Constructive interventions are used by educators to strengthen process skills. A focus on learner process skills is a stronger way to produce growth than the traditional emphasis on clarifying disciplinary knowledge. This module addresses several aspects of constructive intervention including theory, the “intervention cycle,” principles, and critical issues. It also profiles the conditions that indicate metacognitive understanding of intervention strategies; this will help educators elevate their skills in using constructive intervention. An accompanying module includes more detailed information and insights about actual constructive intervention techniques and the contexts in which they are useful. Authentic growth in the use of constructive intervention requires knowledge both of the basic principles and practice that is assessed in real-time.

What is Constructive Intervention?

Constructive intervention refers to a pattern of facilitator skills designed to guide learner growth. There is a wide range of techniques and insights for improving interventions (3.2.8 Constructive Intervention Techniques), all of which depend initially upon observation, listening, and information gathering. This initial work enables a facilitator to assess what learners are doing and how well they are oriented to the goal of improving performance in a process. Sound assessment data will enable the facilitator to decide whether to intervene and, if necessary, how to intervene. Later, assessment of changes in performance will indicate whether the intervention worked and allow one to estimate what additional interventions may be useful. “Constructive” is used both in the sense of providing positive assessment feedback and in the sense of helping learners to elevate and expand their learning skills, i.e., to construct better skills through reflective practice.

Theory and Research

The term “intervention” is found in many contexts including counseling, education, training, and management. Interventions are used when there is a need to improve processes related to important outcomes by influencing adjustment, level of knowledge, productivity, or quality of products or services. Adding the word “constructive” emphasizes that intervening in a process may not be beneficial if it is done without an understanding of “limiting skills,” i.e., those skills most essential for effectively performing the processes involved in achieving a desired outcome.

Research from counseling and applied psychology indicates some of the factors that influence “buy-in” of constructive interventions. Oetzel and Scherer (2003) examined how therapists for adolescents achieved “engagement” with these frequently resistant and challenging clients. Interventions that worked best were described as empathic, genuine, and developmentally appropriate. They allowed choices and helped adolescents deal with the stigma of being in treatment for mental adjustment problems. Lieb and Kanofsky (2003) argue that the important criteria for determining whether interventions will be accepted and useful are sensitivity to cultural and intergenerational issues, attention to language, and focus on life stories. When the client and the counselor collaborate well together, both benefit as evidenced by increased ability to construct “mastery stories” that are useful for guiding future behavior.

Constructive interventions start with an intention to influence a process or a learning skill. To analyze leader-ship strategies Stockton, Morran, and Clark (2004) had group leaders list their “intentions” for a series of interventions presented via videotapes of therapy sessions. These researchers were interested in understanding the “self talk” of team leaders, rather than cognitive style and other more “stable” variables that earlier researchers had attended to. Among the categories of intention found by Stockton et al. (2004) were gathering information and assessing members, challenging members, attending to and validating members, directing self, directing the group, and promoting connections and interactions. One implication of this research for educators is the use of reflective journaling to increase consciousness of internal speech that correlates with the selection of intervention targets and techniques.

Bottger and Yetton’s (1987) research supports the significance of well-designed activities, adequate pre-requisite knowledge resources, and assessment of specific skills in creating a stronger performance environment. For example, they found that providing information ahead of time about poor but commonly used decision-making methods produced improvements in group problem solving.

Table 1  Ten Principles of Constructive Intervention
  1. Constructive intervention is the focused assessment of essential skills needed for performance mastery.
  2. The Accelerator Model (4.3.4) can be used to guide the level of affective challenge of constructive interventions.
  3. Facilitation success can be enhanced by identifying target skills, their triggering scenarios, and standards of performance in the facilitation plan.
  4. Facilitator attention to verbal and nonverbal cues from learners will be enhanced by the planning of potentially useful interventions.
  5. Constructive interventions must be used sparingly to avoid causing disruptions and negative affective reactions.
  6. The level of learner openness, i.e., buy-in, to constructive intervention must be facilitated.
  7. Constructive intervention can be used to redirect learner attention or to challenge the level of performance.
  8. Requesting self-assessment as a constructive intervention will enhance learners’ consciousness of their levels of competency.
  9. Facilitator growth in the use of constructive interventions requires a community of peer assessors.
  10. Metacognitive understanding of levels of quality in the uses of constructive interventions is enhanced by articulating “mastery stories” for various contexts.

The Constructive Intervention “Cycle”

Effective use of constructive intervention typically involves a “cycle of intervention” that includes careful curriculum design and preparation of a detailed facilitation plan (3.2.5 Creating a Facilitation Plan). It is difficult to provide effective constructive intervention unless one understands, ahead of time, what is likely to be important. A brief overview is provided here of the typical cycle; more information and examples are provided in the accompanying module 3.2.8 Constructive Intervention Techniques.

