Facilitating encounter within an academic course on communication

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with the potentials and limitations of group encounters in academic teacher training. The major research question is whether person-centered encounter groups should get their space within teacher education and if so, which factors need to be taken into account to maximize students’ whole-person learning through encounter. The author’s – my – finding after more than a decade’s research is that encounter groups – even when lasting a few hours only – tend to leave valuable impressions and growth-motivation on the vast majority of students. Moreover, the atmosphere in class becomes more open and direct, more genuine and more constructive. It proved helpful to introduce students to this distinct experience as this is, for most of them, an unprecedented experience in their academic life. Moreover, a student-centered course that includes encounter group phases appears to benefit from a highly flexible structure, from regular personal online reactions shared with the whole course-community, and from including work in small groups too. For the latter, students tend to appreciate the Open Case setting which is intended to support ‘case providers’ in finding their path toward tackling specific challenges that they volunteer to share in a person-centered atmosphere.

Faciliter la rencontre dans le cadre académique d’un cours de communication

Cet article traite des possibilités et des limites des groupes de rencontre dans le cadre académique de la formation d’enseignants. La question principale de recherche est de savoir si des groupes de rencontre peuvent trouver leur place au sein de la formation d’enseignants et si tel est le cas, de déterminer quels facteurs doivent être pris en compte pour maximiser l’apprentissage de l’étudiant dans l’intégralité de sa personne au travers de la rencontre. Après plus d’une décennie de recherche, les conclusions de l’auteur sont que les groupes de rencontre – même d’une durée de seulement quelques heures – tendent à laisser des empreintes favorables et à soutenir la motivation de développement personnel de la majeure partie des étudiants. De plus, le climat de la classe devient plus ouvert et plus direct, plus authentique et plus constructif. Il s’avère favorable d’amener les étudiants à vivre une telle expérience particulière qui, pour beaucoup d’entre eux, constitue une expérience inédite dans leur parcours académique. Par ailleurs, un cours centré sur l’étudiant et qui intègre des périodes de groupe de rencontre, semble tirer avantage d’une structure très flexible, de réactions personnelles habituelles partagées en ligne avec l’ensemble de la communauté du cours et du travail d’inclusion en petit groupes. Pour conclure, les étudiants ont tendance à apprécier le dispositif ouvert de présentation de situations qui est conçu pour aider ceux qui apportent une situation à trouver leur chemin devant les défis spécifiques qu’ils partagent de manière spontanée dans une atmosphère centrée sur la personne.

Gruppenleitung in akademischen Kommunikationskurses

Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von Encounter in Gruppen in der akademischen Ausbildung von Lehrpersonen. Die zentrale Forschungsfrage lautet: Sollen Personzentrierte Encountergruppen in der Lehramtsausbildung Raum haben und, falls ja, welche Faktoren sind zu berücksichtigen, um das ganzheitliche Lernen der Studierenden durch Encounter zu maximieren? Meine Forschung – nach mehr als zehn Jahren – hat ergeben, dass Encountergruppen, auch wenn sie nur einige Stunden dauern, den allermeisten Studierenden wertvolle Eindrücke und Motivation für persönliches Wachstum bieten.

Darüber hinaus entsteht in der Lehrveranstaltung eine offene, ehrliche, direkte und konstruktive Atmosphäre. Es hat sich bewährt, Studierende auf diese besondere Gruppenerfahrung vorzubereiten, da sie für die meisten etwas völlig Neuartiges bedeutet, was sie so in ihrem akademischen Dasein noch nicht erlebt hatten. Von Vorteil sind für einen studierendenzentrierten Kurs weiters eine flexible Struktur, online Reaktionsblätter, die regelmäßig verfasst und mit der gesamten Gruppe geteilt warden sowie die Arbeit in Kleingruppen. Bei letzteren schätzen Studierende tendenziell das Open Case Setting. Dieses unterstützt in einer personzentrierten Atmosphäre sogenannte „Case Provider“ - Studierende, die bereit sind, einen konkreten Fall einzubringen - darin, ihren eigenen Weg im Umgang mit spezifischen Herausforderungen zu finden.

