Study

last updated:October 2008

What kind of teacher-pupil relationships created a positive learning environment in Rogers’ view?
To Rogers, the kind of interpersonal relationship the teacher had with his/her students was fundamental. He believed the way to create successful relationships (in both counselling and teaching) was through being ethical, honest and open , and treating others with acceptance and empathy.

Being genuine
Rogers believed that by choosing not to adopt the kind of teaching persona that is authoritarian, distancing, judgemental, impersonal, one-dimensional, etc., a teacher is more likely to be effective in establishing and sustaining the kinds of human relationships with pupils in which respect for learning and for each other can flourish.

Being accepting and caring
Another attitude Rogers said stood out in those who were successful at creating a positive learning environment was caring for the learner as a person in his/her own right. Teachers with this outlook:

• fully accepted the fear and hesitation of the student as s/he approached a new problem and rejoiced in their satisfaction when they achieved
• accepted a student’s occasional apathy as well as his/her efforts to achieve major goals
• acknowledged students’ personal feelings that both promoted and disturbed learning, such as sibling rivalry, distrust or even hatred of authority, lack of self-confidence. In return, they gained their students’ respect because they showed they were able to talk to the students at their level.

Empathic understanding
Rogers found  that students felt deeply appreciative when they felt understood – not evaluated, not judged, but understood from their own point of view. “If any teacher set herself the task of endeavouring to make one acceptant, empathic response per day to a student’s demonstrated or verbalised feeling, I believe she would discover the potency of this kind of understanding”. He found that when teachers were empathic and understanding, their students tended to like each other better, feel liked by others and tended to have a more positive attitude towards themselves and school.

Listening
Just as with counselling, Rogers believed being a teacher required careful listening to the students’ voices:

“As a teacher I must first slow down in order to acknowledge the voices of my students – to take these moments to give value to what is being said no matter how loud or soft, gentle or angry, relevant or irrelevant it may seem”.  

You might like to read a case study which shows how a teacher gave her students an opportunity to voice their views of their current learning experiences. They identified a number of improvements to teaching at their school, which echoed Rogers’ beliefs about creating an emotionally positive learning environment. You might also find it helpful to look at our earlier RfT about Consulting pupils and students.

Another pathway: the learning group
Rogers noted how it was common for people to have some sort of interpersonal experience in an intensive group. He noted how many businesses organised teams of people who participated in wilderness experiences together. Universities also sometimes organised retreat groups which included the students and staff. Sessions were held away from the campus in some informal, camplike setting at which students built personal, first-name relationships with tutors and developed friendships with other students. You might like to read a case study which shows how a group of teachers improved their relationship with their students through organising a weekend revision retreat at a youth hostel, and how doing this combined with group work activities helped to raise student achievement.

What effect did showing empathy have on the classroom climate?
Rogers worked extensively as a counsellor with students in distress. He learned that if he tried to understand them and trusted them as essentially competent people, then the students began to:

• develop clearer and deeper self-insights
• see what they might do to resolve their distress
• take actions that made them more independent and that solved some of their problems.

When he started to use the same approach with classes of students, he found that his classrooms became more exciting places of learning. It completely changed the interaction and the climate of the classroom. He ceased being a ‘teacher’ (ie. directive). Rather he became a ‘facilitator of learning’. As a facilitator, he found the students started to tell him their feelings and ask questions. The students also felt able to challenge him, even criticise him and not be put down or rebuked or humiliated. These kinds of classes helped students to become more interested and independent learners.

At the same time, Rogers found himself more able to accept variety in student work and also freer to express vague, ill-found ideas himself (he commented that creative ideas were almost always half-baked) which he then enjoyed discussing with the students. Trusting the students extended to getting the students to assess their own work. He would tell students:

“Give yourselves the grade you think is fair, but I … must [also] sign the grade sheet, giving it my approval, so I believe the grade must be mutually acceptable. If I find a discrepancy between my subjective evaluation of your work and your subjective evaluation, we will discuss it together and try to agree on a reasonable grade”.

In practice, he found that he insisted on giving a higher grade far more often than he argued about a grade he felt to be undeservedly high.

What did research say about the impact of Rogers’ kind of approach?
Freedom to learn presented the findings of a variety of research studies, which showed how,  when the teacher provided the kind of emotionally supportive, facilitative climate Rogers described, students learned more, enjoyed lessons and attended school more often. They were also more creative and more capable of problem-solving, showed more spontaneity, initiative and independence and liked their teacher more. Furthermore, studies indicated that low ratings on understanding, genuineness, respect, and high rating on directive teaching accompanied lower levels of pupil intellectual performance and significantly negative emotional experiences.  We give some examples below.

