Activity 2.1.2 - Experiences

Read the quote in the box below and complete the first step of this activity.

Several years ago [a person] was trying to learn to hang glide. He had soloed an airplane and knew the basic rule of aerodynamics: "Thou shalt always maintain thy airspeed or thou shalt smite the ground." However, when he was taking his first "easy" flight in a hang glider that was not designed to take him more than five feet off the ground, he got caught by an updraft and was suddenly thirty-five feet high. At that moment, rather than levelling off as he had been taught, he closed his eyes and pushed the frame of the kite away from his body and promptly climbed to sixty feet! Somehow, through a series of fortunate events, he returned to earth without being killed.

*Why did he close his eyes and push the frame forward when he knew the consequences of such an action?

Purkey & Novak, 1992. p. 21-22

Think about and answer the quoted question (indicated by the *) in your blog.

Then continue to read the explanations below:

There are various explanations for his behaviour, each with its defenders.

- A behaviorist might conclude that he had been insufficiently reinforced in the standard way of levelling the frame and thus had not been properly conditioned to emit the correct response.

- A Freudian might hypothesize that perhaps he had an unconscious death wish and that his behavior was a manifestation of this basic impulse.

- A perceptualist, by comparison, would try to "read behavior backwards", to discover what the world looked like to the student pilot at the moment he closed is eyes and pushed the frame forward.

In looking back at the incident, the novice was totally surprised to be up so high so soon. At that moment he could think of nothing else but to do the safest thing he could - to close his eyes and get the frame as far away from himself as possible. His reasoning then was, "If I can't see the ground, it can't hurt me." Later, such thinking seemed absurd. At the instant of behaving, however, closing his eyes and pushing away the frame made the most sense. Threat narrows perception and reduces differentiations.

Purkey & Novak, 1992. p. 22

This example describes how the learner's perceptual field - his ability to differentiate (between correct & incorrect, safe & unsafe, rational & absurd), is reduced in times of threat - real or imagined.

"The perceptual tradition holds that to understand human behaviour you must make sense of how things appear from the vantage point of the individual perceiver at the moment of behaving."

(Purkey & Novak, 1992. p. 22)

Now answer the following questions by recording them in your blog.

Briefly describe something similar to the hang-gliding example that you have experienced in your life.
It may have been a very brief misconception about a person or situation, but for that moment the reality was as you perceived it.
Think about your experience - Why do you think the misconception occurred?
What might someone who was watching you have thought about your decisions and actions?
How would you have felt if they had voiced their thoughts at the time?