Juan Carlos Torres
GED 501
Professor Sapp
December 15, 2013
Humanistic Theory of Learning
Throughout my secondary and university education, my learning experiences took place in an Essentialist environment where the instruction and learning was teacher centered. Also, even though I had very caring and nurturing teachers, they demanded their students to comply with their authoritarian approach of governing the classroom and expected a strong work ethicfrom all their students. Their approach to education was reinforced at home by my parents who also taught me to work hard and respect the will of my teachers. As a result of my educational experiences and upbringing, I developed the same Essentialist educational philosophy that I practice in my classrooms today.
Now in my sixth year of teaching, I have realized that I need to reflect on my educational philosophy in search of new theories which can better serve the needs of all my students. Even though I believe I have exercised many humanistic values when dealing with my students’ needs, I have not fully implemented the humanistic theory of learning in my class. Therefore, I would like to know how can a humanistic theory of learning be used in my classroom to improve student learning?
Humanistic educationis based on the work of two humanistic psychologistsAbraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Maslow pays close attention to the interpersonal and the intrapersonal awareness necessary to strengthenstudent learning abilities and maximize their potential. He believed that the basis for the highest levels of student learning can be achieved only if the learners’ needs are fulfilled. These needs consist of safety,security, love, happiness, and self-esteem. As with other humanists, Carl Rogers has been called the Father of Humanistic Psychology. He devoted his effort towards applying the results of his psychology research to person-centered teaching. This teaching practice can only become a reality when teachers act as facilitators and demonstrate key traits such as empathy, care for students, and genuineness.
According to Huitt (2005),the central assumption of humanism is that teachers act with intentionality and values. The primary purpose of Humanistic education is to develop students into self-actualized learners in a cooperative, supportive environment. In humanism, learning is student centered and personalized, and the teacher’s role is to act as a facilitator in order to develop autonomous students.The humanist teacher, or facilitator,must serves as a disseminator of knowledge instead of the traditional didacticism. It doesn’t mean that the humanist teacher should not be concern in meeting the students’ academic needs, but the humanistic teacher must also be concerned with the students’ emotional well-being.
Much of a humanist teacher's effort is in developing students’ self-esteem. If students feel positive about themselves it will facilitate their learning. It is crucial that students feel a sense of high self-esteem and feel that they can set and achieve reasonable goals, high self-efficacy. This form of education is known as student-centered and consists of students taking responsibility for their education and owning their learning.
According to Maslow, people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfill the next one, and the cycle continues.He believed that individuals possess a set of motivation systems unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires.Maslow’s hierarchy, beginning with survival and safety needs, progressing through belonging and esteem needs, and ending with intellectual and aesthetic needs, reflects the “whole person” that is central to humanistic views of motivation. Therefore, it is essential that humanistic teachers create positive classroom environment and a caring student–teacher relationship in order todevelop student motivation.
Humanistic theory of learning has many instructional implications. They consist of student-centered teaching, social personal development, respect students’ feelings and aspirations, and de-emphasize rigorous, performance-oriented, test-dominated approaches.Humanistic teachers believe that both feelings and knowledge areimportant to the learning process. Unlike traditional educators, humanistic teachers do not separate the cognitive and emotional well-being of the students. In addition, humanistic teachers insist that schools need to provide students with nonthreatening environment so that they will feel secure to learn. Once studentsfeel secure, learning becomes easier and more meaningful. Before beginning to write this research paper, I reflected on the needs I desire to fulfill in order become the educator I wish to be. Therefore, I concentrated my research on humanistic approaches to discipline and cooperative learning, and humanistic dispositions. I wanted to seek other pedagogical strategies to innovate ways to improve my classroom instruction and at the same time find ways to better meet the needs of all my students.
Discipline
According to McDaniel (1984), the humanistic approach to discipline is most appropriate in secondary grades when students have reached a higher level of maturity. But a teacher cannot implement the humanistic approach to discipline unless the pedagogy and management skills are mastered. That is, a teacher must provide an effective instructional and classroom structural program. While mastering the pedagogical and management stages, the teacher must work in building community and communication in the classroom, by treating students with respect and expecting responsible and reasonable behavior from the students. Teachers who have mastered humanistic discipline know that the time spend on this process pays rich dividends, not only in better discipline but in more responsible and cooperative students(McDaniel 1984).
Teacher who practice humanistic discipline realize that students who are solving problems are learning to analyze their own needs by brainstorming solutions with other students to reach a shared consensus on solutions with classmates and teacher. In order successfully implement the humanistic discipline, the teacher must get the entire class todefine the problem, generate possible solutions, evaluate the solutions, decide which solution is best, determine how to implement the solution, and assess how well the solution solved the problem.
The language competence of humanistic teachers is important in establishing good discipline. It is important for teachers who want to improve student relations to unlearn their habitual language of rejection and acquire new language of acceptance. Improving one’s language addresses situations rather than personalities. For example, ”I messages” rather than “ You messages,” avoid commands while inviting cooperation, reflective feelings and does not label.
In humanistic discipline, teachers need to confront students in direct, nonthreatening and non-punitive way to encourage responsible ways to promote responsible, self-analysis and decision making. Teachers must ask “What did you do?” instead of “Why” because it focus on the past and submerges motives. This type of questioning encourages students to confront the reality of their present behavior and requires them to analyze their decisions. In addition, questions such as, “Did this help you or others?” provide the studentsto decide on an alternative behavior and solution to a problem. This solution can become the basis for a plan, a commitment, or even a contract that both the student and teacher may use to monitor future situations. The goal of humanistic educators is to replace punishment with positive, solution-oriented classroom practices that involve students and teachers in counseling and negotiation processes.
