Applying a “Therapeutic/Person-Centered Approach”: Thoughts on a “Helping” Relationship

Writings

Apr 4

According to Elizabeth Hopper at ThoughtCo, Rogerian therapy or the Rogerian approach is “a therapeutic technique in which the client takes an active, autonomous role in therapy sessions - and is based on the idea that the client knows what is best and that the therapists’ role is to facilitate an environment in which the client can bring about positive change”.

Founder and psychologist Carl Rogers called this relationship between client and therapist a “helping relationship”.

I couldn’t help but see a connection between this therapist/client approach and the approach I use when working with instructors or educators on their courses.

I see this relationship and dynamic between instructional designers and instructors as having the possibility of being “therapeutic” or a version of Rogers’ “helping relationship”.

According to GoodTherapy, the key components of a helping relationship are:

an empathetic understanding of your client’s thoughts and feelings
the opportunity to share the meaning in their own experiences
a focus on being genuine and authentic in your interactions with them (congruence)
an acceptance and positive regard from both

This approach is also based on an underlying philosophy and belief that “every human being strives for and has the capacity to fulfill his or her own potential” (GoodTherapy, 2018).

During A Collaborative Course Design Project

During a collaborative course design project, there are a number of phases/stages that take place. Regardless of the model or framework used, a key activity is understanding the people who will ultimately be experiencing and learning from the course (the learners).

During this stage, we seek to understand the learners’ prior knowledge, personal needs, motivations, learning preferences, attitudes, and anything else that will help inform our decisions and help us carefully craft a customized learning experience for these particular people.

Over time, as I worked with different instructors, I started to notice something.

Missing in these models was guidance for how to work with an instructor to design their course.

Missing was the directive to give special attention to who was teaching the course.
Specifically, missing was the key step of starting with instructors and employing the same inquiries as we were doing on their students.
In other words, guidance on how to create this “helping relationship” was missing.

A Helping Approach

With a “helping approach”, we would start with the instructor who has their own needs when it comes to development such as striving to reach their own potential through their work.

We would start with this person who has a need for personalization and expression.
We would start with trying to understand their learning preferences and rationales for decisions.
We would start with the understanding that their values, beliefs, and interests guide their actions.
We would start with understanding that their enthusiasm is affected by their own connection to the topic, beliefs in their strategies, beliefs about their abilities, their unique life experiences, and more.

Very early on in the course design process, I dig deep into who the instructor is, what they want, why they do the things they do, what they are trying to do, and what they believe about learning.

I dig into how they feel about their students, their field, their work, this course, this topic, and the possible implications.

What has resulted from this form of inquiry has been comments not just about the students' needs but comments like:

“I feel like you got into my head”

“you brought my ideas to life”

“you did exactly what I have been wanting to do but didn’t know how”

And all of this has stemmed from first starting with them.

These types of experiences are where the person-centered approach and seeing the ID-instructor relationship as a therapeutic one came to me. To me, this is exactly the type of relationship you should strive for when working with clients (instructors, educators, etc).

When you approach the relationship as that of a helping one - and with the understanding that this is a person who, just like their students, is still striving to fulfill their own potential and express who they are through their work - it shifts your mindset when working with them. Starting in this way, and focusing on building them a very personalized platform from which to teach, can be an incredibly helpful gift that serves its purpose for students but also serves this uniquely developed and developing person.