How did being empathic make a difference?
In one study involving 600 teachers and 10,000 students aged 4-18 years, the students of teachers who were trained to offer high levels of empathy and caring were compared with students of teachers who did not offer high levels of these conditions. The students of the highly facilitative teachers were found to:

• miss fewer days of school during the year (on average five days compared with nine)
• have increased scores on self-concept measures, indicating higher self-esteem
• make greater gains on academic achievement measures, including both mathematics and reading scores
• present fewer disciplinary problems
• commit fewer acts of vandalism to school property
• be more spontaneous and use higher levels of thinking.

Furthermore, these benefits were cumulative; the more years in succession that students had facilitative teachers, the greater the gains, both intellectual and affective, when compared with students of traditional teachers.

What other behaviours characterised empathic teachers?
Several studies showed that teachers who provided high levels of empathy and caring were also characterised by a cluster of other behaviours including:

• more discussion with students
• more use of student ideas in ongoing teaching interactions
• more smiling with students.

In return there was:

• more student talk
• more student problem-solving
• more asking of questions
• more involvement in learning
• more physical movement
• higher levels of cognition
• greater creativity
• more eye contact with the teacher.

The importance of eye contact
One study showed that many teachers did not maintain eye contact with their students. The researchers concluded, “Some students never receive favourable eye contact from a teacher and receive only negative eye contact when they are being disruptive”. When they helped teachers develop more positive eye contact, student attendance increased significantly.

Why did Rogers prefer to view learning as ‘facilitated’ rather than ‘taught’?
Rogers commented how ‘teaching’ in the traditional sense of the word was based on the (mistaken) assumption that what was taught was learned. He said, “One does not need extensive study to provide evidence that this is false. One needs only to talk with a few students”.

Rogers argued that transmission teaching or “telling” might make sense in an unchanging environment, but pointed out that we live in an environment that is continually changing. The goal of teaching therefore should be the facilitation of learning and change:

“Merely to absorb facts is of only slight value in the present and usually of even less value in the future”.

“The only person who is educated is the person who has learned how to learn; the person who has learned how to adapt and change”.

As we described earlier, Rogers felt it was important that learning facilitators showed their students empathy. Above all, he said, they should not put on a front, but be themselves and let their students know they care.

“Some readers may feel that the whole approach – the belief that teachers can relate as persons to their students is hopelessly unrealistic and idealistic. I’m sorry, I cannot be coolly detached about this… I can only be passionate in my statement that people count, that interpersonal relationships are important. Better courses, better curricula, better coverage, are not enough”.

You might like to read a case study which showed how a group of teachers succeeded in providing the kind of facilitative climate Rogers advocated.

How did the two teaching approaches differ in Rogers’ view?
Rogers showed the difference between teaching approaches by placing teaching practices on a continuum:

Teacher-focused:
- lecture
- questioning
- drill and practice
- demonstration
- discussion
- collaborative groups
- guided discovery
- role-play
- projects
- enquiry

Student-focused:
- self-assessment

Presenting teaching approaches in this way offered a continuity between the two ends of the spectrum.  Briefly, at one end, in teacher-focused learning environments students would be consumers of information. At the extreme, students always sit and listen to their teachers talking, do worksheets, and sit mostly by themselves, working on what the teacher has provided.

At the other extreme, in student-focused learning environments, students would be the producers of ideas. Students would be encouraged to become engaged through collaborative learning activities, peer-teaching, field trips, projects and classroom talk that requires multiple levels of thinking. They would create new ideas and materials through projects, usually talk aloud about the way they derived an answer and take the initiative to interact with teachers and peers.

You might like to read a case study which shows how a group of teachers went about changing from their usual didactic approach towards a more student-centred approach by offering the students more collaborative work and open-ended, enquiry tasks.

To Rogers however, it was not a case of doing one or the other, but of creating a classroom environment where all participants (ie. teachers as well as pupils) were co-learners in the educational journey and where teachers both modelled and facilitated learning activities through effective relationships with others.

How did Rogers believe teachers could provide opportunities for co-learning?
According to Rogers, to become co-learners, teachers needed to incorporate student-focused approaches, which included:

• learning through enquiry
• peer teaching
• co-operative learning
• self-assessment.