Cooperative Learning
The attraction of cooperative learning for many humanistic educators don’t liesolely in accelerating student achievement, but on the positive effects of variables such as race relations, attitudes toward mainstreamed classmates, self-esteem, and other nonacademic outcomes (Furrer, 2003). Humanistic views emphasizes that students’ understanding arises from peer interaction, which are important to the success of cooperative strategies. It is evident that students learn best from cooperative interactions because they participate in giving and receiving elaborated explanations. In addition, students become motivated to engage in elaborated, cognitively explanations and discussions if the learning of their groupmates is made important by rewards based on individual learning performances.
According to Slavin (1987), cooperative learning methods always use cooperative task structures in which students are required or encouraged to work with one another. In some cooperative learning methods,each group member is given a unique subtask within the group (task specialization), while in others all students work together to accomplish common product (group work), or to study and master a common set of material (group study). Cooperative learning not only combines cognitive and affective aspects of learning, but emphasizes participation and active engagement as well as academic achievement. Furthermore, cooperative learning supports students’ needs to set goals and work towards achieving them.
There are many positive reasons for implementing cooperative learning in the classroom. One, cooperative learning decrease dependence on teachers and reduces divisiveness and prejudice in the classroom. Second, helps to eliminate feelings of alienation, isolation, and social unease among students. Third, not only does it improves academic performance, but teaches personal and life skills. Most important, cooperative learning promotes positive attitudes towards school.
Dispositions
Urban classrooms are overcrowded with large numbers of socially and economically disadvantages students and are difficult to manage. These socially and economically disadvantage students live in a cycle of “vicious cycle of failure” (Matus, 1999). They lack academic and economic support at home and teachers have a responsibility to recognize students as individuals by respecting their differences and supporting them in their social, emotional and academic lives. Teaching in today’s schools increasingly calls for teachers to possess and apply humanistic disposition with an increasingly diverse populations of students, many of whom have experience high levels of stress and trauma and who may not have attached securely with an adult before (Sage 2012).Therefore it is imperative that educators exercise professional attitudes, values and beliefs to interact with students, families, colleagues and communities to create supporting and effective classroom environments.
Putting humanist thinking to work is not misguided. Ignoring its message is a far greater error. Humanistic education maintains that what students experience about themselves and their work is far too important for education to overlook. Instead, such human considerations must be included in every aspect of educational thinking and practice (Combs, 1981).Good teaching is not a matter of teaching method, but rather the person of the teacher. Teachers must be genuine, open, and honest. Bringing the best of oneself into the classroom is extremely important because students know who the teacher is and where he or she stands. In addition, this professional disposition creates a trustful environment where students will feel safe asking for specific support. Increase teacher effectiveness through positive relationships with diverse students is another important professional disposition vital to promoting positive student teacher relationships This disposition ask teachers to generate and construct ways to respond to students’ behaviors and feelings. These humanistic approaches are necessary to meet the essential survival needs of all students which are essential to address so that they can become motivated and interested in their education.
There are many demands of accountability to produce outstanding student achievement from school districts and state legislatures. So it is challenging to completely shift from my Essentialist educational philosophy to a Humanistic perspective. I do exercise some humanistic professional dispositions support and address the needs of all my students, but I cannot say I will ever be a Humanistic educator. As an Essentialist, I have found myself solving misbehaviors with as punishments. After conducting my research, I have concluded that it is worth investing in a humanistic discipline approach because placing blame on behavior and confronting students is not always the best solution. It leads to missed opportunities for dialogue to understand why students are misbehaving. I need to stop been afraid of losing control of my classroom and allow students to dialogue and find solutions to their misbehaviors through healthy dialogue with me and other students.
My instruction is primary teacher led where students listen to my lessons and expected to complete worksheets. There exist few opportunities for cooperative learning, but lack meaningful conversations between students and are graded based on completion of task. The rewards are mastery and not on positive behaviors from the groups. In order to motivate my students, I believe my cooperative learning activities should include positive feedback on their behaviors in order to promote an inclusive learning environment. Furthermore, I am obligated to find themes students are interested in to create activities where the students will become more engage in the cooperative learning. Motivation is not only on the types of class activities, but on making the learning content more interesting.
I believe I have the essential professional dispositions to support the low social and economically disadvantage students I serve, but need improvement in a few of them. For example, even though I am open and honest with my students, I can be threatening when dealing with discipline. I am aware how this attitude can be unappealing to the students. I need to control my emotions, but at the same time remain honest and open to my students. This blindness to control my emotions is a result to my pressures I have in meeting the demands to produce outstanding student achievement. My challenge is find ways to ways to respond to students’ behaviors and feelings. It is vital that I comply with my students’ essential survival needs in order for them to feel inclusive in my class and then continue to fulfill their other needs.
References
Combs, A.W. (1981). Humanistic education: Too tender for a tough world? Phi Delta Kappan. 62(6), 446-449.
Furrer, C., & Skinner, E. (2003). Sense of relatedness as a factor in children’s academic engagement and performance. Journal of Educational Psychology. 95, 148-162.
Huitt, W., & Cain, S. (2005). An overview of the conative domain. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. Retrieved [12/10/2013] from
McDaniel, T.R. (1984). Developing the Skills of Humanistic Discipline. Educational Leadership. 41(8), 71-74.
Matus, D.E. (1999). Humanism and Effective Urban Secondary Classroom Management. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas. 72(5), 305-307.
Sage, S.M., Smith, A.S., & Dixon, A.L (2012). Why Humanistic Teacher Education Still Matters.Action in Teacher Education. 34(3), 204-220.
Slavin, R.E. (1987). Cooperative Learning: Where Behavioral and Humanistic Approaches to Classroom Motivation Meet. The Elementary School Journal. 88(1), 29-37.
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