I love science fiction. One common element of the genre is that someone has to learn to do something — often something that involves some mystical powers. The teacher will often give advice that sounds like an instruction, but really isn’t:
- Use the force.
- Reach out with your feelings.
- Move beyond time and space.
Through a weird quirk in human language, we understand that these statements sound like they are instructions, but obviously they aren’t. In real life, instructions are only useful if the person can understand what they should do differently.
For most people, this doesn’t disrupt the flow of the show. But I’m practically yelling out “that’s not an instruction!”
Parents and teachers can often give “fake” instructions, too. They are simply using language that doesn’t mean much to students in their current situation.
Giving a preschooler a direction like “I need you to focus” is almost never helpful. You might as well tell them to “move beyond time and space.” We can make the same mistake with graduate students when we give instructions like “you need to contrive the motivating operation.”
One of the keys to success in teaching is making sure the instruction sends a crystal-clear communication to the student. If you don’t get this right, the odds of a successful intervention are very low. Sure, you already know that. But it is actually much harder to send a crystal-clear communication then most people think. If you look for this, you will see it happening all the time. It is a common cause of failure. When you see students make “ridiculous” errors like this, you can be sure there was a problem with the communication.
In my view, all BCBAs should take the time to study Engelmann who taught us about “faultless communication.” The classic work is Theory of Instruction. The problem is that book is nearly impossible to read. Engelmann published a much more accessible book here.