Week 7, Ed Founds, Sec., 2012
 A case study
 Maslow:
• Bio and context
• Hierarchy of needs, motivation theory
• Strengths and limitations
 Rogers:
• Bio
• Theories, therapy and education
• Strengths and limitations
 Humanist education: classroom implications
 Humanist education: strengths and limitations
 A job interview question
 Integrating the person and the content
 The teacher’s self in the classroom
 Listen to Dayna’s story and think about the following
question in relation to Maslow’s theory of needs and
motivation:
 What would be the most helpful thing the school and
the biology teacher could do for Dayna?
“marginal man, the Outsider, the rejected
person who has no home” (Maslow, 1960, p. 13)
 Bio and context:
• Russian Jew descent
Abraham H. Maslow
• Tormenting relationship with parents
(1908-1970)
• Anti-Semitic environment
• Student of behaviourist psychology
• Influences of A. Adler, E. Fromm, R. Benedict, M. Wertheimer,
etc
• Personality and motivation of healthy and successful
individuals
• Humanistic psychology: ‘third-force’ psychology
• Enduring influence in psychology, education, and business
 Limitations of needs at each level
Deficit
needs
Being needs
 Self-actualisation at the summit of the hierarchy
 Food, water, sleep, breathing, excretion, etc
 Physical homeostasis
 Maslow’s childhood experience
 Physical protection from harm
 Financial security
 Adequate materials for survival
 Maslow’s experience
 Love, affection, intimacy ,and belongingness
 To receive as well as to give
 Maslow’s experience
 Respected and valued by others
 Self-esteem
 Accurate regards of self
 Higher than love needs
 Maslow’s experience
 Influences from mentors
 ‘What a man can be, he must be.’ (Maslow, 1943, p.10)
 Motivation of the psychologically healthy
 Rank order of relative saliency
 Deficiency (D) needs and being (B) needs
 Multiple motivations of behaviour
 Recognises:
• higher needs than physiology as behavioural motivators
• affective and emotive aspects of learning
 Limitations:
• Linear sequence and mechanical structure of the
hierarchy
• What do the homeless get out of being in a football
team?
• What’s self-esteem to the seriously ill?
 Brief bio
 Theories:
• Self-actualising tendency
“When I look at the
world I'm pessimistic,
but when I look at
people I am optimistic.”
• Alienating culture and society
Carl Rogers
(1902-1987)
 Therapy:
• Non-directive / client-centred
• Reflection and active listening
"The very essence of the creative is
its novelty, and hence we have no
standard by which to judge it."
 Education:
• Interpersonal relationship as core business
• Positive self-concept as main goal
Sources of quotes in
callouts: Rogers, 1961
“The good life is a process,
not a state of being. It is a
direction not a destination.”
 Understanding the affective and emotive needs of the
learner
 Relationship, not curriculum
 Non-directive role of teacher
 Listening, not talking
A Grammar
classroom, from
Sulpizio, 1495
 Recognises:
 Learners as unique individuals
 Learners’ affective needs
 Limitations:
 Polarisation of person and content
 Neglect of teachers’ whole being in the classroom
You are at an interview for a job at a
school with a large number of
students from lower socio-economic
backgrounds. The principal asks, ‘At
our school, some of our students live
in troubled and sometimes abusive
family environments, some others
are from refugee or new immigrant
families with financial difficulties.
Considering the problems these
students experience in their lives,
how will you engage them in their
studies of English / maths / science /
music / PE / ...?’
 How to be yourself in the classroom
 Becoming oneself through becoming another
 Knowing how you communicate
 Maslow, A. (1943) A theory of human motivation,
Psychological Review, 50.
 Rogers, C. (1961) On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's
View of Psychotherapy, Constable, London.