Brain Science: The Ultimate Mission of a Teacher

As some of you may know, I have spent a significant amount ofmy professional life teaching and consulting in southern Africa. During thesepast few weeks, with the Ebola outbreak threatening the African continent, I’vebecome a bit reflective and, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take few minutesand reflect on our careers as trainers and teachers.

In my mind, there is no greater career than that of a teacher.We can call ourselves by any label—trainer, professor, or instructor—butwhatever label you prefer, we enjoy a privileged professional responsibility:to help shape the lives of the people around us.

So that got me to thinking. What is my goal as a teacher? Infact, what is the single aim of all teaching? After reflecting on this, Ibelieve there is indeed a single best answer to this question. But beforerevealing my answer, let me give you a bit of context.

I earned my PhD in psychology and neuroscience at DukeUniversity and I have had the pleasure of working under a line of psychologiststhat includes B.F. Skinner, Dick Herrnstein, John Staddon, and Max Brill. Eachof these researchers share the belief that learning and human behavior can bestudied, it can be understood, and most importantly, it can be improved. Iinherited from these scholars the optimism that we can arrange the environmentwithin a family, within a company, or even within an entire society in a waythat will motivate people to behave for the common good.

Workingin Africa

In the year 2000, I won a Fulbright Fellowship to teacheducational technology at the University of Zimbabwe. And in this role, I hadthe privilege and challenge of trying to apply the educational techniques tothe challenge of HIV. As you may know, all of southern Africa is sufferingunder the modern world’s worst pandemic. Indeed, at its peak, more than 30% ofZimbabwean adults were infected with HIV. 

The early work against HIV in Africa assumed that educationwould be our greatest weapon. The underlying assumption was that if people knowmore, if they understand the risk factors, if they can recite the preventativetechniques, then their behavior will change and they will be safe from HIV. Unfortunately,this assumption turned out to be untrue. International aid organizationsdeployed a massive training program and Zimbabwean children quickly couldrecite more facts about HIV than the average American. But in spite of this “increasedknowledge,” the behavior of the Zimbabweans did not change.

This fact should not surprise you. Indeed, education per sehas never been the fast-track technique to produce lasting behavior change inanyone. For example, teaching Americans about the risk of cigarette smoking oralcohol consumption has had little measurable effect on rates of consumption.

In a limited sense, our training program in Zimbabwe was successful:people knew a lot more. But in a more important sense it was a failure becausepeople’s behavior had not changed and this had disastrous consequences. Between2002 and 2006, the population in Zimbabwe decreased by four million people,life expectancy dropped from 61 to 48 years, and more than one million childrenhad been orphaned as a result of parents dying from AIDS.

A new approach to training

Do not get me wrong. Training and education are importantparts of a behavior change program. But it is not enough. To produce lastingbehavior change, either in a culture or in a corporation, we need a newapproach where training is a part of a comprehensive program that also includesassessment, coaching, social learning, and a booster training program thatreinforces the messages cognitively, socially, and behaviorally.

In Africa, some of the most exciting and effective programsinvolve delivering behavior change messages through radio drama. For examplethe Tanzanian soap opera Twende na Wakati,or Let’s Go with the Times, providescompelling characters, dramatic storylines, and “social proof” messages wherepopular characters provide role models for designed behaviors.

According to Albert Bandura, this “social proof” is one of themost important factors that determines how people will behave. For example, youare most likely to give money to a street musician if the guy in front of youdoes so. In essence, he provides the social proof, and your actions follow. Oneof the best ways to get kids to overcome a fear of dogs is to show them socialproof of other children happily interacting with dogs. The best of thesesocial-proof programs are part of a comprehensive program that providesassessment, coaching, and follow-up training.

These programs have shown success. In Zimbabwe, the incidenceof HIV declined by 50 percent between 2001 and 2011. Admittedly, this is partlydue to depopulation among infected people. But it is also due to the concertedseries of intervention programs that were specifically targeted to changecritical, risk-laden behaviors.

The goal of all training

My experience in Zimbabwe taught me that there is really onlyone goal of training and that is behavior change. After hard experience, Ifinally realized that we did not want people just to know about safe sex, Iwanted them to have sex safely. And now that I am back working with UScorporations, I continue to believe that the only goal of training is toproduce behavior change. After all, we do not want people just to learn abouteffective leadership, we want them to lead effectively. We do not want them toknow about safety procedures, we want them to proceed safely. And finally, wedo not want them to know about rules of compliance, we want them to comply withthe rules.

Measuring our success

So how do we measure our success as trainers? In too manycases, we are “successful” if our learners like us, if they give our trainingprogram a high ranking, and if they score well on the post-training quiz. Butthis is not enough. As we saw last month, the fact that a learner likes our trainingdoes not predict whether or not they have learned anything. The fact that theycan answer questions on a post-training quiz does not imply that they willretain anything. Most importantly, as we have seen this month, the fact thatpeople retain information does not mean that their behavior is going to change.

Smiley faces on an evaluation are not enough! If you agreewith me that behavior change is the ultimate goal of all training, then Ichallenge you to create training programs that define objectives in terms ofspecific behavior changes that you want to produce.

Digging deeper

• If you would like to have your memory of this articlereinforced, send an email to [email protected]. You willautomatically receive a series of boosters on this article. The boosters takeonly seconds to complete, and they will profoundly increase your ability to recall thecontent of these articles.

• This article will help you learn more aboutZimbabwe’s HIV challenge.

• If you’d like to know more about Bandura’s radio show,check out the article The Theory Heard ‘Round the World, publishedby the American Psychological Association. It is inspiring.

• If you’re interested in a contemporary view ofSkinnerian behaviorism, check out John Staddon’s updated The New Behaviorism.