Learning through enquiry
Like Vygotsky Rogers believed in the importance of the teacher setting the stage for a mindset of enquiry by posing the problems and giving assistance – making it possible for students to achieve discoveries independently. He likened the process to that used by scientists and historians etc, with the students seeking answers to real questions, discovering the pitfalls and joys involved. He pointed out that they may not learn as many facts, but would develop an appreciation of learning as a structured and cumulative search for answers. You may like to look at a case study of how a teacher enabled her pupils to work in the same way as academic historians, through being history detectives, which we included in our earlier RoM about Jerome Bruner’s work.

Peer teaching
Activities such as peer teaching had many advantages in Rogers’ view, both for the student who was being helped and for the older or more advanced student who was doing the teaching. You may like to look at a case study of peer teaching which we included in our earlier RfT about teaching phonics.

Collaborative learning
Rogers felt that too many schools were silent and that some teachers avoided group activities because they created too much noise. He also felt that often students missed out on opportunities for engaging in meaningful dialogue when they were expected to sit quietly and listen to others speak. He referred to studies of the time that showed how 70-80% of classroom talk was by the teacher. You might like to read our earlier RfT about raising achievement through group work which helps to tease out the key characteristics of effective facilitation of collaborative learning and our earlier RfT about effective talk in the classroom which shows some of the challenges in moving beyond teacher talk.

Self-assessment
Rogers felt it important that some degree of self-assessment was built into any attempt to enable learning from experience. He believed that the evaluation of one’s learning was the main way student-led learning also became responsible learning. When the individual has to take some responsibility for deciding the extent to which s/he has achieved particular goals or criteria, then s/he learns to take responsibility for him/herself. We look at self-assessment in more detail in our earlier RfTs about assessment for learning and learning how to learn.

How did Rogers believe teachers could best structure student learning?
Methods and techniques that Rogers found teachers had successfully used to structure student learning included:

• building on problems perceived as real
• providing resources
• identifying objectives clearly.

Building on problems perceived as real
Rather than provide pre-determined learning material, Rogers believed it important that teachers drew out from students problems or issues that were both real to them and relevant to the course, but he appreciated that it was sometimes necessary to create or contrive problems for them.. You might like to look at a case study which describes how teachers presented students with geography-related problems, such as why a block of flats needed to be demolished and helped them to consider the problem from a variety of perspectives by setting up a mystery activity.

Providing resources
Instead of spending time planning every second of detailed input for lessons, Rogers believed that teachers should concentrate on providing resources that gave students opportunities for learning from experience and in ways relevant to their needs. He advised making the resources clearly available by thinking through and simplifying the steps the student must go through to use the resources – eg. by making a shelf of books available for loan, inviting people in from the community or providing feedback sheets summarising the major problems discussed/resolved in the previous session. You might like to read our earlier RfT about the Pedagogies with E-Learning Resources’ (PELRS) project in which teachers planned learning events for their students that allowed the students to decide on their own learning activities and choose resources to help them from a careful selection provided by their teachers that included books and a range of e-learning materials.

Identifying objectives
Rogers preferred to think about objectives in relation to the conditions of learning.  He was concerned about an emphasis on behaviour and performance in many so called learning objectives. He wanted objectives to help teachers focus on the underpinning learning process. The kind of facilitative classroom that Rogers aimed for focused on creating the climate for learning and experiences that supported student understanding. The following examples show how he saw the difference between the different kinds of objectives.

• The students will be able to write an organised account of the contributions of ancient Egypt to modern world societies.
• The students will plan for and go on a field trip visit to the ancient Egyptian collection at the museum to develop their understanding of the contribution of ancient Egypt to the modern world.

In the first statement, what the students were expected to do to demonstrate their competence was predetermined; in the second, the experience was prescribed and the learning process was in view, but the steps in between were not predetermined and the learning outputs/outcomes could be negotiated.

How do we know this?
Carl Rogers’ ideas about education grew from a lifetime of research, experimental work and interaction with people, both as a counsellor and as a psychologist. Rogers wrote the first edition of Freedom to learn (published in 1969) in response to a request from his niece, who was a teacher. At the time he had only anecdotal evidence about the impact on learning of the kind of person-centred classroom environment he advocated.