Facilitando o Encontro no contexto de um Curso Académico de Comunicação

Este artigo debate os potenciais e as limitações dos grupos de encontro no contexto académico da formação de professores. A mais relevante questão de investigação é se os grupos de encontro centrados na pessoa deviam ter lugar no âmbito da formação de professores e, em caso afirmativo, que fatores devem ser tidos em conta com vista a maximizar a aprendizagem holística dos estudantes através do encontro. As descobertas do autor – as minhas – após mais de uma década de pesquisa, revelam que os grupos de encontro, mesmo que durem apenas algumas horas, tendem a deixar marcas valiosas e motivação para o crescimento na maioria dos alunos. Adicionalmente, o ambiente da aula torna-se mais aberto e direto, mais genuíno e mais construtivo. Expor os alunos a esta experiência distintiva revelou-se útil. Para a maioria deles, tratou-se de uma experiência sem precedentes no seu percurso académico. Para além do mais, um curso centrado no aluno que inclui trabalho em grupos parece ser dotado de uma estrutura altamente flexível, de reações online partilhadas com toda a comunidade e de inclusão de trabalho em pequenos grupos. Relativamente à última, os alunos tendem a apreciar o contexto de Caso Isolado, destinado a apoiar os fornecedores de casos a encontrarem o seu caminho na resolução de desafios específicos que partilham num ambiente centrado na pessoa.

Encuentro facilitador dentro de un curso académico sobre comunicación

Resumen: abstracto. Este artículo aborda los potenciales y las limitaciones de los encuentros grupales en la formación académica de docentes. La principal pregunta de investigación es si los grupos de encuentro centrados en la persona deberían tener su espacio dentro de la formación del profesorado y, en caso afirmativo, qué factores deben tenerse en cuenta para maximizar el aprendizaje integral de los estudiantes a través del encuentro. El autor - mi - descubrimiento después de más de una década de investigación es que los grupos de encuentro, incluso cuando duran solo unas pocas horas, tienden a dejar impresiones valiosas y motivaciones de crecimiento en la gran mayoría de los estudiantes. Además, el ambiente en clase se vuelve más abierto y directo, más genuino y más constructivo. Resultó útil presentarles a los estudiantes esta experiencia distinta, ya que esta es, para la mayoría de ellos, una experiencia sin precedentes en su vida académica. Además, un curso centrado en el alumno que incluye fases de grupos de encuentro, parece beneficiarse de una estructura altamente flexible, de reacciones personales en línea regulares compartidas con toda la comunidad del curso, y de incluir también el trabajo en grupos pequeños. Para este último, los estudiantes tienden a apreciar el entorno de Caso abierto, que está destinado a ayudar a los ‘proveedores de casos’ a encontrar su camino para abordar desafíos específicos que se ofrecen como voluntarios para compartir en un ambiente centrado en la persona.

KEYWORDS:

• Encounter
• Carl Rogers
• person-Centered approach
• communication
• teacher education
• higher education
• small group
• open case

a well-facilitated encounter group [.] is, and continues to be, a very powerful experience for personal change, for behavioral change, for laying the basis for the solution of social problems.

(Rogers & Russell, 2002, p. 194–195)

Introduction

This contribution ties together the challenge of facilitating encounter groups and the goal to strengthen students’ capacities for clear and constructive communication within an academic course and environment (outside of psychotherapy). For clarity and disambiguation of the several uses of the term encounter group, let us first recall its original description in the context of Rogers’ Person-Centered Approach (PCA) (Rogers, 1961, 1980), inspect the meaning of the word ‘encounter’, and then characterize the function of the group’s leader or facilitator.

According to Rogers (1970, p. 12), the initiator of person-centered encounter groups, an encounter group ‘tends to emphasize personal growth and the development and improvement of interpersonal communication and relationships through an experiential process.’ This characterization of an encounter group encompasses a broad range of settings that share the feature of emphasizing an experiencing and aiming at personal growth along with an improvement of interpersonal communication and relationships. This permissiveness – while providing rich space for encounter groups to reach their objectives – has been and still is raising questions on what would and would not be a ‘proper’ encounter group. These questions seem to prevail despite Rogers’ (1957) clear statement on the ‘core conditions’ of the therapeutic process and on personal growth.

