Reflections on “Passing the Baton”
The goal of any transformative relationship, such as the relationship between a teacher and the student, a therapist and the client, a mentor and the mentee, ideally leads to increasing independence on the part of the student, the client, or the mentee, whereby they are moving towards autonomy and self-determination. These transformative relationships and practices are anchored in the fundamental assumption that when they are successful, the teacher, therapist or mentor becomes unnecessary. How do we, as skilled practitioners, accomplish this? In this blog post, I lay out some principles that I will explore in more detail in the next several blog posts.
The Johari Window
The Johari Window
The Johari Window is a wonderful concept, a tool even, that was developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955[1]. The name ‘Johari’ comes from combining their two first names. In my work, moving a learner towards independence, essentially emancipating them from our relationship, implies that I open the “blind” window. I share what I know about the learner with the learner as completely as possible. While this needs to be done in a skillful manner, with sensitivity to the individual’s self-concept and self-beliefs, it is a critical component of enabling autonomy and self-determination because it locates information about the learner, within the learner.
Fostering Metacognition
3 Types of Metacognitive Knowledge
Metacognition is the awareness, knowledge and understanding of one’s own thought processes. It involves three types of knowledge about learning and the self: declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge[2]. The learner needs to know what their own strengths and weaknesses are, how they learn best, and the conditions under which they succeed or struggle. Leveraging the Johari window is critical to fostering metacognition in the learner. When a specific strategy is learned, one also need to have knowledge about what the strategy is, how it is implemented, and when it is helpful to use the strategy. The learner needs to be able to access and express these different types of knowledge in whatever way is most useful and accessible for them. This type of learning is recursive and reflective and fully draws on the relationship and trust that exists between the learner their “coach”, which may be their teacher, their therapist, or their mentor.
Reflection and integrating knowledge
Paul Gaugin created a painting in the late 1800s when he was living in Tahiti that has philosophical implications. The title of the painting is:
D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?
“D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?”
In English, this is, “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?”
In the spirit of Gaugin’s quest, it is my practice to pause every quarter or so and reflect on our goals, our progress and our work together with all my students. (This presumes, of course, that we set goals and we measure progress. This will be the subject of a separate blog post.) We review our goals and examine work products as well as our notes from sessions. We look at the data we have been collecting on the different goals we have set, noting changes in the indicators of growth that we are tracking. This tends to be a rich discussion, and we look forward to it eagerly. While this discussion always validates hard work and clarifies next steps, it also allows us to adjust our approach through a discussion of what worked and what did not. Sometimes, it confirms that we need to meet more frequently, or that we are ready to pull back and begin the process of termination. These discussions yield precious gifts such as this summary of a discussion with A, who left our work together soon after our conversation to begin a rich and very successful tenure at a high school for students with learning differences. A was being homeschooled when we worked together, and when we had the conversation that resulted in the analysis we captured on the white board in my office.
A’s reflections on where she had come from,who she was now, and where she was going.