Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow popularised this view in psychology, which places a premium on individual agency and development. The primary premise is that people aren't mindless robots programmed to respond to their surroundings, but instead are capable of choosing their own actions. According to humanists, the focus of psychology should be on people's individual, subjective experiences of the world.
Humanistic psychologists have an internal point of view, rather than an external one, when studying human behaviour. Humanistic psychologists argue that a person's outward actions may be traced back to his internal state of mind and sense of identity.
Humanistic psychologists disagree with behaviourists and hold that people are more than the sum of their experiences. Humanistic psychologists, on the other hand, focus on the processes of development, instruction, and learning as they pertain to the individual human mind. The universality of emotions like love, loss, care, and pride in one's own worth are emphasised.
Humanistic psychologists are interested in how individuals' identities and the meanings they give to their experiences shape their perspectives and behaviours. Humanistic psychologists do not place a high priority on one's innate motivations, one's reactions to the world around them, or one's personal history. Instead, they put emphasis on the role that free will, emotional reactions, and environmental factors have in influencing human behaviour.
Humanistic theory holds that everyone has the ability to contribute to society and be a decent and liked person so long as their needs are met. Humanistic theory was pioneered by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, with Maslow being the mind behind the "pyramid of needs."
Maslow theorised that people may reach their maximum potential and become totally self-actualized if their needs were met in the right sequence. After a person's physiological requirements, including those for food, housing, and warmth, are satisfied, they may move on to the psychological and social needs of wanting to feel comfortable, loved and accepted.
Instead of researching people with mental illness, as was the norm at the time, Maslow looked at the lives of successful, creative people to inform his hypothesis. He came to the conclusion that successful people have a few things in common, such as an ability to accept themselves, an outgoing personality, and healthy regard for others.
In addition to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Carl Rogers believed that a person needed to be in an environment that provided them with genuineness, acceptance, and empathy in order to develop fully, and that without such a nourishing environment healthy personalities and relationships would not be able to flourish.
Humanistic thought centres on the maturation of the person. As Western countries have usually drifted somewhat to the political right and there is greater focus on complying to and contributing to a slightly more conservative society, its once-widespread popularity has faded somewhat. Even while humanistic ideology places a premium on the individual, it does so on the idea that flourishing people are in the greatest position to improve society.
According to humanistic theory, one of the most important factors in being happy is being able to explore and follow one's own deepest interests and aspirations, or allowing oneself the permission to do so.
Abraham Maslow's Human Needs Theory
Many people look to Abraham Maslow as the person who launched the field of humanistic psychology. The primary premise of Maslow's theory is that observational experience is the best tool for understanding how people learn and behave. He valued meaningfulness and subjectivity over objectivity and emphasised human attributes like free will, originality, ethics, and self-awareness. Maslow considers the flourishing of each person to be of utmost importance.
Since both behaviourism and Freud's theories were overly reductionist, Maslow rejected both. He believed that Freud had an overly pessimistic perspective on humanity and instead admired virtue, dignity, and logic. A further distinction is that although Freud focused on the mentally sick, Maslow was more concerned with normal people's psychological well-being.
The "third force psychology" term was used by Maslow and his followers to distinguish their approach from the two preceding schools of thought, psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Existentialism and humanism form the basis of the third force.
His famous "hierarchy of needs" theory has become a cornerstone of the study of human motivation. Physiological and survival demands, such hunger and thirst, are the most fundamental. Belonging and love, self-respect, and reaching one's full potential are other stages.
According to Maslow, curiosity is a basic human motivation. Learning's end objective is self-actualization, and that's exactly what teachers should be aiming for. A healthy mind benefits from learning. Learning, according to Maslow, should also help people find their "calling" in life, "realise the preciousness of life," "achieve peak experiences," "feel accomplished," "satisfy psychological needs," "be aware of the beauty and wonder in life," "develop impulse control," "learn to exercise choice," and "confront the critical existential problems of life."
In his theory of learning, Maslow distinguished between firsthand experience and secondhand observation. For him, firsthand experience always trumped theoretical or scientific understanding.
integrating with what is being experienced in such a way that one loses track of time and one's own self-consciousness for a while is what is meant by "being in the present."
being uninhibited, letting go of selfishness, fear, and defensiveness; being open and receptive like a kid; momentarily suspending judgement of the experience's value or unimportance;
Passively allowing the experience to develop without trying to control or manipulate it in any way, without judging, validating, or evaluating it in any way; letting go of preconceived beliefs; disengaging from logical, analytical, and rational processes; trusting experience.
