The workshop held on March 4, 2014, at the University of Hertfordshire focused on identifying the competencies required for effective classroom practice, presenting research by Alison Kington, Nick Reed, and Pam Sammons. Participants learned about personal construct psychology (PCP), its techniques such as 'laddering' and 'pyramiding', and how to design a professional development grid for teachers. The workshop aimed to enhance understanding of individual constructs and foster personal development in teaching competencies.

1. IdentifyingandElaboratingtheCompetencies
RequiredforEffectiveClassroomPractice
AworkshopfundedbyagrantfromtheHigherEducationAcademy
Heldon4thMarch2014attheUniversityofHertfordshire
Facilitators:
AlisonKington
email: a.kington@worc.ac.uk
NickReed
email: n.b.reed@herts.ac.uk

2. Aims & Objectives
• To present the research that Alison Kington, Nick Reed and Pam Sammons did
in relation to the competencies required for effective classroom practice.
• To briefly outline the main features of Personal Construct Psychology ("PCP").
• To introduce you to “personal constructs” and show you how they can be
‘elicited’ and categorised.
• To describe and practice the personal construct technique known as
“laddering”.
• To describe and practice the personal construct technique known as
“pyramiding”.
• To design and complete a Professional Development Grid.
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3. PCP: An Introduction
• The inventor of Personal Construct Psychology was Professor George Kelly, an
American psychologist.
• Kelly’s first degree was in mathematics and physics and he planned to have a career as
an engineer. He also had a degree in education, but his PhD was in psychology.
• In 1955 his major work, The Psychology of Personal Constructs, was published by
Norton. This 2 volume work set out the theory of personal constructs. In 1991, the
book was republished by Routledge.
• Personal Construct Psychology is probably unique in having its underlying theory set
out specifically and completely in one work, from the outset.
• Personal Construct Psychology is also unusual in that it has its own methods which are
firmly based in personal construct theory. The Repertory Grid, in particular, has proved
to be a popular and adaptable method for over 50 years.
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4. The Main Features of PCP (1)
• PCP has an integrated and comprehensive psychological theory of human
experience and behaviour.
• PCP has its own philosophy which Kelly called “Constructive Alternativism”. As
Kelly puts it:
"........ all our present perceptions are open to question and reconsideration and
........ even the most obvious occurrences of everyday life might appear utterly
transformed if we were inventive enough to construe them differently."
(Kelly, 1955)
Some of the implications of that philosophy are:-
• From a PCP perspective, there is a ‘real’ world out there, but we all see it in
different ways through our individual construct systems - but there can be
commonality as well.
• There is always the possibility of change - but change is often far from easy.
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5. The Main Features of PCP (2)
• The basic ‘unit’ of PCP is the “personal construct”. A personal construct is a bipolar
dimension e.g. Petrol -v- Diesel; Loyal -v- Can’t be trusted; Values the extra effort we
make -v- Doesn’t value the extra effort we make.
• In his Organisation Corollary, Kelly states that construct systems are composed of
bipolar personal constructs arranged in a hierarchy, with some constructs being
relatively more important (“superordinate”) and some relatively less important
(“subordinate”).
• Superordinate constructs can be elicited from subordinate constructs using the
technique known as Laddering.
• Subordinate constructs can be elicited from more superordinate constructs using the
technique known as Pyramiding.
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6. The Main Features of PCP (3)
• Personal constructs are the ‘goggles’ through which people construe and thereby
differentiate between people, things and situations.
• Our personal constructs are our ‘theories’ about the world and our ‘hypotheses’
come from applying these theories to the situations, people and things with which
we are confronted.
• We test out these hypotheses by our behaviour. In PCP terms, “behaviour is the
experiment”.
