The Social functioning and Personal functioning courses are contemporary adult educational programs designed to improve the social position and life quality of adults dealing with a higher-than-average level of exposure to adversities. With particular consideration for people in competitive or high-stress fields, such as combat athletes, entrepreneurs, first responders, mediators, etc. The quintessence of the programs is building self-awareness about the incoming influences, one’s own response to them and its impact on the outcome of the situation. The courses aid self-transformation efforts by providing the tools to make deliberate changes in one’s condition and position.
Theoretical background
The courses are anchored by three influential theoretical frameworks. One of which is William James’s work (1902) on self-governance and ethics, often resurfacing in contemporary studies in relation to educational reforms. To James, changing oneself is a matter of reorienting one’s own experience and habits of thoughts and actions. As opposed to judging them based on external factors (Stagoll, 2023), understood as self-blame and pleasing others.
The other core pillar of the programs is the Power Treat Meaning Framework (PTMF; Johnstone et al., 2018) released as a response to the growing ‘drug culture’ – the attempted alleviation of distress with psychotropic medication. The paper represents a major paradigm shift in addressing dissatisfaction in life and offers evidence-based insight on why and how one’s social and personal functioning is impacted by major power operators, cultural norms, and family structures (Boyle, 2022).
The social exchange theory is the third underpinning of the programs (Lawler & Thye, 2006; Cook & Emerson, 1978). The constantly evolving model emphasises that all human encounters involve the exchange of power, emotions, or other forms of human resources between the parties involved, with either one or both experiencing gain or loss. The program modules strongly promote building conscious awareness of these dynamics, as social life, including professional and personal networks, is defined as a flow of interpersonal interactions in which power and influence exercised (Cook et al., 2013) and define life outcomes.
Program structure
Both programs, Social functioning and Personal functioning, aim to assist adult learners to identify underlying emotional and power exchanges, including subtle or unintentional exploitation attempts that occur during everyday life and can lead to marginalization and fatigue. The program modules are heavily grounded in real life contexts, and the scenario-based lessons aim to replicate the learning experience of the natural ancestral social environment that offered play and interaction-based learning (Damasio, 1994). These evolutionary-relevant educational setups are regarded as more effective than formal educational structures (Gruskin & Geher, 2018), particularly in case of multifaceted, complex topics like navigating society.
The courses adopt a modular approach to dissect the complexity of building social fitness into smaller practices. Using a combination of phyco-educational materials (illustrations and text), explicit training materials (graphical social interaction-decoding practices) and implicit training materials (interactive graphic novel with multiple story lines). These formats encourage the learner to put forth effort rather than passively receive information (Gonzales, 2015) that is suggested to be more suitable for mature students as it allows for taking on more responsibility and control over their learning (Sejpal, 2013). Moreover, as the ability of self-reflection and the capacity to recognize hidden assumptions emerge in and beyond early adulthood (King & Kitchener, 2004), the curses are expected to be best suited for adult professionals.
The program modules are lerner-centred, require no note-taking, and build on technological innovation to support the natural learning process with highly engaging course material. The modules gradually increase the amount of effort required, in line with the learner’s growing competence, to maintain the lessons as both challenging and highly rewarding at the same time. These are core factors of the flow-based learning experience (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989) that ensures strong learning outcome. The digital format offers convenience, anonymity, and multimedia delivery (Lal and Adair, 2014). Additionally, the routine is self-paced, the lesson feedback is consistent, and the independent learning format eliminates any potential judgement and encourages free experimentation with the course materials (Ramdoss et al., 2011).
Psycho-educational modules (Module 1, 2)
The first modules are the psycho-educational modules serve as a foundation for the training and introduce the core power operators within society and their role in troubling experiences. Additionally, they introduce the concept of the human boundary system, which explains how power operates in direct interactions. The lessons are concise, supported by relevant life examples, and accompanied by quizzes and flip cards to aid in memorizing. Graphic artworks are utilized to explain the ideas, as many studies have validated the significance of visual narratives in learning (Jain & Billaiya, 2017).
Training modules (Module 3, 4, 5, 6)
The core objective of the training modules that follows is to translate the newly gained knowledge on social and interpersonal dynamics into everyday life competence. Graphic novel style used as main artform as it has been reported to aid the understanding of more complex and high-level concepts of human interactions (El Setouhy et al., 2003). The scenarios depicted are a mixture of single-response dialogues and multi-person situations, helping to develop one’s ability to recognize non-verbal cues. Additionally, they help to reflect on the potential responses and build up the skills to drive the outcome of a situation towards the desired direction. The example scenarios are chosen from workplace, leisure, business, romance, and training situations. Using before-after comparison, situational hot spots, and boundary visualisation, the combination of implicit and explicit learning forms is expected to provide a synergistic effect on learning (Sun et al., 2007).
Play-based module (Module 7)
The final module is a play-based module that offers an opportunity for playful learning to assist with engraving the newly developed competences. The digital interactive format allows for multiple storylines to experiment with (Tobita, 2015), and is often used in online independent learning (Khotimah & Hidayat 2022) due to its highly engaging nature.
Summary
The main learning objective of the competence programs is to equip professional adults in high exposure fields with the critical ability to navigate social dynamics. The teaching of which falls beyond the reach of formal education yet strongly correlates with successful life outcomes (Algan et al., 2014), life quality, and life expectancy. The courses ensure quality learning experiences by using highly tailored content, artistic visual material, and user-centric design methods. Through the learning process of understanding, recognising, reshaping, and engraving, course graduates achieve the self-transformation required for better functioning and leave with an instant impact on their social status and personal circumstances.
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