Maslow's Needs Hierarchy
Physical Requirements
They include the need for a steady supply of oxygen, food, water, and a manageable internal temperature. The fact that a person would prioritise satisfying their physiological requirements in the event of total deprivation makes them the most fundamental of all human wants. They're crucial to our very existence. According to Maslow's theory, if you want to fully achieve higher-level wants like social requirements and esteem, you need to first satisfy the more fundamental needs like physiology and security.
When we reach a point where our basic physiological requirements are met and no longer dictate our actions, we move on to our desire for security. One's thoughts naturally shift to protecting oneself against danger, whether that be actual or psychological.
Securing a residence in a secure neighbourhood
Healthcare coverage
Having a secure job is a priority.
Funds Set Aside
The requirement for safety is one among them. Only in extreme circumstances, when social order has broken down, do we pay much attention to them (war time, terrorist acts, domestic violence, natural disasters). According to Maslow's hierarchy, a person's ability to focus on more advanced needs is diminished when they fear for their safety.
After a person's basic requirements, such food and shelter, have been met, they go on to the next level of demands, which is the social needs. Needs that arise through interactions with other individuals are called "social."
I'm in need of some pals.
a desire to feel a sense of community
The requirement for both giving and receiving love
After our basic survival requirements are addressed, our next greatest need is to feel liked and accepted by others around us. According to Maslow, a key motivation for human behaviour is the need to end feelings of isolation and disconnection. Affection, acceptance, and a feeling of belonging are all part of this (family, friends, social groups).
Assuming the other three groups of requirements have been satisfied, it is then possible for esteem needs to take centre stage. There is a need for both internal pride and external approval in these areas. Both internal and environmental factors might contribute to a person's need for esteem. Some instances of satisfying a desire for internal esteem include feeling respected and successful. Acceptance from peers and professional peers are instances of external esteem demands. For example, consider the following esteem requirements:
Self-respect\sAchievement
Attention\sRecognition\sReputation
People require both internal and external respect, both of which must be solid and high.
When these requirements are met, a person can flourish emotionally and realise their true potential. Those feelings of inferiority, weakness, helplessness, and worthlessness are triggered when these demands go unmet.
Wants for self-actualization become active only when all the other needs have been met. The self-actualization or fulfilment needs are the last type of need that people have. Meaningful development and reaching one's full potential fall under this category. At this stage, a person's personality has developed normally and they are able to operate independently.
For Maslow, self-actualization is about fulfilling one's potential and becoming or doing what one was "born to accomplish." "A poet must write, an artist must paint, and a musician must play," the proverb goes.
These requirements manifest as agitation (person feels edgy, tense, lacking something, restless.)
Few people, in Maslow's opinion, ever achieve full self-actualization. Despite the fact that we all want to make progress toward realising our full potential, we may find that other requirements emerge and prevent us from doing so.
Even Maslow conceded that there is more complexity between needs and behaviour than can be captured by his 5-level need hierarchy. Although there may be major outliers, the sequence of requirements makes sense for most of us (e.g., some people need to satisfy their needs for self-esteem & respect before they can enter a love relationship).
In our pursuit of one need's satisfaction, we could put others at risk. It's possible, for instance, for an aspiring actor to put off eating because the money they bring in is so little that they can't afford to keep up with their basic necessities while they strive to build a name for themselves in the industry.
Maslow's research focused on happy, mentally balanced people. These were fully realised human beings. He conducted in-depth interviews with them to learn how they managed to fulfil every demand in the aforementioned hierarchy. In his quest to learn more about these individuals, he engaged in what he termed a "holistic analysis," in which he looked for overarching insights.
Most people in this category are content with who they are. They are honest about their shortcomings and work hard to improve themselves.
They don't dwell unduly on past failures but rather look ahead to future successes.
They have a healthy dose of self-respect and confidence. A healthy dose of self-love, not narcissism.
They are less constrained than most people by social conventions. It's okay with them if their ambitions run counter to the general consensus. These individuals frequently experience states of peak consciousness in which they feel a sense of oneness with the cosmos, freedom from worry, and transcendence of space and time (birth of a child, marriage, deciding to go to school).
In the field of personality psychology, Carl Rogers played a pivotal role in the development of the humanistic perspective. Life span: 1902–1985. Over the course of his lifetime, he played a crucial role in the development of the concept of the self as the starting point for the investigation of human potential. Every person, he said, had a burning curiosity and ambition to learn more and better themselves.
