Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis

Justifiably, many parents complain that school personnel make them defensive, especially at program planning meetings, such as Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings. Some school personnel make similar complaints about parents. No matter who’s at fault, defensiveness can destroy the possibility of developing programs that meet children’s needs. It stymies progress by fostering misunderstanding, distrust, secrecy, resentment, and contempt. Cooperation is one of its first victims.

If you’re in this situation, if school personnel are defensive, you should ask yourself, “How can I reduce their defensiveness?” Neither this question nor this column implies that you’re at fault. Nevertheless, examining your behavior may suggest how you can improve the situation, even if the defensiveness of school personnel is due to factors for which you’re not responsible, such as administrative pressures, recent experiences with hostile parents, and cross examination at special education hearings.

Gibb’s Behavioral Categories

About a half-century ago, Jack Gibb (1961) identified a powerful set of behaviors that made people defensive. Fortunately, he also identified a powerful set that fostered receptivity and openness to the views of others, which he called support. By understanding these sets of behaviors, and effectively applying those that reduce defensiveness and increase receptivity and openness, you might improve the likelihood that your child’s instructional program will meet his needs.

First, we’ll describe behaviors to avoid, behaviors we may unconsciously use, behaviors that may sneak up on us and arouse other people’s defenses. Then, we’ll describe those you should stress, those that encourage—but do not guarantee—better understanding and greater receptivity and “open-mindedness” to the views and ideas of others. Finally, we’ll offer cautions.

Behaviors that arouse defensiveness …………. Behaviors that foster support

Evaluation …………………………………………………………………………………. Description

Control……………………………………………………………………………………….. Problem Orientation

Strategy ………………………………………………….…………………………..……… Spontaneity

Neutrality……………………………………………………………………………………. Empathy

Superiority …………………………………………………………………………………. Equality

Certainty…………………………………………………………………………………….. Provisionalism

Evaluation—Description. If you judge someone, you’re evaluating him. It’s not limited to your words. You may unconsciously and subtly transmit evaluative messages by your tone of voice, manner of speech, facial expressions, gestures, and positioning of your body. These may contradict your words.

The most devastating evaluative messages focus on people or convey the idea that “something must be wrong with you if that’s what you think.” Such messages quickly and forcefully provoke defensiveness—and usually backfire.

None of this means you should shun evaluative statements. When developing instructional programs, a form of problem solving, evaluation plays a necessary role, but only after you and school personnel have defined the problem and freely generated and discussed alternative solutions. This is the time for evaluative statements, but only ones that focus on the strengths and weaknesses of proposed solutions.

Descriptive messages are straightforward. And although they may deal with touchy issues, they avoid judgments, especially ones that focus on people. Here’s a parent describing a touchy issue: “If it’s okay, let me see if understand what you said. Although Kelly did poorly on her reading tests, she doesn’t need extra reading help because she’s a hard worker. Did I get it right?”

Control—Problem Orientation. School personnel are less likely to cooperate with you if they perceive—rightly or wrongly—that you’re trying to control their behaviors and decisions and that you’re hiding your true motivations. As with evaluation, suspicion of control may arise from your voice, gestures, choice of words, facial expressions and body positioning. It may also arise from frequent, unnecessary references to special education laws. If you frequently cite your state’s special education code in fault-finding ways, school personnel might think you’re trying to control the meeting to satisfy a hidden agenda.

The direct opposite of control is problem orientation. With a problem orientation, your actions and demeanor suggest that you have “no predetermined solution, attitude or message to impose” and you want to act collaboratively in “defining a mutual problem and in seeking a solution” (Gibb, 1961, p. 330).

Strategy—Spontaneity. Gibb found that strategies such as “taking a role, feigning emotion … withholding information, or … having special sources of data” heighten defensiveness and are especially resented. Perceiving such machinations—whether right or wrong—communicates to school personnel that you’re duping them, or that you have a pernicious hidden agenda. Thus, it’s important to share, not to withhold information from schools, such as the results of private tutoring that you’re asking the school to support or a private reading evaluation to which you often refer, but won’t share. Conversely, Gibb found that people are far less defensive when they view others as sincere, open, honest, straightforward, and appropriately spontaneous.

