There are many specific social skills that undergo development as children grow into adulthood. One skill that is particularly relevant to education is referred to as instrumental help-seeking (Nelson-LeGall, 1992). There are really two types of help-seeking. Students engage in dependency-oriented help-seeking when they rely on others to deliver more help than is needed. This form of help seeking is undesirable not only because it reduces achievement but also because it is likely to reduce the learner's perceived self-efficacy. It is associated with feelings of embarrassment, indebtedness, and dependency (DePaulo, Nadler, & Fisher, 1983).5
Mastery-oriented (instrumental) help-seeking, on the other hand, is an important problem-solving skill. This form focuses on obtaining the information or skills necessary to solve a particular problem. Engaging in mastery-oriented help-seeking while resisting dependency-oriented help-seeking requires a high degree of social sophistication on the part of the learner, who must:
- become aware of the need for help;
- be motivated to assume responsibility for overcoming the perceived obstacles;
- make a decision to pursue mastery-oriented as opposed to dependency-oriented help;
- identify potential helpers who possess the needed resources;
- implement and monitor strategies for obtaining help from the helper;
- evaluate the effectiveness of the help-seeking episode.
Learners do not necessarily have to ask for or obtain help in order to overcome difficulties; they can also work by themselves or learn vicariously by observing others overcome similar difficulties (Webb, 1992). However, the willingness and ability to seek useful help gives learners another option that may help them overcome particular obstacles.
Learners will vary widely in their ability to perform the skills in the preceding list. For example, young learners (or learners who have been helped too readily in the past) may be aware that there is a need for help but believe that it is someone else's responsibility to get it for them. In addition, young learners may find it difficult to make the distinction between mastery- and dependency-oriented help seeking. It is only through a slow, consistent process of learning over a long period of time - that is, through the process of development - that learners can develop effective help-seeking skills. By being aware of the developmental needs of learners, parents and teachers can help them develop these skills, which will play an important role in such diverse areas as the development of metacognitive skills (Chapter 7) and effective participation in cooperative learning (Chapters 5 and 15).
When students help one another, they often have a tendency to simply do the work for the other person (Shavelson, Webb, Stasz, & McArthur, 1988; Vedder, 1985). This kind of help may be counterproductive; it may actually prevent the recipient from learning useful skills or from correcting misunderstandings. Teachers should encourage students to prompt their peers and to model effective strategies, rather than simply giving them the answers (Swing & Peterson, 1982). Indeed, research consistently shows that students who give their peers explanations (rather than just telling them the answer) gain significantly in their own understanding and ability to apply the subject matter (e.g., Peterson & Swing, 1985; Webb et al, 1986). Common sense suggests that students can study together by asking one another questions, and research shows that it is productive to train students to ask one another high-quality questions (King, 1990).
All social skills emerge through development, and it is impossible to discuss all of these skills in this chapter. A few more social skills are discussed in Chapter 8, and those social skills that are related to classroom discipline are discussed in Chapter 13. Children's sense of humor and ways to develop humor skills in conjunction with academic skills are discussed in Hill (1993).
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