In the mid-1980s, the human potential movement, which included the theories of both Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, gained widespread recognition. In studying the effects on one's personality and in the sphere of education, among others, psychologists have utilised the framework established by classifying their work. The only educated person is the one who has learnt how to learn and adapt," is a phrase by him that encapsulates his overarching philosophy. This quote expressed his theoretical belief that individuals need the freedom to chart their own course of learning in order to get to the next stage of their own personal growth. People can be re-tuned to learn to free themselves from a setting in which their potential is limited by societal expectations, as proposed by Rogers (1951).
Rogers thought that people's potential was crippled when they let their perception of their surroundings to limit their possibilities. But if one can get past their mistaken impressions of the world and recognise the opportunities for development, they may take the necessary initiatives to bring about such changes. Rogers said that a person has reached a point of development when they recognise their own capacity for change and growth.
The need for a favourable environment for growth was also underlined by Rogers. Rogers thought that social elements contribute to beneficial development because of his knowledge of how conducive the environment is to growing. Pfaffenberger (2007) states that Rogers (1982) "emphatically declared that in his perspective, all individuals will demonstrate compassion and collaboration if the right environmental supports are made available to them." Therefore, according to Rogers, it is vital to one's growth to study in a conducive atmosphere.
Rogers (1982), a much later author, also stressed the importance of connections that foster personal development by increasing self-awareness and fostering a sense of purpose. Rogers theorised that development occurs when interpersonal connections let one see oneself in new contexts. A youngster who grows up in a loving home where he or she is accepted is more able to perceive external factors (like schoolwork or acquiring new skills) as sources of intrinsic motivation on the path to success. However, it is important to note that Rogers's assumption may be incorrect since it has been suggested that situational circumstances can sometimes operate to the individual's harm. But Abraham Maslow (1968) recognised that adversity may also foster development. Many studies have looked at the ways in which growth-promoting relationships and environmental factors might cause varying degrees of emotional response. In one of the most conclusive investigations, L. King (2001) (quoted by Pfaffenberger. A, 2007, p 510). Using Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test (SCT) from 1976, King looked at how traumatic and confining experiences affected participants' personalities. The findings of the study indicate that growth depends on the nature of the interplay between innate capacities and environmental factors (p, 511). This research also lends credence to the existential therapy theory put forth by Rollo May (1958), according to which patients are guided toward a more positive relationship with their limitations and encouraged to exercise their own agency in order to pick and choose among their own personal values, meanings, and levels of commitment.
There are two main theoretical frameworks that may be used to capture the essence of Roger's humanistic approach. Both the self-determination theory and the person-centred theory focus on what it is like to be a human being.
Almost half a century after Carl Rogers's (1959) seminal publication of "A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relationships," the client-centred framework and the person-centred movement have been used outside the realms of counselling and psychotherapy. Person-centred theorists base their work on the premise that people have a natural inclination toward flourishing.
Rogers (1959), cited in Patterson and Joseph (2007), states that "the person-centred approach gives a dynamic, process-focused explanation of personality development and functioning." Therefore, the actualizing propensity, a form of intrinsic motivation, is present in every individual from birth.
As described by Rogers (1959), an organism's actualizing tendency is "the natural inclination of the organism to develop all of its faculties in ways which help to preserve or increase the organism's progress towards autonomy and away from heteronomy, or control by external factors." (p 196) (From Patterson & Joseph, 2007, page 120)
Someone within each of us has the ability to unlock their full potential. A major aspect of Roger's actualizing tendency is the actions people take to actualize their potential. For Rogers, it all comes down to the influence of Mother Nature. Rogers said that when people are in a supportive social and environmental setting, their self-concepts develop organically in line with their values (OVP). One's Own Valued Perspective (OVP) is the process of rating events according to how well they satisfy one's own unique set of needs. Rogers put it up well when he said, "the human child is shown to have an intrinsic motivational system and a regulatory mechanism (the valuing process) which by its "feedback" maintains the organism on the beam of meeting his motivational demands." (Rogers, 1959, p 222).
Each person has a desire to satisfy some of their "intrinsic wants" (needs that can't be satisfied by anything else or that aren't influenced by past experience or education) from an early age. Children's innate understanding of the value of exploration as they learn and play is a prime illustration. Children learn valuable lessons about themselves, their world, their peers, and the world at large as they engage in this process. Children develop a sense of their OVP when they learn to assess events in light of their innate needs and make connections between those evaluations and their overall self-concept structure.
