Dear Friends,
The following abstract describes the study I completed for my dissertation.
Limited to 350 words, the submitted abstract leaves out some information
especially pertinent to PCT researchers. I used PCT methodologies in a
modified replication of Robertson's 1999 article, "Testing the self as a
control system: Theoretical and methodological issues." Several theories
of social behavior of George Herbert Mead, Erving Goffman, H. P. Grice, and
Penelope Brown & Stephen Levinson were compared with Perceptual Control
Theory. It was argued that these theories also describe behavior as the
control of certain social perceptions. I presented a model of the learner
as as a social control system. For members of my department, I briefly
sketched out an instructional design paradigm from a PCT perspective that
would teach to that student model.
I hope that I have been able to advance both the knowledge of training and PCT.
BT
Here it is:
"Self-Image Maintenance in an Educational Setting: A Perceptual Control
Theory Study of Technical Training"
The purpose of this study was to understand the self-image as a factor of
active learning. Ordinarily, the process of learning in a technical
training session is presumed to involve the acquisition of technical
concepts and skills relative to certain instructional objectives set forth
by those in charge of managing the learning environment. Recently, there
have been several attempts at describing instruction in terms of a social
encounter involving an active learner. At the heart of every social
encounter is the maintenance of one's self-image. A framework for
understanding the maintenance of self-image is Perceptual Control Theory
(PCT), a cybernetic approach to the understanding of self-regulative,
purposeful behavior in active learners. Seventeen men and women took part
in separate sessions that studied the process of self-image maintenance
during a training encounter which involved several socially dissonant
interactions.
The present investigation considered the relative importance of task or
social interaction as participants upheld previously identified
self-concepts (aspects of the self-image) while performing a computer task.
It was proposed that learners would principally act to preserve their
self-image in social encounters such as training workshops, and defer
learning activities until these difficulties were resolved. It was
predicted by PCT that the process of learning represents a multi-tiered
cybernetic iteration of varied lower-level behavioral outputs that
culminate in a continuous maintenance of self-image discrepancies
experienced as a result of the learning.
Results indicated that participants took great care maintaining their
self-image. Their social interactions (including performing the computer
task) ultimately supported that maintenance process. Interactions were
analyzed in chunks of related dialog, where a potential social disturbance
was expected to be deflected or affirmed on the basis of its congruency
with earlier participant assessments of a particular self-concept. Both
the maintenance of individual self-concepts and performing the computer
task, while each was generally successful, were found to be essentially
subordinate to the presentation of the self-image. Participants considered
social disturbances to be impediments to success in the task, which
unexpectedly they considered more important to personal feelings of
success. Participants reframed their perceptions of the interaction around
the computer task to regain justification in their self-image as good
learners and subjects. The findings suggest that instructional designers
and classroom instructors should recognize the active role of the learner
in the design and implementation of instructional sessions.