Bernard Mageean, Professional and Educational Studies, Faculty of Education, Humanities, Law and Theology, Flinders University, Adelaide (for AARE Fremantle November 1993) self-talk and teaching-talk : on the cognitive science of instruction 1. As recently as the seventeenth century, our thinking, in various ways, took a cognitive turn. Nor can we necessarily blame Descartes. It was Shakespeare who said that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. The blame, then, might be borne by Literature - our essential 'work on language' - for putting thinking about thinking in something of a bind. Given the competition, it is small wonder that nineteenth century psychology and philosophy, doing what came naturally, fled into the waiting arms of mathematicians, logicians and scientists of physical and biological persuasions, leaving theologians and historians to flock with poets and storytellers. What follows is a tale of pigeons coming home to roost. In a sense, my argument is just Ôwhat I am doingÕ, and well done if I am doing what I am doing well. And this doing is teaching - i.e. is trying to say what I am doing, to teach you, and myself, about what is happening. As Bernard Lonergan taught in ÔInsightÕ, published in 1957, insight into thinking can be gained by saying what I am doing when I do some knowing, and doing and saying accordingly. The result is knowledge of method. And, as I do my teaching, I say that thinking is about what we find ourselves doing, or having to do (and we do not know why, though we can learn from doing it), and doing some thinking is a framework of our own doing about what is happening. Doing some knowing is doing something thoughtfully, as Gilbert Ryle might comment; and doing thoughtfully is doing well. On another tack, I might say that we gain illumination from not knowing what is happening and yet knowing what is happening, from not knowing what we are doing and yet knowing how to keep up appearances, and by not knowing what is to be done and yet knowing how to do something about it. Why we do what we do may be a puzzle to us, yet we learn from what we do, again and again, and think it worth carrying on. There is, then, a movement, a carrying on, in our thought and action. Problems come in what is carried on and, I have come to believe, occur largely because of a failure to see something that is happening in front of us all the time in this complex of knowing and partly knowing. From movements and their problems, learning, I think, is largely accidental. It happens to us in its critical moves; we but catch up as we might say. In its basic form, it is not so much a change in us as maintenance in the face of the accidental flux of world-process; and important learning may consist in noticing what was always (going on) in front of us, but was simply overlooked, for lack of point or urgency. A great deal of looking may be needed to notice what is important and that it is important. It should be recognised that a scheme by which we understand also causes us to overlook some things that are ultimately going to come back and haunt us. In this way, for example, necessary specialisations of knowledge actually lead to difficulties in seeing and learning certain things that may be very important. Solving the deeper problems of the integration of specialisms means attending to, and not overlooking, these things. This takes time, as history teaches. So it is with the procedures and practices of what we call the experimental or scientific psychology of learning, memory and cognition. This can, it is thought or hoped, be applied to problems of instruction. My point is that something that should have been noticed has not been noticed, leading to this research being often empirically well-aimed, but conceptually flawed. It is far less useful, therefore, than it might be. As I discuss what has been overlooked, I am seeking to develop the view that the key questions about cognition involve matters of instruction necessarily and centrally, as well as peripherally. Some key concepts will be what I call self-talk and self-demonstration - the components of self-instructive self-rapport. 2. Talking to oneself has popularly been held to be a sign of madness, as has hearing voices when there's no-one there - the receptive equivalent of the one-sided conversation. The history of psychoanalytic theory should alert us to the possibility that self-talk or narration can characterise a coping system under extreme pressure trying to produce a positive result. In the landmark initial case of Anna O., her self-talk was extraordinarily illuminating for Breuer and Freud. Out of it came, of course, a therapeutic practice which, for all its mechanist intentions, essentially involved talking to people, and people talking to themselves. Not overlooking some of the things Freud overlooked has indeed led in recent years to a discussion of the cognitive core of his work. A potted history of psychology and learning/teaching theory could be given here only by overlooking many things; but it might be mentioned that many would credit an interest in self-talk, inner speech or inner dialogue to the work of Vygotsky, known to english-speaking psychology in increasingly better translations in the last three or four decades. At the same time, however, various other traditions of therapy and of learning/teaching theory alike have provided a fertile soil and a plentiful watering for Vygotskyan seeds. Thus it is twenty years or so since it was realised by 'behaviour' theorists/therapists that, in the same way as they were able to design and apply programmes of analysis and reinforcement of behaviour to other people, so those people are able to do this to themselves. From this breakthrough in 'not overlooking' self-programming come the Self-Efficacy Theory of Bandura, the 'self-directed behaviour' schemes of Watson and Tharp and the 'Cognitive-Behaviour Modification' of Meichenbaum. The last-mentioned is worth pausing over, as Meichenbaum explicitly uses Vygotskyan notions in his 'integrative approach', published in 1977 in a 'Behaviour Therapy' series under the title 'Cognitive-Behavior Modification'. Meichenbaum writes of the uses of training in self-instruction using 'private speech' for Hyperactive Children and Adult Schizophrenics. But he sees this as more than just a useful specific tactic. It is illuminative of the self-awareness operating at the core of the cognition of both psychological observer and observed client/learner. Both have to say or name what present action is, as some later theorists have put it. For his part, Meichenbaum is a self-aware learner: one of his chapter sections is headed 'What shall we say to ourselves when we obtain negative results ?'