In order to delve a bit deeper into the notion of encounter, let us inspect the meaning of the word ‘encounter’, as elaborated by Peter Schmid. Referring to Martin Buber’s encounter philosophy (Buber, 1961) and building upon his former work with Mearns, e.g. (Schmid & Mearns, 2006), Schmid wrote that Rogers’ person-centered attitudes (congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding) ‘are seen as three dimensions of one fundamental attitude towards life: presence – the core condition of encounter, of being with and being counter’ (Schmid, 2013, p. 359). In his previous work, Schmid characterized, in particular, the specific human quality of gaining distance, of being counter ‘as a precondition for encounter. [.] Being counter appreciates the other in his autonomy and as somebody of worth to be dealt with. Standing face to face avoids both, identification and objectification; it enables encounter’ (Schmid, 2002, p. 75). For me, the uniqueness of each such encounter has been amazing, giving way to profound and lasting constructive change. Perhaps this is my major motivation for offering students a space in which encounter experiences are possible (Motschnig & Nykl, 2014).

When describing the function of a group leader or, synonymously, facilitator, Rogers stated that

In almost all instances, the leader’s responsibility is primarily the facilitation of the expression of both feelings and thoughts on the part of participants. The group leader and the members focus on the process and dynamics of immediate personal interactions. (Rogers, 1970, p. 14)

To me, this original, generic description resonates with what I conceive as my function as a facilitator of an encounter group. It is also in tune with a more recent and concrete characterization in which Hutchison (2015, p. 47) explicitly included Rogers’ core conditions and wrote,

The facilitator’s responsibility […] is to actively support the development of a cohesive group climate characterized by the core conditions wherein members will engage with one another in a constructive and facilitative manner, to assist (when needed) in affect regulation, and to help provide an optimal reflective environment in which members can symbolize and process their experiencing optimally.

In his later writing, Rogers (1971) shared his tendency and desire to gradually bridge the difference between him as a facilitator and a participant as the group process proceeded. He wrote,

I hope gradually to become as much a participant in the group as a facilitator of the group. I want to move back and forth easily between these two functions in a way which is comfortable to me. It does sometimes create a certain amount of conflict as to whether I should be listening to others or listening more intently to what is going on within myself. (p. 275, italics included here for emphasis)

The conflict or tension Rogers recognized is equally present in me when facilitating academic courses on communication including encounter groups. For myself, I found out that while I can endeavor to improve my capacity and clarity of shifting between the modes, the tension will persist and I am not willing to give up any of the functions for a longer period. Since Senge (2006) conceptualized the notion of ‘constructive tension,’ I can better accept the (necessary) tension and decide for myself from moment to moment whether I can trust the process for some time and allow myself to be more of a participant than a facilitator or rather want to fully focus on the group and its process implying my presence as a facilitator. A concrete instance of the/my struggle and its resulting behavior will appear later in a case example in this paper.

After having clarified the key terms of this article let us move to its core purpose, namely sharing from (rather than just about) integrating encounter into an academic course on communication. For students who may not have heard anything about the PCA before and who are accustomed to the tradition of being rather passive recipients of information during lectures, going through encounter might seem to be too much of a rift to bridge within one course. Nevertheless, since the first beginning, it felt right, though challenging to offer an encounter opportunity to students. I was further encouraged to conduct encounter groups while having participated in the La Jolla Program (in the years 2003 and 2005) run by the CSP (Center for Studies of the Person). Furthermore, I have been deeply grateful to my colleague Ladislac Nykl who offered encounter groups to students of psychology at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, and started me off by letting me co-facilitate groups while offering indispensable mentoring and reflection. Yet further encouragement to include encounter into a course on communication came from reading the following statement by Carl Rogers in his oral history (Rogers & Russell, 2002, p. 66): ‘I discern more sharply the concern of my life as having been built around the desire of clarity of communication, with all its ramifying results’ (Italics included here for emphasis). And not only Rogers, also, for example, J. K. Wood emphasized the connection between effective communication and person-centered encounter groups. Wood wrote,

Thus, the person-centered small group [.] possesses the same capacities for healing and self-knowing as the therapeutic relationship of client-centered therapy as well as the additional social therapeutic potential: a greater understanding of others and improving effective communications with others. Further, the group’s functioning as a collective is likely to become more significant. The group offers an opportunity to become aware of the patterns and the consequences of conscious and unconscious collaborations between group members – that is, the group as a whole. (2008, p. 39) (Second instance of italics included here for emphasis.)

Furthermore, including encounter groups into teacher training was described and researched by Reinhard and Annemarie Tausch. For example, the Tauschs found that 73% of the teachers who had participated in a two-and-a-half day encounter group had long-lasting changes in their personalities, leading to improved self-concepts and changes in their teaching behavior. Their pupils became more trusting of the teacher, enjoyed more self-determination, and had fewer discipline problems. Ninety-nine percent of the teachers who had participated in the encounter groups said that such groups were helpful for their work at school (Tausch in Rogers, 1983, p. 218).