  1. Prepare the context. Preparation of well-designed course activities that support course and program objectives will make it possible to recognize opportunities for interventions.

  2. Spot the growth opportunity. Knowing what learning skills are likely to limit the level of learning prepares the facilitator for observing signs of problems due to the deficient skills. It is essential, in real time, to “skim” a room to notice general problems such as whether some team members are trying to work without a plan or are being dominated by one member. Noticing a problem initiates Step 3.

  3. Identify a limiting skill. It is important to quickly estimate what is the most significant skill needed for the context. In a team context, failure of members to argue for their positions may indicate lack of preparation (which could be due to insufficient resources in the curriculum) or a need to improve the skill of persuasively arguing a position—an essential learning skill. The classification of skills provides the facilitator with recognized labels for specific skills.

  4. Decide on learner readiness. Learning skills exist at various levels; intervention at too high or too low a level will reduce effectiveness. For example, if a learner is persuasive only if he or she emotionally engaged by an issue (“unconscious use” of a learning skill), an intervention might be to ask why and how a previous argument was persuasive (i.e., elevate growth to “conscious use”).

  5. Choose an intervention. Depending on learner readiness and the context, the intervention must address the performance issue by guiding the learner to self-assess current performance. The principles of constructive intervention (next section) provide guidelines for making effective choices.

  6. Implement the intervention. Judgments about frustration level (e.g., whether to intervene immediately when a performance issue is observed or after a period of frustration), technique (Table 1 in 3.2.8 Constructive Intervention Techniques), mode (e.g., whether the intervention should be verbal or nonverbal), and timing (e.g., whether the intervention is needed during the activity or could be addressed later) are all relevant and must be made in real time.

  7. Assess the results. Observations, review of documents, and learning journals are useful ways to assess whether an intervention produced the intended effects. This is essential for elevating facilitation skills as well as learner performance.

  8. Decide on follow-up actions. Continuity from one constructive intervention opportunity to the next requires that a facilitator be consistent in addressing learning skills until they actually improve and to be aware of the next step of growth for an individual so new interventions build on previous ones.

Constructive Intervention Principles

The ten principles in Table 1 underlie the theory and practice of constructive intervention. By internalizing and committing to these principles, educators will become more proficient at fostering learner growth.

1. Constructive intervention is focused assessment of essential skills needed for performance mastery.

To be effective facilitators must be able to identify the skill(s) needed by teams or individuals in specific learning activities or contexts. Articulation of the names of these skills is available for over 250 specific learning skills in four domains (cognitive, social, affective, and psychomotor). To be effective, a facilitator should focus on only one or two key skills in a given performance and then constructively intervene to strengthen these.

2. The Accelerator Model can be used to guide the level of affective challenge in constructive interventions.

The affective domain, which contains skills involving value development, personal development, and aesthetic development, is a major source of learning skills that can be targeted by means of constructive intervention. Mastering these skills widens a learner’s “comfort zone,” (4.3.4 The Accelerator Model) so that the degree of challenge slightly exceeds the learner’s skill set.

3. Facilitation success can be enhanced by identifying target skills, triggering scenarios, and standards of performance in the facilitation plan.

The more planning that can be done before facilitating an activity, the more comfortable the educator will be conducting interventions and the more successful these interventions will be (3.2.5 Creating a Facilitation Plan). Empathically putting oneself in the place of the student lacking a key skill will help one to anticipate the behavior and associated feelings, to focus attention on how to observe and assess the performance, and to provide insights about how to plan an intervention and follow-through that will “grow the skill.”

4. Facilitator attention to verbal and nonverbal cues from learners will be enhanced by the planning of potentially useful interventions.

The facilitator must collect information from written reports as well as verbal and nonverbal cues, making strong use of observation and listening skills. Having potential interventions in mind from preparation of a detailed facilitation plan is a powerful way to maintain full control of the constructive intervention process.

5. Constructive interventions must be used sparingly to avoid causing disruptions and negative affective reactions.

A common mistake of an inexperienced facilitator of team activities is to intervene unnecessarily. Every intervention disrupts the flow of the group. See 3.2.2 Profile of a Quality Facilitator for a detailed description of behaviors relevant to constructive intervention and a rubric for levels of facilitator effectiveness.

6. The level of learner openness to constructive intervention must be facilitated.

See 3.1.1 Overview of Quality Learning Environments for principles of how to achieve a learning environment in which the learners respect each other and the educator and in which resources and opportunities are provided to meet clear and challenging learning goals.

