Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on Education and Educational Technology, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, December

16-18, 2006 13

NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING: A PERSONNAL

DEVELOPMENT TOOL APPLIED TO THE PEDAGOGY AND TO
THE IMPROVMENT OF TEACHERS/STUDENTS RELATIONS
J. LEGALL - Philippe DONDON
ENSEIRB, Av Dr A. Schweitzer 33405 Talence, France.

Abstract: With the recent student’s behaviour evolution, we have some difficulties in evaluating their needs and in
understanding their motivation for scientific studies. Theses difficulties generate a loss of effectiveness in our
teaching process. Thus, some alternating pedagogical approaches are going to be tested. We suggest here, the use
of N.L.P (Neuro Linguistic Programming) as a tool to improve the motivation and the quality of the relation
between teachers and students. Some person from the technical staff of our School has been trained to these NLP
techniques. It makes it possible to measure the effects and the impacts of NLP in particular at the time of the of the
free electronics projects in 2nd year.

Key words: Pedagogical experience, student’s motivation, human behaviour exploration, Neuro Linguistic
Programming,

1. Introduction engineering school (mechanical, chemical,

architecture and so on.). And the last 1/3 is here
because they do not know what to choose or they did
not have the choice (due to French High School
1.1 ENSEIRB engineer school presentation selection process)
The “Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electronique,
Informatique et Radiocommunications de Bordeaux” Secondly, the time dedicated to home work has
is one of the graduate national engineering schools, drastically decreased due to the evolution of the civil
known as 'Grandes Ecoles', in France. It is also one society. The students of today are solicited by
of the oldest, as it was founded in 1920. different leisure, games and many other extra
ENSEIRB has developed with the growth of activities. As becoming a competent electronic
information and communication technologies. The engineer requires a heavy work and a high level of
Computer Science Department was created in 1986 knowledge, we have to solve a quite difficult
to complement the original Electronics Department paradox.
and was followed in 2000 by the new
Telecommunications Department. Thirdly, we observe since 1995 some major
evolutions in student’s behaviour: We can quote the
modifications of the cycles of attention of the
1.2 The new student’s behaviour students. Two main tendencies appear:
We have noticed for a few years a global change of
student’s behaviour in the three departments. - Reduction of the long cycle of attention (inherent in
Consequently, the teachers are in front of a new kind human being and normally about 45 min with 1
of public and do not know how to manage behaviours hour): on a traditional course of 1 hour, we observe a
which are not familiar. progressive unhooking of the audience faster than
First, from annual opinion poll performed at the before.
arrival of student in our school, we can say that 1/3 - Multiplication of the short cycles of attention.
of our students are into the school by conviction and These one duration cycles from 6 to 7 minutes, are
choice. The second 1/3 are in our school by chance also inherent in the human being. They have
but could have interest in any other thematic appeared however more openly since a few years.
Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on Education and Educational Technology, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, December 16-18, 2006 14

They are concretised by successive unhooking and long time, we are trying to transpose it in our scholar
accosting during the course, phenomenon improperly system. Indeed, in order to improve the methods of
qualified of "zapping" by some. teaching, it is extremely useful to take into account
At least, we also observe a global disaffection for some internal processes inherent to human being.
theoretical lessons: This phenomenon is confirmed
by national statistics. There is a global loss of
motivation for the scientific curriculum. Economical,
commercial studies seem to be now more attractive 2. NLP basis
for this new generation of students. NLP is well known all around the world. The Neuro
Linguistic Programming is a tool which has been
developed to answer to the following question: «
1.3 Consequences of this evolution Why some people obtain exceptional and durable
According to this situation, it appears a kind of ditch results better and faster than the others (in private or
between supply and demand regarding education professional life) ?
needs. The two need to be given in phase : As the John Grinder and Richard Bandler, the inventors of
previous teaching methods doesn’t match anymore NLP, have carefully observed during many years the
with these students of today, we have to test other behaviour of professional communicators in the
teaching methods to restore effectiveness and quality. fields of business, education, law, and medicine.
From theses studies, they tried to build a behaviour
modelling. They also gave explanations to the
1.4 Alternating pedagogical approach testing “success attitude” and suggested different tools to
In front of this evolution, we have obviously tried improve the communication quality. We can now
different pedagogical approaches like “pedagogy by define the words N.L.P :
project” [1], “professional project”, “e-learning” and Programming: throughout our life, we program ways
so on. And we obtained interesting results. of being, of thinking, of behaving, according to what
But, one of the complementary possible ways of we live and what we meet.
investigation is to “play” with psychological aspects
of the teaching process: The two past years, a first Neuro: this ability to program ourselves depends on
approach has been done, using the Hermann diagram our neurological capacities. Brain, nervous system
[2] as a psychological tool to globally optimize the enables us to apprehend the external world, to
interest and the motivation of the students. perceive, store and organize information and to
Some other comparable and powerful approaches deliver such or such answer to a specific situation.
often used in private company to improve the
commercial or manufacturing efficiency, can also be Linguistic: verbal and non-verbal language reflects
suitable for pedagogy purposes: They all use a this manner of representing and apprehending the
human behaviour modelling with some world.
particularities. But, even if there are some
differences, all these approaches obviously converge
towards the same goal: to better know oneself in 2.1 The human sensitive channel definition
order to enhance your motivation potential and your We are in contact with the exterior world or
communication ability. environment through our sensory channels: The
Looking deeper at the individual evolution of sight, hearing, the sense of smell, the touch, and the
student’s behaviour during the full classroom taste. However, people have a dominant channel in
courses, we are now convinced that improvements learning something. For example they will use the
can be obtained by first changing our own behaviour sight while others will use hearing.
and our own approach of the teaching process. So, We can mention that « internal digital hearing »
we naturally paid attention to NLP techniques. well known as the « small internal voice » in popular
This approach [3] is born in States in 1973. Well words, (when we speak inside to ourselves) is not a
known in industrial or commercial business since a sensory channel. Thus, we can not learn from the
Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on Education and Educational Technology, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, December 16-18, 2006 15