For all these reasons it seems more than justified to include opportunities for encounter within the teacher training curriculum. My searching journey on how to accommodate for encounter group sessions in a single academic course is the subject of the following study.

Context: academic, person-centered course on communication

In this paper, I aim to illustrate my approach to including encounter group sessions and phases of encounter into an academic course, with all its requirements like mandatory enrollment, specified learning outcomes, and grading. ‘Communication and Teamwork’ is a lab course with about 12–20 participants, held in seven blocks, each lasting 3.5 hours. It is part of the Bachelor curriculum for teacher trainees of Informatics. They enroll in this course during their second or third year. It is their most intensive student-centered experience, even though many of them would have already participated in another student-centered course with the same instructor. This previous course, however, has a more stringent emphasis on the subject matter of didactical design rather than on interpersonal communication.

Course goals

Consistent with the objective to facilitate significant, whole person learning (Motschnig & Cornelius-White, 2012; Rogers, 1961, 1983), I formulated initial goals at the level of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, including:

• General goals: Participants acquire personal experience, skills, and background knowledge in situations of professional and everyday communication (such as listening, articulating, speaking in a group, conflict resolution, decision-making, etc.). Participants build a learning community around the concern for better communication and teamwork in general and with a focus on teaching/learning situations and collaboration in groups and teams.

• Level of knowledge and intellect: Students acquire knowledge about the basics of the person-centered approach, significant learning, encounter groups, and the group process.

• Level of skills and capabilities: Students gain active listening, dialoguing, and feedback skills in face-to-face interactions as well as in online settings. They improve their abilities in spontaneous communication, communication in difficult situations, and decision-making in teams and groups.

• Level of attitudes and awareness: Students gain self-experience while expressing their own feelings, meanings, and intentions and perceiving those of others. They experience active listening and develop their own attitude toward it. Students become more sensitive and open to their own and group experience and loosen preconceived, rigidly held constructs. Students move toward acceptance and a better understanding of themselves and others. Students move from more stereotyped behavior and facades to more personal expressiveness. They become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses when working in a team (Motschnig & Nykl, 2014).

These initial goals are complemented by the students’ goals elicited during the first unit, comprising items such as speaking spontaneously in front of a group, being better understood by others, and being able to express oneself succinctly. Special emphasis is put on addressing real-life situations that teacher trainees are likely to encounter.

While there are various goals for the course, during encounter group sessions I aim to be fully present above all, providing a person-centered atmosphere based on Rogers’ core conditions of congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding (Rogers, 1957). Perhaps the only slight ‘adaptation’ is that my endeavor to deeply understand a student extends to a thorough, encompassing understanding of ‘all there is’ (Motschnig & Ryback, 2016), including the subject matter, context, and ideas, whilst still emphasizing the feeling level. Personally, I do not feel that my aim to understand participants’ comprehensively at all levels contradicts person-centered theorizing due to Rogers’ own conceptualization of significant, whole-person learning as:

Significant learning combines the logical and the intuitive, the intellect and the feelings, the concept and the experience, the idea and the meaning. When we learn in that way, we are whole, … (Rogers, 1983, p. 20)

In another article on facilitating groups, Rogers shared (1971, p. 275) that:

In any group to some degree, but especially in a so-called ‘academic course’ which I am conducting in an encounter group type of fashion, I want very much to have the whole person present, both in his affective and cognitive modes. I have not found this an easy thing to achieve since I believe that most of us choose one mode rather than the other at any given moment. Yet it still remains a way of being which has much value for me. I hope to make progress in myself, and in groups I facilitate, in permitting the whole person, with his ideas, and ideas permeated with feelings, to be fully present.

I do share this hope with Rogers, being aware that the non-exclusive emphasis on the emotional is likely to influence the development of the group and it might well be that a therapist-facilitator would impact the development of the group in a different direction. Further investigation of this aspect is necessary to find out more regarding the influence of purely empathic compared to comprehensive understanding in encounter group sessions for beginners, and in general (Wood, 2008).