. The self-talk of psychologists is instructive, of course, to them and to us. But what, we may ask, is it about, if not instruction itself ? Meichenbaum quickly had some effect on information- processing/cognitive psychologists, but they tended to overlook the full implications of his demonstration of the need to get oneself into the picture of one's psychological work. Behaviour therapy or psychotherapy, even when labelled 'cognitive' was to them of no more than passing interest. Some, like Farnham-Diggory in her excellent 1978 text on 'Learning Disabilities', did take a hint about general models having to be used in specific instructional assessments of a conversational type. But she was working explicitly upon instructional activities. Meichenbaum viewed the information-communication models (and the neurological models) as premature and narrow. In fact, their creators are sophisticated observers, describers and labellers. They do not notice, however, that their model using and naming is part of a larger context of useful and instructive self-talk about what they are doing, explicit consideration of which tends to be relegated to the skeletonic framework of mere 'method' talk. Perhaps it was difficult at that stage in any case for cybernetic enthusiasts bowled over by working models not to overlook that to study some psychological work is to do something that is instructive - the doing of which is the substance of what is happening to be studied. They studiously overlooked in some way, rather than said, what they were doing. Not saying what they themselves are really doing is the great overlooking of the psychological experimenters. This would seem to them to be outside their modelling enterprise, but it is really they who are enclosed, in an instructional system their deeds cannot but work with and through, though their words fail to acknowledge this clearly enough. 3. Taking method very seriously, as implicated in the very substance of the inquiry, one can attempt to go beyond Meichenbaum's position to a further integration. He discusses both 'learning theory' therapies and 'cognitive restructuring' therapies, explaining with reference both to observation and assessment methods, and to the conceptualisation of events, just how the internal dialogue involving 'inner speech' influences both behaviour and 'cognitive structures'. From Sokolov he accepts the foundation notion that: 'Inner speech is nothing but speech to oneself, or concealed verbalization, which is instrumental in the logical processing of sensory data, in their realization and comprehension with a definite system of concepts and judgments'. It is, one might say, a crucial factor in how we see things, or organize our consciousness. According to Meichenbaum, behaviour change occurs through a sequence of mediating process involving the interaction of inner speech, cognitive structures, and behaviour and their resultant outcomes. In a first step, the client becomes an observer of his own behaviour; then new cognitive structures are developed which permit him to view his symptoms differently. This particular general notion is not, of course, original in discussion of therapeutic success. The further possible generalisation is what is of interest. For Meichenbaum, the internal dialogue comes to guide new behaviour, the results of which have an impact on the individual's cognitive structures. Information-communication models and neurological models fail to do much more essentially than provide models and labels for talking and, if these have value, they gain it through use in internal schematic or prescriptive dialogue. For experimenters in cognitive psychology, this dialogue is importantly about method. For Meichenbaum, faced with a client with a problem, a functional analysis of cognitive strategies in the internal dialogue is the key empirical demand. For both experimenter and client, therefore, the key concern is a matter of what they say about what they are doing. Meichenbaum then discusses analysis of cognition by experimental manipulation of task, environment or instructional aid provided to the client. In this analysis of task for the purpose of empirical observation and assessment it should be apparent that the psychologist's self-talk about method meshes with the client's (or subject's) self-talk as Ôteaching-talk'. There is thus fundamentally set up an instructional method for the study of cognition, where cognition is seen as instructive activity quite globally for all concerned. As if to drive this home, Meichenbaum cites Vygotsky's work on 'inner speech' and instruction in a way that has profound implications for the general methodological issue in cognitive science: ÔVygotsky suggested that a most useful way to assess capabilities, especially in children, is to have the client perform a task and then note the degree and kind of improvement that derives from the administration of instruction... For Vygotsky, the individual's ability to employ and benefit from instructions was the best reflection of intellectual capabilities. Vygotsky's use of the child's response to adult instructions is consistent with his view that what the child is able to do only with such help will eventually be incorporated into his own action; eventually the child will internalize the organisational principles that are inherent in the assistance he receives from others. As Luria quotes Vygotsky, "The function which is today divided between two persons will be interiorized and become the independent mental function of the child himself".