7. Constructive intervention can be used to redirect learner attention or to challenge the level of performance.

Because the intent of constructive interventions is growth of learning skills or processes (2.3.8 Learning Process Methodology), it is essential to continuously assess the level of a few central, i.e., “limiting,” skills needed in activities being facilitated. See 2.3.3 Classification of Learning Skills for a rubric to assess the level of use of specific learning skills through five levels: non-conscious use, conscious use, consistent performance, self-reflective use, and transformative use.

8. Requesting self-assessment as a constructive intervention will enhance learners’ consciousness of their levels of competency.

Until learners become proficient in the process of self-assessment, they will remain dependent on external sources of feedback. Often a simple request to write a self-assessment will produce growth in specific learning skills by encouraging increased consciousness of how the skill is being performed.

9. Facilitator growth in the use of constructive interventions requires a community of peer assessors.

The best assessment of constructive intervention skills will come from a peer coach who is not immersed in the process as are the facilitator and learners. It is important to specify for the coach, by sharing these details from the facilitation plan, what learner skills are being assessed and what constructive intervention techniques are planned. Peer coaching may occur within a broader mentoring relationship (4.2.3 Personal Development Methodology and 4.2.1 Overview of Mentoring).

10. Metacognitive understanding of levels of quality in the uses of constructive intervention is enhanced by articulating “mastery stories” for various contexts.

The facilitation rubric describes skills at five qualitatively different levels, including ranger, manager, director, coach, and change agent. A strategy for improving as a reflective practitioner is keeping a journal with stories, cases, and personal narratives about specific ways to successfully provide constructive interventions.

Effective Use of Constructive Intervention

Growth effects from using constructive intervention become increasingly predictable when educators are prepared, learners have bought in, and follow-through occurs consistently. The following outline provides a summary of the main factors involved from the educator perspective.

1. Preparation

  1. Curriculum design specifications are sound and well-focused (2.4.6 Methodology for Program Design).

  2. Activities (well-focused assignments or tasks) provide opportunities that require learners to use new skills or to advance skills to new levels (2.4.8 Methodology for Course Design.

  3. A detailed facilitation plan is written that predicts many of the learner areas for improvement and includes intervention techniques.

  4. Learner buy-in for receiving and using assessment has been achieved (3.1.5 Getting Student Buy-In).

  5. Assessment information is available on the main “limiting” skills expected to be in need of improvement in the current context.

2. Essential Behaviors and Attitudes

  1. Focus must be on processes and learning skills, not on content (4.1.3 Mindset for Assessment).

  2. Focus of attention must shift flexibly among the larger contexts (e.g., skimming the whole classroom to assess current status), the teams, and the individuals to identify key learning barriers and issues.

  3. Relationships with assessees must be positive by focusing on strengths first but also by providing clear assessment information for improvement.

  4. Constructive interventions must facilitate mental independence and support active learning.

  5. Interventions must influence elevation of learning skills or processes to the next level feasible for the team or individual.

3. Follow-Through Strategies

  1. Assess growth trends of teams and individuals over time.

  2. Plan opportunities to apply, transfer, and generalize learning skills and processes.

  3. Facilitate learner skills in self-assessing performances so they can constructively intervene for themselves or for others without external facilitation.

  4. Continuously improve learning opportunities at activity, course, and program levels.

  5. Create experiences that include celebration of growth.

  6. Do research on learning and growth outcomes that can be shared with other educators.

Concluding Thoughts

Constructive intervention is the art of facilitating individual growth in learning skills and learning processes, i.e., in learning to learn. The theory, cycle of intervention, and major principles of constructive intervention presented in the present module help educators acquire a basic understanding while an accompanying module, 3.2.8 Constructive Intervention Techniques, provides application examples. Being ready to constructively intervene requires attention to all aspects of the learning curriculum, environment, and processes. Effective facilitators must put substantial thought into preparing their minds through detailed planning, so they are able to see learner needs at both the group and individual levels. When individual growth issues arise, the facilitator with skills in using the constructive intervention cycle and techniques will be able to smoothly and effectively support learner growth.

References

Bottger, P. C., & Yetton, P. W. (1987). Improving group performance training in individual problem solving. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 651-657.

Oetzel, K. B., & Scherer, D. G. (2003). Therapeutic engagement with adolescents in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 40, 187-202.

Lieb, R. J., & Kanofsky, S. (2003). Toward a constructivist control mastery theory: An integration with narrative therapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 40, 187-202.

Stockton, R., Morran, D. K., & Clark, M. B. (2004). An investigation of group leaders’ intentions. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3, 196-206.