Course design and structure

The course’s structure has evolved from a more rigid design to one that is increasingly flexible. Previously, the first half of the course consisted of participants introducing each other, elaboration of the theory, and small exercises targeted at acquiring active listening attitudes and skills. The second half was devoted to encounter group sessions. However, not all participants could immediately appreciate the encounter groups and tended to raise wishes for more structure and small teamwork in which they could be more active. In their personal reactions submitted in an online course-space, students shared, for example, that too much time was spent with topics not relevant to them and that in large groups only the most extrovert people were talking. Some students considered working in smaller groups more enjoyable since they had felt more present and heard. For those who were inclined to suspend their ideas rather than bursting them out, the small groups provided more opportunities to articulate their thoughts. Last but not least, a student shared that he was ‘surprised by the amount of empathy of other participants’ during activities in small groups.

Furthermore, in my experience, sometimes deep issues come up at the beginning of the course and it does not feel right to ‘postpone’ them until the encounter session. Based on these experiences, gradually a more flexible course structure has evolved that seems more natural to respond to the flow of experiencing and making sense of person-centered communication.

In the flexible mode – as practiced for at least six years – there are a few pre-scheduled encounter group-like sessions. However, I also provide space throughout the units for spontaneous encounter, often happening naturally in the course of some loosely structured activity, such as reflecting on the active listening exercise, or elaborating on cases from students’ private- or school experience.

Considerations on including encounter group sessions

Currently there are some reoccurring elements in each course instance on communication, such as elaborating on participants’ expectations and fears, the active listening exercise and its reflection, Rogers’ core conditions, encounter group (unless students resent trying it), being in dialogue versus having a discussion, and the open case setting (Motschnig & Ryback, 2016). Aside from these, particular themes and activities come up through the flow of the course. For example, the most recent course instance (winter term 2018/2019) evolved to include elements like:

• Elaboration of perceived characteristics of a promotive learning climate

• Encounter and its potentials and constraints

• Mobbing and cyber-mobbing – what are the underlying, experiences, dynamics, and how can I counteract it as a teacher?

• Impulses for students’ entries in their accompanying, self-organized ePortfolio.

At the end of the second unit in which we had reflected in depth on the active listening exercise – where the setup had been referred to as ‘artificial’ – I asked the students whether they would like to try active listing in a group. In this constellation, we could share what mattered to us flexibly and naturally, without the setup of an exercise with fixed roles of speaker, listener, and observer. All students agreed and I felt excitement from them as well as from myself to facilitate 'the encounter experiment'. I indicated that, for the following lesson, I would not start the class as usual with discussing the reaction sheets (Motschnig-Pitrik, 2014) and suggesting an agenda, but instead we would form a circle and it would be our decision how we would shape our experience of sharing and active listening in a group setting.

But how can a scheduled encounter group session be introduced to students who had never experienced anything like that? Throughout the years I had tried various forms of describing encounter groups to students before the experience in order to give them an idea of what to expect. My impression, however, is that – regardless of how detailed or brief, whether orally or in written form I have chosen to describe an encounter group – students could not grasp what to expect. Inevitably, respective questioning tended to come up during the group sessions. Hence, my hypothesis is that due to the fact that encounter cannot be related to students’ previous (academic) experience – it is too different from anything else they know – they cannot conceptualize it and cannot make much sense of the descriptions. This would be in line with item b) from Rogers’ proposition XI in his Theory of Personality (1951):

XI: ”As experiences occur in the life of the individual, they are either, a) symbolized, perceived and organized into some relation to the self, b) ignored because there is no perceived relationship to the self structure, c) denied symbolization or given distorted symbolization because the experience is inconsistent with the structure of the self.“

In a nutshell, the students’ experience closest to encounter often is the active listening exercise and it has proven suitable to introduce the idea of encounter. Moreover, this ‘strategy’ has the benefit that students get a grasp on what they may want to attend to as the group proceeds, for example, who listens in which way, who initiates themes, when to speak up, how does it feel (not) to speak up, etc. Equipped with some cues on how to be present, most students can accommodate to the sudden lack of any structure better than if we just ‘jump into’ a first encounter session.

At times, an encounter unfolds from a spontaneous opening-up of some student and others, accompanying him or her. So far, while such a situation has consistently received highly positive reactions by the student who had opened up, some students are left with the impression that we have deviated too far from the schedule. In their perception, the sharing was emotional and probably helpful for the student who opened up, but the facilitator (i.e. me) should have paid more attention to the agenda such as not to get lost in digression! In my view, such negative evaluations hinder rather than further the group process. Hence, instead of going through excessive confusion and explanations, I have been more attracted by raising students’ motivation and curiosity by indicating that encounter group sessions can be a response to students’ reoccurring question such as:

• How can I become more congruent, respectful, and empathically understanding?