In Roger's theoretical framework, the idea of OVP is fundamental to the whole argument. According to Rogers (1957), a fully functional individual exemplifies the ideal of independent psychological functioning that happens when self-actualization is in harmony with the organism. This idea is similar to that of Maslow (1970) in that it assumes that people have to meet their most basic wants before moving on to other things. Rogers suggested in his later writings (1963 and 1964) that more fully functioning people's attitudes and behaviours are congruent with certain internally created value directions. In the direction of greater openness to experience, the person comes to value openness to all of his or her inner and outer experience, and the direction toward increasingly socialised goals, where sensitivity to others and acceptance of others are positively valued, and where deep relationships are positively valued ( Rogers, 1964, p 166).
Rogers admitted that a person's potential is not always optimal due to their social and environmental variables. There is a sense of discord when things aren't quite right. Tension and internal disarray characterise the current situation. Rogers argues that when people are exposed to an unfavourable social situation, their drive to actualize is impeded (1959). The circumstances of value undermine the propensity toward actualization. The developing infant's demand for favourable attention from significant persons in his or her social surroundings is thought to provide the groundwork for what psychologists call "conditions of worth," or the values that an individual introjects from his or her social interactions. A baby who is shown conditional love and approval will grow up learning to assess the value of things based on whether or not they conform to the standards set by others. By acting as an internalised social order, the conditions of worth come to replace organismic value as the guiding basis of an individual's attitudes and behaviours as they mature.
Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R. M. (1985, 1991, 2000) put out this modern organismic theory of motivation and personality functioning, which places primary emphasis on the individual's own internal resources for shaping their identity and controlling their own behaviour. Like the person-centred theory, self-determination theory sees each person as a dynamic, developing organism who is always adapting to and making the most of his or her surroundings. The following points serve as a synopsis of the self-determination theory:
Every person has the ability to take charge of their lives and take charge of their circumstances.
As self-organizing systems, humans have a natural propensity towards improvement and wholeness.
Individuals need "nutrients" from their social surroundings in order to develop their full potential and fulfil their own unique character.
Originally published on pages 23 and 24 of Deci and Vansteenkiste's 2004 (quoted by Patterson and Joseph, 2007, p 124)
One of the basic ideas behind self-determination theory is the idea that different types of behaviour may be motivated in different ways. Acting in line with one's own values (OVP) is the same as being intrinsically motivated or regulated. Also, extrinsic regulations might be explained by one of three (3) types of extrinsic incentives.
Locus of evaluation is a person-centred construct that seeks to identify where an individual feels motivation originates from (Rogers, 1959),
Essential and Adequate Requirements - the requirements of feeling capable, connected, and in control of one's own life, all of which are fundamental to healthy development on all levels (mental, social, and personal). The need for competence describes the desire to exert control over one's circumstances and to be effective in one's environment; the need for autonomy describes the effort to act as the sole arbiter of one's own attitudes and actions; and the need for relatedness describes the desire to be in relationship with others, to care for others, and to be cared for by others. According to the tenets of self-determination theory, these three requirements must be satisfied continuously over the course of a person's life if they are to have a feeling of wholeness and fulfilment. This theory lends credence to the idea that certain social-environmental situations foster self-regulation based on organismic valuing, resulting in a trajectory toward healthy functioning and psychological well-being.
One's sense of one's own worth is affected by the opinions and actions of others who are deemed important to them; this concept is known as "contingent self-esteem" or "conditional self-regard" (Deci & Ryan, 1995; Ryan & Brown, 2003). One may compare this to the conditional self-regard perspective.
Self-determination theory and person-centered theory have many commonalities. Both theories propose that a person can achieve mental health by listening to their gut. Knowing that various people have diverse combinations of traits that either help or hurt their ability to learn is crucial to the study of education. To achieve this optimal level of learning, it is important to understand what elements influence the learning process, create an appropriate learning environment, consider each student's unique OVP and social context, and organise the curriculum accordingly. Humanism argued that people should be seen as a dynamic and ever-changing state called "being," in which each person is always seeking to realise his or her own potential.