• The opposite pole of a personal construct will often be of particular interest. The
poles of your personal constructs show the alternatives available to you at a
particular time
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7. Elements
For this exercise, you will be eliciting constructs in the context of the competencies that a good
teacher requires for effective classroom practice, using the following elements:
1. The best teacher I know
2. The worst teacher I know
3. A good teacher I know
4. A poor teacher I know
5. The ideal teacher
6. An average teacher I know
7. Another good teacher I know
8. Another poor teacher I know
9. Another average teacher I know
NB. These elements are ‘role titles’ and a DIFFERENT person must be used to represent each
element. You don’t have to know them now. The element “The ideal teacher”, can be an
imaginary person. 7

8. Some Ground Rules For Today
• When you are the ‘interviewee’ in the practical exercises you are going to do
today, you don’t have to tell the person with whom you are working anything that
you would rather not reveal. Be especially aware of this in the “laddering”
exercise.
• Everything that you are told by the people you work with in the practical exercises
must be treated as being strictly confidential, and you must not reveal what they
have said to anybody else.
• Be aware of what is going on in the practical exercises and how you feel about the
questions that are being put to you. This is very good practice if you use the
techniques you have learnt today when interviewing people in the future, because
you will be aware of how it feels to be questioned in those ways.
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9. The Triadic Method of Eliciting Constructs
• Select three elements (a ‘triad’) and ask the interviewee if there is: "any important way in
which two of the elements are alike and thereby different from the third.” (NB. It is often
helpful to state that you are looking for characteristics rather than things like physical
features).
• When your interviewee has given you the first pole of the construct (i.e. they have given
you what is called the ‘emergent pole’), ask the interviewee for their subjective opposite in
meaning to that pole. This opposite pole is called the ‘contrast’ or ‘implicit’ pole.
• The contrast pole may or may not be a characteristic of the third element.
• Occasionally, a person will not be able to come up with a way in which two of the elements
are similar and different from the third - they may say they are all the same, in which case
you can ask in what way they are the same and then ask for the opposite pole.
• You can use the following triads of elements to elicit constructs for this exercise:
123 456 789 147 369 358 159 357 246
• Each construct that you elicit must be written (both poles) on a separate record card.
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10. E1
The best teacher I know
E2
The worst teacher I know
E3
A good teacher I know
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11. Laddering Example
Doing what we’re here to do -v- Wasting your life
More likely to make progress -v- Might stagnate
More likely to get where I’m going -v- May not arrive
Reliable -v- More likely to break down
Japanese cars -v- European cars
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12. Laddering
• Ask the interviewee which pole of the personal construct they prefer. Underline that pole.
• Ask the interviewee why they prefer that pole to the other pole of the construct. Write
down their answer. Then, ask what for them personally, is the opposite of what they have
said and then write that down.
• Carry on going up the ladder using the procedure set out above, always starting with the
preferred pole side of the ‘ladder’ as you go up each ‘rung’.
• Instead of asking why the interviewee prefers one pole to the other, you can ask them why it
is important to them personally to be X as opposed to Y or, what are the benefits (or
advantages) to them of being X rather than Y.
• You will sense when you have reached the top of the ladder because the interviewee will
probably be stating very abstract concepts such as “Well that’s what life’s all about” or they
may start repeating the same construct again and again. Laddering is just as much an art as
it is a skill and it takes practice to learn how to do it.
• If you sense that a person is becoming uncomfortable with your questioning, STOP the
laddering process.
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13. Some Laddering Tips
• Often, your interviewee will give you a great deal of information. To reduce this to
manageable proportions, ask them to summarise what they are saying into just a few
words, so that you can write down the gist of what they are saying.
• It is important that you remind your interviewee frequently that it is their personal
response in which you are interested. For example, ask things like “And what are the
advantages to you personally of being X rather than Y?” or “Why do you personally
prefer X to Y?”
• Do NOT try and elaborate (i.e. gather further information) as you go “up the ladder”.
Stick firmly to your purpose - getting to the top of the ladder. If you don’t, the
chances are your interviewee will become distracted and you run the risk of never
getting to the top ‘rung’ of the ladder.
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14. Pyramiding (1)
Pyramiding (Landfield, 1971) is a way of making abstract constructs more
concrete. As you have seen, there are lots of subordinate (concrete)
constructs at the bottom of your construct system and a very few
superordinate ones at the top.
