Learned Helplessness
No one person is good at everything. In fact, the average human fails over 1000 times learning to walk.?The average western baby learns to walk at around 15 months old and yet babies in a tribe in Africa learn to walk by 9 months old.?Why? Because they utilise a natural reflex action that all babies are born with, but which disappears around 12 months old.?If you hold a 6-month baby up in the air by holding them just under their arm pits, their legs will move as if walking.??
Imagine if you decided after 500 failures that walking wasn’t for you?? What would your life be like?? I doubt I will ever hear an account of that happening, where a baby chooses to stop learning to walk.? And yet young people are constantly choosing to stop travelling pathways towards their independence, their dreams, to follow their interests.? Why?? The reasons are likely to be multifaceted but one is because of Learned Helplessness.?
The term was coined by Martin Seligman and is defined as - a condition in which a person has a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed.? Learned helplessness can also occur when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable, stressful situations, then does not exercise control when it becomes available.?
This YouTube video gives a nice explanation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLe658Z8Uag?
I spent some time looking at the vast number of videos on YouTube and came across this experiment done by a high school teacher in the US.? I found it very interesting and also worrying, because it demonstrated how fast the psychological state of Learned Helplessness can “kick in”.???
It took just TWO challenges before some of the young people in the experiment started to exhibit Learned Helplessness, unable to complete the third test item because of it.? I have known about Learned Helplessness for some years, but never considered it could be induced so quickly.?
So, what of the young people that we coach, mentor, guide and support at NMT?? Do they exhibit Learned helplessness?? I believe the vast majority do and it is a minor miracle that many turn up at all.? The video above led me to ask the following questions:?
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Over a few days I also thought about antidotes to Learned Helplessness.?The example antidote below is based on how Seligman reversed the Learned Helplessness that had been induced in the dogs in his experiment – they literally had to drag them from their cages.? Now we can’t literally drag the young people we enable and support into our centres, but we can shape exercises that result in small wins that in turn grow in line with their capacity for growth.?
Imagine this scenario:
Young person B arrives at an NMT centre with no prior achievement, suffers from anxiety and yet initial assessments indicate a capability for L1 Functional Skills.? Then a tutors decides to stretch him early on, and gets him to sit a higher paper (E2) in the first half-term. Then B passes the paper and NMT awards him with an actual NOCN certificate. Then B progresses to a higher paper (E3) in the second half-term and acquires yet another certificate.? B then focuses on L1 (higher than E3) for term 2 and term 3.?
I think in this scenario young person B demonstrates an enabling form of dragging from the cage. A great way to use positive reinforcement at regular intervals. Through tailored steps young people can grow their confidence combined with constant reinforcement that they can achieve. This is evidenced through real certificates, physical proof of success vs just words of encouragement.? Obviously, with the kind of learners we have, we're also careful about overly drawing attention to the young person. No big song and dance is made unless the young person makes a clear signal they want it.??
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