Interval Meetings at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis

The Application of Pprinciples to Teaching and Learning.(Part I: Norman Kelman; November 12, 1950. Part II: Norman Kelman; Marie Rasey, guest speaker; December 10, 1950) Teaching and learning are a cooperative enterprise, usually a group experience. General agreement within the group as to purposes or directions is essential for optimal teaching and learning. This does not exclude healthy differences of opinion, which are, in fact, essential if constructive experience and genuine learning are to be achieved. Healthy differing is to be differentiated from neurotic competitiveness which tends to isolate one person from the next and prevents healthy sharing of experience and resources. To the teacher with needs for mastery, any student who fails to agree becomes essentially a competitor. To the student who needs the teacher's approval or the corroboration of his own viewpoint, his colleagues become competitors. In such competitive situations the spirit becomes one of guardedness and inhibition rather than of sharing experiences. Good learning, like healthy growing, involves total participation in giving out and taking in. All of us have experience which is of potential value; good teaching creates situations which will enable these experiences to come to the fore. Optimal learning and teaching is effected when a course serves to raise questions, whet appetites, and open new vistas for exploration, and when it contributes to an understanding of ourselves, others, our work, and to increased interest in our work. There are four aspects to optimal teaching which may be illustrated by considering how children learn:

1. Being curious

2. Seeking help

3. Trying, failing and succeeding

4. Experiencing change

In evaluating, we may ask: does a course encourage curiosity and participation, make help available, stimulate change? It is important that instructor and student evaluate a teaching program constantly and take actions to improve it.

All neurotic values are obstacles in the way of effective