• Can active listening work in groups? How does it work in a group?

• Can I/someone open up to ‘strangers’? What is the risk?

• How do others perceive me? Do I feel understood?

• What can I learn in an encounter group? What are the rules?

So my preferred way of introducing students to an unstructured encounter experience is to invite them to look for a way of finding our own responses to questions like the ones raised above and then ‘just’ immerse oneself into the experience and be fully present.

Participants’ and facilitator’s experiences and reflections

To allow the reader to get an impression of what students reflect after their first 1.5- hour encounter group session, let us look at excerpts from their reactions from the most recent course instance. The reactions were submitted in the online course-space with participant’s name linked to the statements. Students agreed that anonymized excerpts from the reaction sheets could be used and published in the context of research. All statements were submitted in German and I translated the selected excerpts into English. The excerpts were selected to trace the students’ echoes regarding their very first encounter session. For the purpose of giving the reader a glimpse into the students’ perceptions, this small case-study seemed more appropriate than conducting a thematic analysis of reaction sheets. For a more detailed case study of an earlier course, see Motschnig (2013) for further research into student-centered courses consult (Motschnig & Cornelius-White, 2019).

One male student shared,

Since I knew only a few participants beforehand, it wasn’t easy for me to share my personal experiences. However, I had always thought: what would be a meaningful enrichment, which questions can I pose?

This reaction shows that for some students the encounter session – the third unit of the course – may have come too early to trust the group sufficiently to open up. Nevertheless, the student appeared to be fully present, appreciative, and contributing in his way.

Similarly, a female student reflected on her feelings during the encounter session as follows:

Unfortunately, I did not feel 100% well. I think that for me it would have been most convenient, if I had tried this method with my friends. I respect Joe (name changed) very much. He had the courage to raise such a personal theme in the circle, I couldn’t have done this. I realized that I can share my deep thoughts only when my friends are present. I am very thankful to have such good friends on whom I can rely.

This reaction, too, communicates the missing familiarity between participants for opening up on personal issues. Remarkably, this insight comes paired with gratitude for having close friends rather than with criticism on the course’s setup.

Another male student who had participated in a predecessor course and knew most other colleagues reflected upon the initial phase and his opening up:

I was already thrilled beforehand, how “Encounter” would evolve in our group. Right in the beginning I found it interesting that some colleagues asked for more information: What exactly are we up to; what are the goals; what are the rules? […] The first theme: ”To lie in order to meet the needs of others” was provided by myself. I felt that the group listened to me very well and was interested in the problem. Some fitting questions were asked and suggestions on how to deal with the problem were offered. [.] Throughout the whole conversation, issues became clearer to me and new perspectives had opened up. Today I am going to seek the conversation with my mother in order to talk to her about the whole theme – I’m curious how it will go.

As illustrated by the excerpt below, this same student clearly realized the difference between the deep personal expression and a shallower phase following it. He wrote:

I found the further process of the “Encounter“ less moving for me. Throughout the more “shallow” phases I felt uneasy and thoughts like “please, can we drop this theme now” came to my mind. The shared personal experiences of colleagues were a lot more instructive, interesting, and constructive than the political discussions. I’d be interested to do the same experiment with the group toward the end of the term again.

The final sentence can be seen to confirm this participant’s interest in the phenomenon of encounter – one of the goals of the course.

A more critical student reflected,

I had the impression as if today’s circle session didn’t work out as it should have been. The beginning with Joe’s personal story succeeded, here the active listening worked well and the conversation was carried forward through questions. [...] Afterwards, however, the conversations always went off-track, because they were much too general and (in the first moment) there was no precise question, no possibility to listen. [...] At this place, Renate could possibly have intervened earlier, because the conversation went on for a long time [...].

