A Dialogue and Three Principles

Abstract

A new role has been proposed for school systems-that of social psychological specialist-addressed to problems of cooperation and communication among adults which lead to incoherence in educational programs and planning.' The role represents a shift in the way psychology has traditionally addressed itself to education, drawing on social psychology as its base, rather than on clinical psychology, the psychology of learning, or the psychology of cognition. Some consequences of this shift and one set of operations that might characterize the new role have been described in an earlier paper.2 In the present paper, an attempt is made to provide an understanding of some aspects of the role at a more concrete and specific level of discourse. In the following dialogue, the social psychological specialist explores a problem of communication with an acquaintance much as he might were they working in the same school system. The initial problem is specific, in this case a problem of language and of frame of reference, but the substantive content of the problem is not as characteristic of the role as is the manner in which the