Group Learning
She carried out pioneer research into the use of groups in learning with medical, architectural and education students, and she shared with diverse audiences in many countries her extensive knowledge and expertise as a teacher who used the methods and principles of group analytic psychotherapy. Jane Abercrombie came to these views through her contact with the psychoanalyst and group analyst S. H. Foulkes and in 1952 she became a founder member of the Group Analytic Society, and president of the society in 1981. This society still awards a prize in her name, the Abercrombie Prize, in recognition of the importance of her ideas.
| “ | …what is being perceived depends not only on what is being looked at but on the state of the perceiver. (Abercrombie, 1960:27)
We tend to think of ourselves as passively receiving information from the outside world, but this is far from the case; in the process of receiving information we interpret and judge, (ibid.: 29) Free group discussion is to thinking (ideas and abstractions) as handling things is to perception. (Abercrombie, 1960) Our methods of formal education are still governed by a notion that children's little heads are empty, or at least emptier than they should be, whereas the truth is that it is because they are too full of what we do not understand that they are difficult to teach. (Abercrombie, 1960) When the thing we look at is sufficiently like the thing we expect to see, and easily fits our scheme, our experience helps us to see. It is only when what we expect to see is not there that our schemata lead us astray, (ibid.: 33) How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching. (Abercrombie, 1960) We never come to an act of perception with an entirely blank mind, but are always in a state of preparedness or expectancy, because of our past experience, (ibid.: 63) |
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Read more about this topic: M. L. J. Abercrombie
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