Neutrality—Empathy. If school personnel think you’re a clinically detached, low-affect person who views them and the school as an-object-of-study, they may think you care little about your child and them. This creates defensiveness. Conversely, if you’re empathic, if you try to understand things from their point of view and you express your understanding in respectful, supportive ways, they’re more likely to trust you and be less defensive. Empathy need not be agreement. And it is not reprehensible manipulation to hurt others, but a sincere, genuine attempt to understand them, so you can work effectively with them to solve your child’s learning problems.

Superiority—Equality. Gibb found that messages of superiority warn listeners that the speaker is “not willing to enter into a shared problem-solving relationship ….does not desire feedback…. does not require help, and/or will likely try to reduce the power, status, or worth of the receiver” ( p. 332). If any of these tendencies describe you, minimize or eliminate them. Otherwise, you’re likely to make school personnel defensive, resentful, and resistant to your ideas. It’s not that they’re bad people—they’re just people, acting defensively, like most of us would.

Conceptually, it’s easy to prevent defensive responses to behavior that screams “superiority”: Treat school personnel respectfully, as equals—not inferiors or superiors. Recognize that they have knowledge and skills you lack, but you have knowledge and skills they lack. One key is to recognize and respect differences, not place differences or people in a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority. School personnel will know you respect them and consider them equals if you listen carefully to understand what they’re saying, listen without interrupting, show that you’re judging the merits of their ideas, and focus on investigating issues rather than rigidly advocating for preconceived solutions.

Certainty—Provisionalism. Gibb (1961) observed that people “saw the dogmatic individual as needing to be right, as wanting to win an argument rather than solve a problem, and as seeing his ideas as truths to be defended” (p. 333). People resent such certainty, and respond defensively. In contrast, they were far less defensive when they perceived others’ attitudes as provisional rather than dogmatic. People with provisional attitudes were flexible, were willing to experiment with their behaviors, attitudes and ideas, and were willing to investigate issues rather than rigidly and harshly defending their predetermined position.

Cautions

Human behavior is not absolute, it’s probabilistic: We can’t predict, with 100% certainty, what will work. We can only play the odds. And odds are that if your behavior is supportive—genuinely so—you’re likely to develop better relationships with school personnel than if your behavior provokes defensiveness. But be careful. You shouldn’t use Gibb’s categories in absolute, mechanistic, rigid ways. You shouldn’t accept an instructional method or evaluation procedure that has little or no research supporting it when one supported by quality research is available. You shouldn’t let school personnel do all the talking and dictate what will happen when you also have something valuable to contribute and you have a right to help make decisions. You can use Gibb’s categories, even if you disagree with school personnel.

For example, as an equal you might say, “I know you like the Wilson approach, but you’ve used it with Kelly for two years and you’ve told me she’s made only three months progress. She’s now further behind her peers. I’d like to join you in finding a program with a better research base for struggling readers like Kelly. I just read, for example, that the Florida Center for Reading Research found the RAVE-O program highly effective for struggling readers like Kelly. Can we examine this? Or do you have information about another program that research has shown to work effectively with struggling readers like Kelly?” Here, you’re being polite, respectful, descriptive, problem oriented, and provisional. And by ending with questions, you’re shunning certainty and dogmatism. Instead, you’re communicating your readiness to listen. Although you’re following Gibb’s advice, you’re also advocating—strongly—for your child’s needs. And that’s what you should do.

References

Gibb, J. R. (1974). Defensive communication. In R. S. Cathcart & L. A. Samovar (Eds.), Small group communication: A reader (2^nd ed.). Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Company, Publishers.

Florida Center for Reading Research. RAVE-O. Retrieved 5/23/2010, from http://www.fcrr.org.

Howard Margolis, Ed.D. © Reading2008 & Beyond

www.reading2008.com