environment by this way. An immediate consequence “The magical number seven” from Georges
is that to make recite the children a lesson “in their MILLER [4]). After that, we automatically switch in
head”, is not a good learning method. the internal conscious mode (internal sight, internal
Thus, it is important for someone who wants to hearing, and digital hearing (the famous “internal
optimize the information transfer efficiency toward small voice”)). That is, we are no more able to
an interlocutor, to adapt its behaviour to the dominant receive new information from environment until the
sensory channel of this interlocutor. next cycle. It is like if our short term memory was
temporary full. The switching cycles external to
The concept of the dominant sensory channel can be internal conscience states occurs every 45 seconds
illustrated as follow: When you ask several people to due to the inherent ability of human being. This
tell their last beach holidays, you can have different phenomenon has been confirmed by testing many
answers depending on their dominant channel. people. If some one gives a lecture of a story in front
Some of them will remember family discussion, the of a group of people, each person will then remember
waves sound. Others will visualize the sand beach 5 to 9 items but not obligatorily the same ones.
and the sand mountains colours and shapes, while As a direct consequence of this mental intrinsic
others will remember the feeling of heat, the sands limitation, we can guess interesting information
texture or the caress of fresh air on the skin. about classical courses duration, structures and
contents.
The whole “human information processing”
behaviour can be summarized by the figure 1.
2.3 Mental cutting size
smell, taste, The received information from the exterior world is
internal cut into blocks by the brain before to be analyzed. It
and touch :
sight
is an inherent “information processing” due to human
being. The size of cutting varies according to the
external External internal
Internal individuals:
hearing Behaviour hearing
processing
-There are people, who “cut” small, i.e.,
digital whose speeches are precise with many detailed
external internal examples. These people are very factual.
sight hearing
Internal - There are people who « cut » large, i.e. that
Emotion their speeches are very conceptual and have a high
level of abstraction. They do not need to use
examples or to detail their matter.
We give here a short example to illustrate this cutting
Fig 1 : Schematic diagram of human behaviour concept :
-large cutting size : ”yesterday, I ate an
An external situation or event is first received apple”
through the sensory channels (external behaviour). -small cutting size : “yesterday morning at
Then, we switch in an internal process mode: it 11h30 am, I ate a quite juicy golden delicious apple.”
means that we create in our brain a representation of
this situation or event. This representation can be A direct consequence of this mental cutting is that
based on the sight, hearing or other channel during a course or a lecture, it is thus necessary to
depending on our dominant channel. After this step, use two modes of mental cutting, so that teacher
one or more feelings (which can be positive, negative speeches can be synchronized with the student’s size
or neutral) appear inside us. of cutting.

2.2 Information processing human limits 2.4 Mismatching and matching attitude [5]
Our conscious field is limited to 7 (+/-2) items In NLP words, a matching attitude means “yes”
“mnesic” : It means that we are able to process while a mismatching attitude means “yes but “.
between 5 and 9 information at the same time (cf
Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on Education and Educational Technology, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, December 16-18, 2006 16

In the human communication field, we try to to the energy or with calms emanating from a place
understand or to describe the things around us. The because this one gets a particular emotion to them.
people seek or establish links by similarity or
difference with what they already know. They The individuals have all the four primary education
compare information, they weigh up, either while sorting but there is of them one of dominating which
validating or while invalidating, what is told as. More is often activated. One more time, knowing the
precisely, they establish links (resemblances) or they primary sorting keys of the interlocutor allows an
find counterexamples (differences) with what is told optimized communication.
as.
During training periods, it is better for the speakers,
to practice « matching » with the audience. Indeed, it 2.6 Feed-back
is easy for someone to always find a counterexample One of the postulates of the NLP is that we are not
or an exception which invalidates the information: what we do: We should not confuse our behaviours
thus, a “mismatching attitude” limits the fact of and what we are or in other words « the map is not
learning something new. the territory ».
In education world, the teacher is present to judge the
As we all are switching spontaneously and work of a student and not the student himself: It is
permanently from matching to mismatching attitude not because a student makes many mistakes that we
along the life, we have to know when it is better to can conclude that he is inapt or inefficient. It is
“match” or to “mismatch” with someone. important to highlight that a student in training will
make progress only if he makes errors and takes
Thus, during a communication process, it is benefits from it.
necessary to replace a mismatching person within the The information given by the teacher as “Feedback”
framework of the conversation because when she is just an information about the work of the student.
invalidates what it is said, she will seek an example It is given to take retreat or distance compared to his
which leaves this framework. work, nothing more.