Humanistic theory in education provides teachers with valuable conceptual knowledge of students as learners. Educators can benefit from Maslow and Rogers because they get a deeper understanding of the factors that influence students' learning styles, as well as the range and depth of their information retention and application. Humanistic Self-Instruction, written by R. Craig Hogan in 1978, argued that teachers should treat students as distinct individuals with specific requirements. The problem with viewing students as "empty jars or blank slates" is that it might lead teachers to think of their students as passive recipients to be filled with whatever they choose. This has potentially devastating consequences since teachers can coerce students into submission without any responsibility to respect their right to a personalised, autonomous educational experience.
Chris Argyris states that "we see them (learners) and they see themselves as autonomous, responsible individuals committed to the direction the intervention is taking, making free choices based on sufficient valid information about the means and ends" (Intervention Theory and Method: A Behavioural Science View, 1970, pp. 15-16).
Most teachers and educational institutions make the mistake of assuming that students need to be told how to study. This theory is based on the idea that there is a correlation between how a course is structured, the methods of instruction used, and the final grade a student receives. Most nations' educational systems are somewhat strict, having been constructed according to the "tried and tested" model of the currently established instructional framework.
In situations like this, it's possible to have a mix of students who are all equally interested, all equally capable of self-management, all equally independent-minded, all equally diligent, all equally brilliant, and all equally mediocre at learning. All students would be taught using the same methods, and they would be given the same material at the same pace. Students' initiative to take charge of their education at every level of responsibility is stifled in a traditional classroom setting, which is restrictive to students' autonomy, independence, and freedom. Minimizing the need for independent study (Hogan, 1978, pp 262-263)
Organizational learning and social influence to promote humanistic values
Conceptually, group contingencies may be traced back to behavioural learning theory (Bandura, 1969). Members of the group use social penalties against one another to urge members to do what is necessary to ensure the success of the group, according to the theory of group contingencies (Slavin 1987). It is also possible to employ group contingencies, provided that the reward or penalty is not directly tied to the activities of any one member of the group. Every member of the group takes on personal responsibility and liability for the group's success. Each person's innate humanist values are brought to the fore in this process.
The term "cooperative learning" is used to describe a variety of teaching strategies that promote or require students to work together on academic projects. Having students sit in groups to collaborate on assignments is one example of a cooperative learning strategy. Group contingencies, in which rewards are provided but are not required to achieve the desired outcome, are one example (Slavin, 1987, p 31).
Important to the success of any cooperative learning environment is the opportunity for students to work together and build relationships with one another. A person's ability to learn and complete tasks depends on the calibre of their interactions with their peers. Two (2) studies (Hulten & DeVries, 1976; Slavin, 1980) demonstrated that cooperative learning boosted student accomplishment even when students were not allowed to engage with one another during class, demonstrating the power of recognising student teams based on the sum of their individual learning. Another research revealed similar results in Germany (Huber, Bogatzki, & Winter, 1982): giving students the option to study in groups did not improve their performance, but rewarding them collectively for individual progress did. According to (Slavin, 1987, p. 33),
Therefore, the aforementioned studies provide strong evidence for the claim that the effectiveness of these approaches in raising students' accomplishments requires cooperative reward systems or group contingencies based on the individual learning of group members. The importance of peer contact in the effectiveness of cooperative tactics is clearly established. Based on the research of [Webb (1985)] and [Peterson and Janicki (1979)]
When students are incented to contribute to their group's success by receiving awards based on the individual achievement of their peers, they are more likely to provide detailed, thought-provoking explanations and conversations (Slavin, 1983).
Slavin's research shows that cooperative learning can have good benefits on students' non-academic outcomes including racial relations, attitudes, and self-esteem (1983). The humanistic view of education is not narrowly focused on the individual, but rather places an emphasis on the ways in which pupils are able to form a positive self-concept and work toward personal development. If comparable results emerge, then cooperative learning plays a crucial part in this.
The most common context in which the humanities are put to use is in the education of adults. The old saying that "more is caught than taught" holds true for most mature people. This aphorism describes the kind of casual and unintentional learning that occurs on a daily basis and in the majority of settings, according to a study presented by Jackson, and Sanetta. George, Cooks, Alyce; Hackney, Darwyn; Stevens, Claude; and Zumwait, Dave, (2002). Relationships between people are the focus of education in these settings. It is well-established that adults and children experience learning in quite distinct psychological contexts. The humanistic perspective helps us better comprehend the psychological learning environment of adults because of their agency in shaping their own growth and development, particularly in the realm of education. The term "psychological learning environment" refers to an atmosphere where students and instructors may communicate openly and honestly. To wit: (Jackson, et al.) This implies that educators have the responsibility of making their students feel safe and at ease by addressing their concerns.
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