Õ A little later, Meichenbaum comes to self-instruct more explicitly on what is going on and what to do in the matter of psychological assessment, observation or empirical activity generally in the study of cognition: ÔHowever, the assessment is not only an appraisal of the client's internal dialogue but also in itself acts as a stimulus for the client to change his internal dialogue concerning his problem. As a result of the cognitive-functional assessment the client will come to entertain the notion that part of his problem results from what he says to himself.... As a result of the assessment, the client comes to see how he is an active contributor to his presenting problem.Õ Studying cognition is a matter of doing some, one might say. But there is some overlookng on Meichenbaum's part too. In his view, it is a limitation of this technology for studying thinking that when we ask someone to verbalize his thoughts while doing a task we may in fact be changing both his thoughts and what he is doing. Assessment and change are interdependent. However, 'if we are mindful of this limitation we can learn a great deal about an individual's thinking style and then relate it to task performance'. There is something being overlooked in this warning that what the psychologist is doing in assessing the situation is changing the situation. The assessment is causing the client to assess and change as an inevitable part of the cognitive activity system involving both psychologist and other - what I would call the single instructional-activity system. There is reversion in this comment to the 'general static' model whereby cognitive science has to be a sophisticated labelling which makes nothing happen. But this is a misconception of human cognition. The modelling and labelling of cognitive science has its place as an assessment and observation tactic, but serves instructive activity and makes little sense without it. Instruction is not to be the handmaid of cognitive science, but rather the converse. What we are about is not a cognitive science of instruction, but rather an instructional science of cognition. 4. It would seem best to move to discussion of what I would call the instructional turn (for doing some thinking about thinking about doing something). In speaking of the instructional turn I am signalling that self-talk is a key part of an instructional self- rapport that may be thought of as our part in a wider instructional system involving self and others - ultimately the whole race and its activities in the Jungian collective sense. I have spoken elsewhere, therefore, of scientific psychology being largely an answering of the question, 'what can be taught to whom ?'. In the space that remains I want to discuss this sort of idea in tandem with the notions of self-talk and teaching-talk (or instructional talk) clearing the ground for a question I cannot deal with here - namely, 'when, or at what level, do we need to tell ourselves explicitly what we are doing, or what is happening to us ?'. In 'Behavioral and Brain Sciences' for 1987 there is a paper of J.R. Anderson's on 'methodologies for the study of human knowledge' in which, from a more orthodox cognitive science perspective, he comes to a conclusion easily related to that of Meichenbaum on the matter of studying and changing cognitive function. The conclusion has also the same limitation, in that it clings still somewhat to the notion of a closed, static or mechanist-determinist model of cognitive function, possibly for various reasons connected with the biological science heritage of psychological ideas. Put broadly, Anderson argues that research into knowing has largely been conducted by giving people instructions to do things they 'know' how to do. In other words, says Anderson, they are working at the 'implementational' level, more or less. It would be more interesting, he claims, to investigate the 'algorithmic' level. This turns out to be the level at which people have to be told and have to tell themselves what they are doing - instruct themselves as it were. In Anderson's own work on intelligent or advanced tutoring systems, commentators have noted that 'learning by doing' becomes the key notion. It is a short step thence to Anderson advocating the sort of 'pedagogic' method that Vygotsky talked of, arising in the necessary self-study of a cognitive system that does so by internalising the words and deeds of instructors so as to learn to self-instruct by doing some self-instruction. Pedagogics as a methodology is seen as a way into, and heightened awareness of, the overall rule-acquiring instruction-getting and instruction- giving system, which is poised to make use of such and to carry on in the light of such as its essential operation, moving along the sensitivity to what is happening of cognitive-scientist- instructor and subject-learner alike. The point should not, to my mind, be that there is an important instruction-giving and instruction-getting part of the cognitive system, to which Anderson is here referring, and of which he is saying we should take more notice. The point is that instruction-giving and getting is what cognitive system essentially does and is. It does not so much take in information, store and reorganise it, and produce output, as use such a model as instructive - to tell itself about certain things that are happening, and carry on in that light. An information-processing model of the mind of the learner, or indeed a somewhat broader task-analytic model of the mind of the instructor, may be proposed or implied for various purposes; but essentially cognitive system arises in action in the generation and use of all such models of and from the human conversation, in some higher integration that permeates the doing of instructive and meaningful activity. It can justly be claimed that it is from Vygotsky that we can take the key notion that we hold a crucial conversation