2.5 Primary sorting 3. Using NLP for the electronic

In NLP language, the four primary sorting keys student’s project management
indicate on what people are focused in the Electronic projects in 2nd year study are held as
apprehension of an ordinary or extraordinary weekly sessions of four hours, twelve students,
situation. Indeed, the individuals sort on: during all the year. This is multi thematic projects
- People: People, who have this primary including analogue, digital, power and RF circuitry
sorting like the contact with the others, love the basic’s. There is one teacher for 12 students and one
verbal exchanges. They appreciate being surrounded technical storekeeper (for the management and
by other people and as soon as they are back at home, distribution of the required electronic components).
they phone or invite them. Our storekeeper has been trained to NLP and is now
- Activity: people who sort on the activities NLP master graduated. Since we use this technique,
need to be busy, even with always making the same we observed some evolutions in terms of efficiency
things. Indeed, they want to have always something and relation with the students. We give, in the next
to do. paragraph, some results we obtained by using NLP.
- Information: the individuals who sort on
information want always to be informed, or to collect
information in order to improve their knowledge. 4. Results
- Place: this sorting is very often secondary When working on psychological aspects, it is always
and comes in complement from one of the three other difficult to quantify the results: there are no tools to
one’s. The people who use this sorting are sensitive measure the impact, no material proofs. Some times,
the changes are so subtle and fine that even the
Proceedings of the 5th WSEAS International Conference on Education and Educational Technology, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, December 16-18, 2006 17

people who are involved are not able to detect them. 5. Conclusion
It is often after several years that one perceives the With this experience, we can say that NLP can be
behaviour’s evolution. also applied in educational world to improve the
We can just observe subjectively and discuss some motivation and the quality of relation between
interesting changes on the following points: teacher and students: NLP is a power full tool which
• Modification of the student’s behaviour allows the users to synchronise their own behaviour
asking information or components to the on the one of the others with tolerance and humility.
storekeeper. In the past, the storekeeper was The information transfer between two people may be
often considered by the students themselves then optimized. NLP is also power full to discover
as a simple “component’s distributor”. Now, your personal goal and to mobilize your own
a balanced and harmonious relation is resources in order to reach theses goals. Finally this
established with more mutual respect and approach also makes it possible to learn how to learn,
confidence. The students discover also that because we have this faculty compared to the other
the storekeeper is an interesting technical and animal species, which is to be able to learn how to
human support. better learn: if our training strategy does not match
anymore with the needs, it is necessary to use an
• The improvement of relation’s quality other one which is more adapted with our operating
between teacher, storekeeper and students mode. As a loop without end, we will continue in
has a secondary beneficial effect on the theses permanent pedagogical researches.
student’s behaviour: Before, the students
often seemed defeatists and fed up with a lot References
of things. Now, we notice a better mental and
[1] M. AVILA, JC. BARDET, S. BEGOT, P.
physical presence, and also a more active and
VRIGNAT, N. STRIDE «La pédagogie par projets »
positive attitude.
CETSIS Nancy 25-27 octobre 2005 France
• Modification of the group attitude: the [2] Ph. DONDON "E-learning on the web : An
improvement of relation act like a positive approach based on the Hermann model" , JSF 20-21
contamination to the whole group. With a décembre 2003 Tozeur (Tunisie)
better work atmosphere, we observe an
increasing and dynamic emulation between [3] DILTS Robert, GRINDER John. BANDLER
students and positive team spirit. Richard, BANDLER L.C., DELOZIER Judith,
“neuro-linguistic programming, the study of
Of course theses results have been observed on a few subjective experience” Meta Publications Cupertino
groups of students. So, it is too early to have a global (California, USA) 1980
feed back. As it is a new experience for us, we can
not compare theses observations with others inside [4] http://www.well.com/~smalin/miller.html
our school. No other similar experience has been
done in our scientific university. But these first tests [5] Olivier ZENOUDA et Pierre ARTHAPIGNET
are very interesting and encouraging. We hope that NLP masters, INFORPNL : institut de formation
this small quivering will grow in the near future. PNL, 159 rue Maréchal Leclerc, 33130 Bègles-
France
Twenty years ago, a manager of the T.R.T French
radio communication company told us like a joke:
“In an industrial company, there are no technical
problems, there are only human problems.”
With the NLP experience, we understand now
perfectly this sentence which replaces the human
being in the center of all the concerns.