Behavioral characteristics:

     At the beginning of the field placement experience, intellectual learners tend to assume a great deal of initiative in learning. The students feel secure because they have read widely, analyzed their situation, and developed a frame of reference within which they relate to social work professionals and clients. The students are stimulated by the theoretical content of academic courses and are successful in this area. Their early case recordings reflect interest in people, freedom to speculate about the meaning of behavior, and a capacity to identify both tangible problems and problems that deal with feelings.

     As the field experience progresses, these students, demonstrate a special skill in the diagnostic area. They are organized, logical, concise, and able to conceptualize. However, difficulties may arise when they must do more than provide tangible services. Since theoretical learning is so effortless for them, these students become frustrated with the need to think through the interactions involved in the relationship process. Their levels of self-expectation are high, and they become easily discouraged by their lack of success in "doing."

      In their early contacts with the client: they are able to identify obstacles. It is difficult, however, to move these students from problem focus to client focus. They are overly prepared for interviews and are frustrated when flexibility is required. As a result views and are frustrated when flexibility is required. As a result they sometimes fail to grasp the importance of working at the pace of the client. The students' need to effect change quickly may overwhelm the client and result in termination or lack of any significant response.

     Intellectual learners experience problems with field learning and place many demands on field instructors. Many of their problems stem from their strong desire to succeed and their fear of being forced to act before they have sufficient knowledge based on course content. Consequently, when they are forced to focus on the emotional content of the helping relationship, their security is threatened. The students react to this insecurity by seeking a magic formula that provides clear and explicit instructions on how to help clients beyond tangible needs. They are threatened by criticism and less free to expose themselves to risk. They protect themselves by attempting to control conference periods. They may focus on details about which they are knowledgeable or attempt to engage in abstract reasoning.

      Making changes in their manner of relating to clients is difficult for these learners; frequently, they can adapt superficially without really changing. Self-awareness, consequently, is much more painful for these students. They struggle hard and long to hold onto old patterns of learning and performing, frequently fearing that they will lose status in the intellectual area and will regress rather than develop.

      Teaching approach. Intellectual learners are not as easily identified as are the other two types of learners. Intellectual learners tend to protect themselves with their ability to achieve and produce on an intellectual level. Learning may proceed at an intellectual level but break down when put to practical use. Although intellectual grasp is a first step from the standpoint of the aims of professional education, the student has not changed until he or she can do differently.6 These students take the first step in their education smoothly and successfully; field instructors must help them take the next step by helping them experience some success in practice beyond the giving of tangible services or implementing agency procedures.

     Intellectual learners need time to examine how theory applies to a particular situation before being able to integrate one with the other. Caution should be taken not to force them into the feeling areas before they are ready. As this process continues, field instructors need to constantly stimulate discussions of feeling areas on the part of clients and students. Frequently, the students are cognizant of meaningful responses from clients but require help with their own responses. Additional efforts should focus on helping intellectual learners perceive various elements of a situation so as to stimulate their curiosity and imagination.

      Selecting a variety of case material helps intellectual learners redirect their tendency to categorize people. Learning needs, in general, are most effectively met by increased emphasis on case assignments and, subsequently, more contact with clients. This helps students individualize clients and see their tendency to impose their own values on clients; it helps them to question causative factors for behavior early in the field experience. The variety and increased number of contacts also helps reorient students from focusing on the client's problems to focusing on the client with the problem.

      Discussion of the social worker's role helps students recognize their own lack of emotional involvement and begin thinking about why their responses are not effective. This, in turn, leads them to look for alternative approaches and responses. It must be remembered, however, that intellectual learners are less introspective; consequently, their ability to understand their interactions with the client is internalized at a slower rate. Repetitious discussions may stimulate awareness of their interactions with clients, disciplined use of self in the interview, and the importance of their own feelings.

      The students' freedom to admit their inadequacies is directly related to how comfortable they feel within their relationship with the field instructor. Students look to the field instructor as a model of the social work professional and often feel they must test the relationship before committing themselves to it. Instructors must be alert to their own feelings because of the provocative nature of intellectual learners' responses to supervision and the danger of perpetuating their inadequacies. Field instructors must be intellectually stimulating in order to help students recognize and work advantageously within their learning patterns, while stressing the strengths of the experiential and intuitive learning modes.

      It takes time for these students to test, trust, and become comfortable with their feelings. Instructors may tend to react defensively to this type of learner, who may be perceived as a "know-it-all." It takes patience, effort, and time for field instructors to evaluate their own feelings toward these students and to arrive at teaching goals with the students.