For the second edition (published in 1983), Rogers sought the input of teachers and researchers. Rogers incorporated many examples of teachers’ experiences with learners of all ages as well as research data. The research evidence was drawn from many sources, documented over time and in different contexts. Some of the data were based on tape recordings of thousands of hours of classroom interaction in eight countries. These represented all levels of education, many different ethnic and national groups and a wide spread of geographical locations. Other research was drawn from longitudinal studies of caring schools and families.

Jerome Frieberg (an American professor of education) was a major contributor to the second edition. He also provided feedback on the manuscript during its preparation. Later, after Rogers’ death in 1987, Frieberg set about providing a 1990s perspective to the book. He retained many of the chapters with few changes because he felt they stood the test of time, but he also introduced a great deal of new material to incorporate more recent experiences.

Implications
Teachers may like to consider the following implications of Carl Rogers’ book Freedom to learn:

• Rogers believed that teaching which involved facilitating learning was preferable to direct instruction. You might like to reflect on one of your recent lessons and consider the balance between the amount you directly teach  and the amount you facilitate your students’ learning. Could you provide more opportunities for student-led learning in your next lesson(s), for example through allowing students to choose which tasks they do and/or how they will go about them?
• facilitated learning involves providing pupils with opportunities for problem-solving, which require pupils to hypothesise, ask questions and discuss lines of enquiry. Could you provide more opportunities for pupils to work together, and with you, to solve problems?  Would you find it helpful to share ideas with colleagues about the kinds of problems that enthuse pupils?
• Rogers referred to studies of the time that showed how 70-80% of classroom talk was by the teacher. You might like to see how much pupils contribute to the talk that goes on in your classroom.  You could make a video or audio recording of part of one of your lessons or ask a colleague to observe, and note down the number of times you speak and the number of times your pupils speak to you, and to each other, as well as the length of yours and your pupils’ interactions (ie. number of words) to find out the proportion of time you and your pupils talk. Would you find it helpful to discuss with a colleague how you might increase the amount of talking your pupils do?
• Rogers was passionate about teachers showing their students empathic understanding. This often happens instinctively and in unnoticed ways. Perhaps you could try to be show empathy more actively. You could make a note of any empathic responses you make, and to which students, and monitor their effect over time on their attitudes/behaviour? You might, for example, sympathise with a student who was unhappy about not being chosen for the football team, commenting that you’d feel like that, or that had happened to you too or that s/he had done well to get that far etc, then ask what s/he might do next.

School leaders may find the following implications helpful in acting on the messages in this RfT:

• To Rogers, the kind of interpersonal relationship the teacher has with his/her students is key. Are you aware of differences in emotional climate between classrooms? What signs do you look for?  How do such differences arise? How do you handle them? Would peer observation and/or team teaching focusing on how teachers relate to their students help your colleagues develop further the emotional climate in their classrooms? Would it also help for teachers to talk about their own feelings and whether these might have an impact on the classroom environment?
• Rogers believed that as facilitators, teachers should concentrate on providing resources that give students the opportunity to learn through experience. Do you have colleagues who have experience in working in this way who could share their approach and/or coach others? Or would it be possible to offer teachers time to work together to plan problem-solving and/or enquiry activities and work together to explore their effects in different classrooms, phases or departments?
• Rogers’ beliefs underpin current assessment for learning practices which help pupils learn how to learn. Would professional development activities geared towards deepening and extending formative assessment practices help your colleagues to help their pupils take more responsibility for their own learning?

Filling in the gaps
Gaps – of basic premises, related issues methods, analysis and/or interpretation – that are uncovered in a piece of research also have a useful role in making sure that future research can fill in the gaps and build cumulatively on what is known. If research is also to inform practice, it needs to be convincing to teachers, and to take account of their views of its adequacy; so practitioners’ interpretation of the gaps and follow-up questions are crucial.  We think the following areas would be fruitful:

• the impact of teaching-with-less-telling on particular groups of pupils eg. special needs pupils; underachieving gifted and talented students, and
• the impact of creating an emotionally supportive environment on disaffected students.

Do you think that research exploring these questions would help you inform your practice?
Which issues are of most interest to you?

What is your experience?
Do you have any evidence regarding changing from a traditional teaching style to facilitating student-centred learning or how you create an emotionally supportive classroom climate? We would be interested to hear about examples of changes you have made and the impact they have had which we could perhaps feature in our case study section.

Your feedback
Have you found this study to be useful? Have you used any aspect of this research in your own classroom teaching practice? We would like to hear your feedback on this study. To share your views with us email: research@gtce.org.uk