Ελληνικός Σύλλογος Μουσικοκινητικής Αγωγής Carl Orff

 

 

Rogers focused on the attitude of the teacher, in the same way that he focused on the therapist’s attitude, maintaining that this is more important than the method and is independent of the issue of teaching. The certain attitudinal qualities upon the significant learning exist in the personal relationship bet- ween the facilitator and the learner. There are three definable qualities (Rogers 1983, Rogers 1959):

1.        Genuineness, realness, or congruence. The more the teacher is in the relationship, without presenting a front or facade, the greater is the likelihood to be effective and significant knowledge to be achieved. The feelings that the teacher is experiencing are available to his / her awareness and he / she has to be able to live them and communicate them if appropriate. It means that the teacher comes into a direct personal encounter with the learner, meeting him / her on a person-to-person basis with presence, authenticity and awareness.

2.         Acceptance, caring and trust. This means an unconditional positive regard and acceptance toward whatever the student is "at that moment” in a total rather than a conditional way. This kind of acceptance based on the true belief that everyone can succeed leads the teacher to genuine appreciation. Such a teacher can accept all kinds of feelings and recognizes the learner as an imperfect human being with many feelings and potential.

3.          Empathic understanding. This is happening when the teacher has the ability to understand the student’s reactions from the inside with sensitive awareness and feel “like” them. The attitude of standing “in the other’s shoes” of viewing the world through the student’s eyes, is rare but has a tremendously releasing eflect when it occurs. This kind of understanding is sharply different from the usual evaluative understanding, which follows the pattern of “I understand what is wrong with you”.

 

 

This attitude requires an active-empathic listening that is one of the most potent forces for change.

Rogers was aware of the difficulty in achieving this attitude so he abstracted a number of principles about learning for helping teachers (Rogers 1983):

1.          Human beings have a natural potential for learning.

2.          Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the student as having relevance for his / her own purposes, when the individual has a goal that he / she wishes to achieve and sees the presented material as relevant to the goal. Then, learning takes place with great rapidity.

3.          Learning which involves a change in self- organization in the perception of oneself is threatening and tends to be resisted.

4.          This kind of learning is more easily perceived and assimilated when external threats are at a minimum.

5.          When the threat to the self is low, experience can be perceived in differentiated fashion and learning can proceed.

6.          Much significant learning is acquired through doing.

7.          Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning process.

8.          Self-initiated learning which involves the whole person of the learner feeling as well as intellect is the most lasting and pervasive.

9.          Independence, creativity and self-reliance are all facilitated when self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of secondary importance.

10.       The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of the process of learning, a continuing openness to experience and to incorporate into oneself the process of change.

Trying to be more precise he gave to the teachers some guidelines according the methods that de- veloped (Rogers 1983):

The facilitator:

π    is very important to set the initial mood or climate of the group or class experience,

π    helps to elicit and clarify the purposes of the individuals in the class as well as the more general purposes of the group,

π    relies upon the desire of each student to implement those purposes which have meaning for the student as the motivational force behind significant learning,

π    endeavors to organize and make easily available the widest possible range of resources for learning,

π    regards himself / herself as a flexible resource to be utilized by the group,

π    in responding to expressions in the classroom group, accepts both the intellectual content and the emotionalized attitudes, endeavoring to give each aspect the approximate degree of emphasis which it has for the individual or the group,

π    as the acceptance classroom climate becomes established, is able increasingly to become a participant learner, a member of the group, expressing his / her views as those of one individual only,

π    takes the initiative in sharing himself / herself with the group feelings as well as thoughts in ways which neither demand nor impose, but represent simply a personal sharing which students may take or leave,

π    throughout the classroom experience, remains alert to the expressions indicative of deep or strong feelings.

π    in his / her functioning as leader, endeavors to recognize and accept his / her own limitations.

Rogers highlights that if the teacher is not fearful of accepting contradictory purposes and conflicting aims and if he / she is able to permit the individual a sense of freedom in stating what they would like to do, then this helps to create a climate for learning.

These principles have been put to use in a number of educational settings, such as programs in medical education, educational policy in California, teacher education and postgraduate programs. The results of the programs where these teacher attitudes have been attempted indicate that it is difficult for teachers and administrators to change their attitudes, to share their power and responsibility and to trust the intrinsic motivation of their students to learn. But the results also indicate that, when teachers and administrators change their attitudes, the student’s motivation, learning and behavior is improved (Zimring 1994).

Research results show that the person-centered approach is not an idealistic, utopian educational form but is essentially a person-to-person relations- hip between the teacher and students. In addition they show that university students can become more responsible, self-directed, exercise more power in the academic setting and feel less helpless (Chickodonz et al. 1986). In one of the first and largest research projects 600 teachers and 10,000 students from kindergarten to grade twelve were involved. Teachers who were trained to offer high levels of empathy, congruence and positive regard were compared with control students of teachers who did not offer high levels of these facilitative conditions. Mentioning some of the results, the students of facilitative teachers, made greater gains on academic measures, increased scores on self-concept creativity measures and I. Q. tests, indicating more positive self-regard, presented fewer disciplinary problems and became more spontaneous (Aspy / Roebuck 1969).

Creativity is a central point in Rogers’ theory as a required element of life. Creative skills develop when:

a)      the person is exposed to the experience,

b)      the internal individual point for evaluating the results of the process is more important than the external evaluation and answers the question “do I have to create something that satisfies me”, and

c)      the person has the ability to “play with meanings and elements” (Rogers 1995).

Rogers’ perceptions for body deserve mention. Endorsing mainly the theories of Thomas Hanna and of his partner Eugene Gendlin they consider the person and the body as one system. He accepts that there is a special kind of internal bodily awareness and a body-sense of meaning as an ongoing interaction with its environment with more than conceptual and language forms (Gendlin 1981, Hanna 1970).

Orfl-Schulwerk is a humanistic education that is implemented in educational, social and therapeutic contexts. It is based on a holistic approach of the person, supports and facilitates individual expression and creativity, encourages interpersonal relations, incorporates and utilizes diversity. Inter- action, cooperative learning and teamwork should be taking place in any lesson based on Schulwerk. Orfl visualized his Schulwerk as an open approach in a constant process of development. Under this perspective, Rogers’ theory could contribute as a supplementary and supporting theoretical frame in the training of “Orfl-Schulwerk teachers”, lifelong education and personal growth. Rogers’ method provides activities for developing facilitating attitude and the literature itself can motivate personal growth. Theoretical principles can also be used in the organization and the articulation of the objectives, means and activities of the teaching.