he could not recount what he had done but could remember the emotions he had felt. He was able to state that he had had a generally good day but something had upset him on the way home. It turned out that there had been an incident with the day centre transport, not involving him, that had been quite alarming. He remembered how he felt but not the events.

One important aspect in the reconstructing of memory, and therefore remembering, is environment. If people with dementia are reconstructing their memories it is important for them to have cues around them like photographs, the ornaments on their fireplace, or the view of their garden. Under such circumstances their capacity to remember may improve. They will ‘remember’ through exploration of their environment. We’ve all done this: you walk from one room to another and can’t remember what you were about to do so you return to the room where you had the thought and find you can remember by looking around for cues.

A practice example would be when people with dementia are in hospital their presentation becomes more confused and more disorientated but then when they return home these ‘symptoms’ improve. This has proved the case many times in my experience and I would argue you cannot adequately assess someone’s ability to be at home without them being at home. The value of a home visit while still an in-patient, or while in a reablement centre, is substantial in gaining a true picture of strengths and levels of independence. Convincing families and family carers of this can be understandably difficult, but anecdotal evidence shows the possibility of a successful return home under these circumstances to be significant.

In working with people with dementia there are also some opportunities we can utilise to help people remember. Fernyhough (2012) observes that remembering is a social process. It happens with other people and is often contextual. What you can remember may rely on cues, but also some of those cues can be the people you are remembering with. So, in the earlier example of the man attending the day centre if I were reviewing his attendance there I might want to do that at the day centre with staff, and possibly even other service users that he relates to, obviously considering the appropriateness of that in terms of service user choice and confidentiality, to help ‘scaffold’ his memories.

De Vries (2013) reports Normann et al (2006) found that when supporting people with dementia, close contact with family and caregivers improved lucidity. Even when not at the day centre, priming memory with facts, for example, “the place you go on the bus”, “where you see George”, may aid remembering.

So in undertaking interventions or assessment work with people with dementia we need to consider where we undertake the work we do, who we have present, and how we can assist the person with remembering in order to make sure they are fully represented in the interaction and more importantly that they are shaping the outcomes of our involvement themselves.

Fernyhough, C. (2012) Pieces of Light: The new science of memory. Profile Books:London
de Vries K (2013) Communicating with older people with dementia. Nursing Older People. 25, 4, 30-37. RCN Publishing Company

 

[Stephen Mordue]