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15. Pyramiding (2)
• The process of pyramiding is one of asking ‘What’ and ‘How’ rather than ‘Why’ (the
laddering question).
• For example, if one way that a person discriminates between cars is by using the
construct economical -v- uneconomical, and you want to know what they mean by
‘economical’, you can use pyramiding to find out. They may simply mean it uses
modest amounts of fuel - but they may also be referring to cheap servicing, spares and
insurance or that it is a car which does not depreciate rapidly in value.
• Pyramiding can also be used to elicit specific behaviours. For instance, an interviewee
may use the construct warm -v- cold to describe one of the ways she uses to
differentiate between people. She can be asked: “How do you recognise someone
who is warm”. She may say “because they come up to you and talk to you rather than
ignore you”. There may also be other behaviours she considers to be ‘warm’ (or ‘cold’)
and these too can be elicited by pyramiding.
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16. Categorising the Constructs
• The cards with the constructs written on them, now need to be sorted into piles with
each pile containing cards having a similar meaning. This may not be easy because
the themes are not always clear-cut.
• You will find that there are some personal constructs on the cards are ‘unique’ in
meaning and they should all be placed in one pile.
• Limit your group to producing not more than 12 theme piles (not counting the
‘unique’ pile).
• You now look at each theme pile and, if possible, select the personal construct in that
pile that best represents the meaning of the pile.
• When you come to design the Professional Development Grid you may find that you
need to subtly change the wording of some constructs, for them to make proper
sense.
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17. The Professional Development Grid (1)
• The purpose of this grid is to analyse the skills/competencies needed by someone in
relation to a particular task, occupation or role. Usually, one of the reasons for doing the
grid will be to help the person calculate both their present skill levels and their required
skill levels.
• The constructs you will use to design this grid are the ones that you have elicited today
about teacher competencies using the triadic method.
• Take the positive pole of each construct and write it on the right hand side of the grid
form.
• On the form, indicate the interviewee's construing of her (or a teacher she knows)
present level of each skill and the level of each skill the interviewee thinks she (or the
teacher she knows) requires.
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18. Professional Development Grid
Level of the competency/skill now = X - Level of the competency/skill required = Y
Scale: 1 to 10
(1 = very low level of a compentency/skill,10 = a very high level of a competency/skill)
S C A L E
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Competency/Skill
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
NB. Competencies/Skills can also be put in rank order of importance.
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19. The Professional Development Grid (2)
• In addition to the interviewee's own construing of her present and required skill levels, the
construing of her manager and/or the views of other relevant people, could be indicated on
separate grid forms using the same 'skills constructs' and possibly others supplied by them. The
interviewee could also be asked to put down her construing of how her manager etc. would rate
her on the various skills.
• If required, the skills can be RANKED in order of importance.
• The following questions could also be relevant:
(a) How is the interviewee going to "move" from their present level to the required level of
each skill/competency?
(b) When is the interviewee going to start to take the action necessary to move on each
skill/competency?
(c) What obstacles might the interviewee encounter in trying to move from their present level
of skill/competency to the desired level of skill/competency? How will they deal with such
obstacles? Who help or support might they need?
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20. 20
Further Reading
• Butt, T. & Burr, V. (2004) An Invitation to Personal Construct Psychology. 2nd Edition. London: Whurr
Publishers.
• Kington, A., Reed, N. & Sammons, P. (2013). Teachers’ constructs of effective classroom practice: variations
across career phases. Research Papers in Education. DO10.1080/02671522.2013.825309
• Denicolo, P. & Pope, M. (2001). Transformative Professional Practice: Personal Construct Approaches to
Education and Research. London: Whurr Publishers .
• Fransella, F. (1995) George Kelly. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Useful websites:
http://www.centrepcp.co.uk
This is the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology's website.
http://www.pcp-net.de/info/centre.html
This website has information on Personal Construct Psychology and Repertory Grid Technique.