While I do agree with the participant’s accurate description, my effort went into spotting something to help leading the conversation to something personal reaching more depth. Apparently, I did not succeed with this for some time and then chose to express something connecting the general discussion (about radicalization) to my personal concerns and felt received in how I had felt. Soon afterward the session ended. Upon my personal reflection, the student’s comment about intervening earlier brings my own issue to the surface: Should I intervene earlier by interrupting participants or trust we find an entry for bringing the process to a mode in which I/we can express the core conditions better than in discussions? My preferred style has been to guide the group toward more personal expression by communicating my interest in students’ feelings and thoughts, rather than confronting them with my perception of them/us having a discussion. In any case, I’m amazed how ‘my’ students were smart enough to realize the difference between ‘successful’, ‘not working out’, and ‘off-track’ phases of the session. The transition from one phase to another is also illustrated in another participant’s reflection. Moreover, this student connected the encounter experience with some elements he had remembered from the preceding two course blocks. He reflected,

During the last unit we tried the “Encounter“-method, whereby I could recognize elements of other theories or methods. […] right in the beginning, I could recognize “active listening”. [...] After that, the group didn’t present ready-made solutions, one rather tried to support the person and let him, so to say, elaborate his path towards a solution. Once the first theme came to an end, in my view a discussion started. Since, however, this was not the goal of the unit, one tried to get out of this mode.

At the very end of the course, one out of twelve students shared in his final reaction sheet that he did not like encounter and open case sessions and would have preferred more traditional, lecture-like input in the course. All other participants appreciated the diversified mode of the course, emphasizing, for example, its unique and exciting student-centeredness, learning for life, opportunities to get in touch with self and others, and gaining of team-competence through the frequent intensive group work.

If you as a reader got an impression of what could and could not be achieved during students’ very first encounter group session and create ideas on how to introduce encounter in your context, I see the purpose of this contribution as fulfilled.

Discussion

There is no doubt that each (first session of an) encounter group develops its own dynamics and momentum. Intriguingly, however, the encounter experience – as bumpy, incomplete, and imperfect as described above – tends to be perceived as something that stays on the minds of participants and that impacts the atmosphere of the whole course. It develops to become more open, direct, trustful, appreciative, and, I would say, humane. Once students – and often also I – reveal something personal, the whole climate of the session changes. Even if later on there are scheduled sessions (e.g. on handling conflict or specific difficult situations), students tend to feel more free to express themselves spontaneously, expecting they would be perceived without being judged.

Before moving on, let us take a brief excursion to reaction sheets (Motschnig-Pitrik, 2014). I am most thankful to Carl Rogers for inspiring me to adapt this form of written expression of students between course units. Reaction sheets are, in my perception, of enormous value for both students and the facilitator. They form a bridge between individual units and allow me to perceive how the group and its members think and feel before starting a unit. Rogers described reaction sheets as follows (1961, p. 20):

I have also frequently asked for ‘reaction sheets’ from students – in which they can express themselves individually and personally regarding the course. They can tell of the way it is or is not meeting their needs, they can express their feelings regarding the instructor, or can tell of the personal difficulties they are having in relation to the course [.]

I highly appreciate personal reaction sheets and consider them a valuable asset for orientation and continuity when moving from one unit to the next. For students, they are aimed to serve as an active reflection and a means to strengthen the communication with the course-group, contact, and student-centeredness of the course, as we address the reaction sheets regularly and they tend to have a fully transparent, perceivable influence on the evolution of the course.

There is no doubt that a very short experience of encounter can just provide a very small window of experience of the powerful phenomenon. With its unique creative potential as well as the risk of an ‘unproductive’ process with shallow discussions, tiring and seemingly endless decision-making in groups and by other factors, encounters have the tendency to slow down the group process. Nevertheless, students receive a spark of the idea and potential of free encounter and some seem to ‘catch fire’ wanting to do more, read more, and seek other opportunities or training. For example, within the last twelve years, seven master students and seven doctoral students wrote their theses in the realm of the Person-Centered Approach in Education or Leadership. Some young teachers even reported that – on occasion when wanting their pupils to be fully present to deal with some issue – they let their pupils form a circle with their chairs during class and initiate sharing in the spirit of encounter.

