Theory & Approaches in Art Education

1. ADE605 Theory & Approaches in Art
Education
HUMANISTIC
Syamsul Nor Azlan Mohamad
Faculty Of Education
Universiti Teknologi MARA

2. Humanistic Theory
 The focus of the humanistic perspective is on the self.
 Emphasizing personal responsibility and innate tendencies
toward personal growth
 Issues dealing with self-esteem, self-fulfillment, and needs
are paramount.
 Two major theorists associated with this view are Carl
Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

3.  Abraham Maslow: the study of self-actualized people
 Maslow feels that individuals have certain needs that must be
met in an hierarchical fashion, from the lowest to highest. These
include basic needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs,
achievement needs (self-esteem), and ultimately self-
actualization

4. The needs must be achieved in order. For
instance, one would be unable to fulfill
their safety needs if their physiological
needs have not been met.
Maslow’s theory of motivation suggests
that human operate on a hierarchy of
needs which influence behaviour.

5. Basic --- safety – belonginess & love --- esteem – achievement --- self-actualization

7.  Needs hierarcy is only part of Maslow’s theory of
personality.
 Maslow has devoted much attention to the study of
people who, in his terms, are psychologically healthy.
These are individuals who have attained high levels of
self-actualization – a state in which they have reached
their fullest true potential.

8.  What are self-acutalized people like?
 accept themselve for what they are
 recognize their shortcomings and
strengths
 less likely to conform than most of us
 well aware of the rules imposed by
society, but feel greater freedom to
ignore them than most persons

9.  retain their childhood wonder and
amazement with the world
 for them, life continues to be an exciting
adventure rather than a boring routine
 sometimes have peak experiences –
instances in which they have powerful
feelings of unity with the universe and
feel tremendous waves of power and
wonder

10.  Maslow studied healthy, creative, productive
people’s lives rather than those plagued by
mental illness
 Examples of self-acutalized people :
 Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor
Roosevelt, George Washington Carver

11.  Maslow noticed that all high-achieving
people share characteristics such as
openness, self-acceptance, and love for
others.

12.  Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987) agreed with
what Maslow believed, but added that for
a person to “grow”, they need an
environment that provides them with:
i. Genuinness (openness and self-disclosure)
ii. Acceptance (being seen with unconditional
positive regard)
iii. Empathy (being listened to and
understood)

13.  Self and ideal self
Gaps between our self-concept and our experience: A
cause of maladjustment in Rogers ’s Theory
According to Rogers, the larger the gap between an
individual’s self-concept and reality, the poorer this
person’s psychological adjustment

15.  The aspect of your being that is founded in the
actualizing tendency, follows organismic
valuing, needs and receives positive regard and
self-regard, Rogers calls it real self. It is the
“you” that, of all goes well, you will become.

16.  But in our society, we are forced to live with
conditions of worth that are out of step with
organismic valuing, and receive only conditional
positive regard and self-regard, we develop instead
an ideal self. By ideal, Rogers is suggesting
something not real, something that is always out of
our reach, the standard that we can’t meet.

17.  This gap between the real self and ideal self, the “I
am” and the “I should” is called incongruity.
 The more incongruity, the more suffering. In fact,
incongruity is essentially what Rogers means by
neurosis.

18. Defenses
 When there is incongruity between your image of
yourself and your immediate experience of yourself (real
self and ideal self), you are in a threatening situation
 Feel anxiety, and avoid the situation by using defenses.

20.  Conditions for healthy growth
 Fully-functioning person possesses
the following qualities:
1. Openeness to experience
 opposite of defensiveness
 accurate perception of one’s
experiences in the world, including
one’s feelings

21. 2. Existential living
 This is living in the here-and-now; getting in touch with
reality
 Should not live in the past or future – past is gone and
future isn’t anything at all
 Should recognize the past and future for what they are:
memories and dreams, which we are experiencing here
in the present

22. 3. Organismic trusting
 We should allow ourselves to be
guided by the organismic valuing
process
 Trust your real self
 Organismic trusting assumes you are
in contact with the actualizing
tendency

23. 4. Experiential freedom
 We feel free when choices are
available to us
 Fully-functioning person
acknowledges that feeling of
freedom, and takes responsibility for
his choices

24. 5. Creativity
 If you feel free and responsible, you
will act accordingly, and participate
in the world
 Feel obliged to contribute to the
actualization of others
 This can be through creativity in the
arts or sciences, through social
concern and parental love, or simply
by doing one’s best at one’s job

25. 6. Therapy
 Rogers’s approach to treatment for
healthy change or healthy growth --
Client-Centered Therapy because it
sees the individual, rather than the
therapist or the treatment process as
the center of effective change.
Nowadays, most people just call it
Rogerian therapy.

26. • Rogers felt that a therapist must
have three qualities in order to be
effective. They must be:
• Congruence or Genuine:
 completely open with their
feelings, honesty with the client

27. Accepting or respect:
 acceptance, showing an unconditional
positive regard towards the client
Empathetic:
 non-judgemental in their disclosure
of feelings; the ability to fee what the
client feels

28. • Humanistic Principles of Learning
 Humanistic theories of learning
tend to be highly value-driven and
hence more like prescriptions
(about what ought to happen)
rather than descriptions (of what
does happen).

29. • Human beings have natural
potentiality and desire for learning
• Learners need to be empowered and
to have control over the learning
process
• The teacher becomes a facilitator -
one who created the environment for
engagement.