with ourselves with inner speech, and that we do this because we incorporate the speech of others and learn thereby some crucial things at a number of levels, mostly unacknowledged as a rule. But it might be said equally that this is just one of the things that happens to us that is particularly meaningful. There need be nothing peculiarly Vygotskyan about the overall argument. The notion of the circular reflex, used by Baldwin and then by Piaget among others, says that we generally are picking up the things that happen, that we happen to do to ourselves, and are patterning and scheming them as valuable in making a world (with a self in it that things happen to and that makes something of this). It is important to see that with outer and inner speech come outer and inner demonstration of an instructive kind. The possibilities of our doings are outlined and dealt with by us in both telling and showing. One cannot therefore ignore the Piagetian account of early development. The language of learning and instruction will contain doings both vocal and non-vocal. 5. A few final wild assertions may serve to indicate other tracks I have travelled and am travelling still. It was noted by Meichenbaum that 'cognitive restructuring' theorists and practititioners are easily drawn into a way of talking that emphasises the model of the internal dialogue and self- instruction. Harri-Augstein and Thomas have attracted me by their work on learning within the tradition of Personal Construct psychology. Their 1985 volume, on 'Self-Organised Learning' is unnecessarily difficult because of the 'repertory grid' tactics that clutter the book. What emerges, however, is that they and their various client groups together are learning by and from the doing and the 'telling and showing themselves what is happening' that that doing is framed by. In 'Learning Conversations', published in 1993, they manage to get some core ideas about self- awareness to the fore, rather than fussy applications, though the book still suffers from being a amalgam of accounts from different necessarily specific learnings not too carefully woven together. These authors write about the 'conversational being' and of 'being conversational' to represent the single instructional system in action. Representation is of the essence, and conversation stands as model in order to mean what conscious self-organisation and self-awareness are (about ). To talk in this way allows the unit of analysis to be a single human or many humans, or indeed less than a single human, as we hold different inner and outer conversations taken up from time to time in different ways. A conversational endeavour is also a methodological notion, in that, while there is in our doings continuous regeneration of meaning, we know we can converse. When conversational beings begin to model their own processes awareness is created, and what we think of automatically as a self in action is seen to be learned thing, which takes reflection back to the method. Thus the method is the conversational knowing in action, and the conversational knowing is generated from multiple representations of experience of the method. Models in use are very mirror-like and constantly about themselves - hence the import of self-talk and self-demonstration which together make up the self-rapport that is instructive. The problem, perhaps, is one of stopping the reflection. The stage is set possibly for using a Rogerian notion of an acting self which is both directive and non-directive in a paradoxical way. For any model is bound to be an observer's model, even when the observer is the self-observing self; but any self-notion is an actor-notion, so that the model becomes a model (in) action. The action is, as in a play, directed and directive, from actor and to observer, and from observer and to actor. Each self will be a learned account in a search for a Rogerian 'congruence' of some kind with reality. This congruence of 'accounts' of the selves in the instructional system is what is worked for by the parties to the overall conversation, or whichever bit of it is in current use. Dennett in 'Consciousness Explained', published in 1992, has talked of the self as a centre of narrative gravity. Our stories of what is happening to us organise our consciousness and are used like drafts in circulation on various fronts to be updated as necessary. Consciousness is nothing else; it is explained by the instructive point and intent of this activity. I can only telegraph here something of Dennett's meaning, but some simplicity may be regained by simply talking of telling ourselves things (singly or collectively) that we need to know. Dennett has a story - what else ? - of how the breakthrough in thought consisted in someone doing to themselves the talking that others had previously done to them. A person alone by accident one day simply discovered that they could tell themselves the sort of things they had previously relied on others to tell them, and that it worked. We like to think of consciousness in some other way, but Dennett feels that we would gain by telling ourselves about the narrative we tell ourselves. He links thus with Vygotsky, with Meichenbaum and with Anderson, and, I might add, he believes that the Law of Effect will not go away, because 'what happens' is, it happens, instructive - the stuff of our self-instruction, in my view. The history of psychology's work is all here. The single instructional system is obviously the larger context of all this activity, involving and using self-talk and teaching-talk on all sides. In this way we can talk, therefore, of our language as part of a common collective memory for action, re-realized in various copies born of the creative accidents and intent of self- instructive individuals in the single instructional system of the race struggling to maintain its gains. The nature of my self- talk may firstly and finally be a conversation about what I have to say and to teach - a conversation in which as teacher I am learner and as learner I am teacher. October 13th 1993