Personally, I have long pondered about how to maximize students’ deep, significant learning during the course on Communication and Teamwork. I do consider encounter groups as most powerful and not substitutable in terms of their potentials for nurturing creativity and person-centered attitudes, and shaping participants’ intuitions for dealing with all kinds of challenging interpersonal situations and relationships. Nevertheless, I have been aiming to find a process that would bear less risk of digression, overlong searching phases and slipping into discussion mode. My suggestion in that direction is the ‘Open Case’ setting (Motschnig & Ryback, 2016). In a nutshell, small groups of three to seven people sit together in a circle to deal with some specific case that has been proposed by a participant beforehand. Each student is free to choose whether to suggest a case or rather be an interested peer in any of the cases that are brought up. The process in the small group is guided by a handout that suggests a sequence of sharing, trying to identify accompanying feelings, emotions, and images, asking questions, identifying influences, sharing experiences and opinions, and reflecting on the process and learning. A recent content analysis of students’ reactions to Open Case (Motschnig & van Zyl, 2019) confirmed my positive impression of this setting. Students tend to be highly engaged and say that they find sharing and listening in a small team and in a small circle easier than in front of the whole group. Hence, I tend to include an Open Case session in one of the final units of the course on Communication and Teamwork. Thereby it is crystal clear to me that it cannot substitute for the richness of encounter; nevertheless, it appears to be a suitable and less risky complement for participants’ (including myself) significant learning in time-restricted settings like courses or workshops at conferences. I would be most interested in your, the reader’s opinion, about – or even the experience of – facilitating Open Case sessions. The guidelines can be obtained from Motschnig & Ryback (2016, p. 166–167) or by contacting me. Intriguingly, in an international course at the Masaryk University in Brno, CZ (where ”my” students and I had experienced both Open Case and encounter sessions), the majority of the local (Czech/Slovak) students had preferred the Open Case format due to this allowing for more activity, focus, and intimacy. International students, however, tended to prefer the large group encounter since this gave them a better opportunity to get to know the local/other students and to learn more about their culture. In general, national diversity was highly valued and underlined as an asset by several students, leading me to imply that encounter groups, in particular, are promising settings promoting social inclusion of students from different origins and cultures (Motschnig & van Zyl, 2019).

Conclusion and further research

In this paper, we have explored various facets, considerations, and reflections on facilitating encounter during a teacher training academic course on communication. While each course develops differently, it proves beneficial to follow a highly flexible course concept allowing to ‘stay’ with spontaneous encounter experiences whenever they happen. Furthermore, including at least one dedicated encounter session and preparing students for it in a way that appears motivating and wakens curiosity has proved helpful. Such an experience tends to be recalled and reflected in students’ reaction sheets. It evokes significant learning, as has been illustrated by citing excerpts from the students’ online reaction sheets.

Referring to Buber (1937, p. 11–12), ‘All real living is meeting. The relation to the Thou is direct. [.] Only when every means has collapsed does the meeting come about. In face of the directness of the relation everything indirect becomes irrelevant.’

To summarize, in my experience, person-centered encounter groups are better facilitated as one of the several socio-pedagogical approaches, if there is just a single course on communication available in a curriculum. Teacher trainees tend to appreciate a variety of didactic elements and love to work in small groups where they can be more active. For the latter, the Open Case setting and procedure has been suggested and is being researched (Motschnig & van Zyl, 2019). But does this not contradict Buber’s quote mentioned above? My current thinking and experience is that letting ‘means collapse’ seems well possible and perceivable in particular, if such means have been there and students can – each at their own pace – experiment with letting go of them to subsequently open up for the real meeting to happen.

As a next step, long-term studies are needed to find out in which ways the course on communication in general, and its encounter-orientation in particular, leave significant traces on participants. Such research should follow procedures suggested by Barrett-Lennard (2005), Rogers (1983), Reinhard and Annemarie Tausch (1998) and authors like Maureen O’Hara, Barbara McCombs, and Kennon Sheldon (Cornelius-White, Motschnig-Pitrik, & Lux, 2013).

If you, the reader, have formed your opinion on including encounter and also other settings into student-centered, academic courses, I see the purpose of this paper as fulfilled. Personally, I fully agree with Rogers on his quote cited at the beginning of this paper. At the same time – for education outside the realm of psychotherapy and counseling – I perceive a need for ‘compatible’ person-centered settings – even if they are less powerful and employ some means. In particular, courses and workshops in which the time for meeting is strongly restricted can still benefit from person-centered small teamwork and online reactions being shared with the course community.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Renate Motschnig

Renate Motschnig is head of the research group CSLEARN – Educational Technologies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Renate authored numerous articles on the PCA in education and three books on Person-Centered Communication. She is deeply interested in the ways in which understanding and whole-person learning happen. She appreciates synergies between presence and distance, cognition and feeling/meaning, and a multitude of cultures.