Humanist orientation; Symbolic interactionism

“The facilitation of significant learning rests upon certain attitudinal qualities that exist in the personal relationship between facilitator and learner” (Rogers 1990 p.

305).

Within the philosophy of existentialism, which developed in the interwar period in Germany and after World War II in France, one can find the thoughts of humanism.

Both existentialism and humanism, stress the uniqueness of human existence, in particular the human freedom and the possibility of self- development, meaning that human beings can decide their own destiny, by taking individual choices based on the assumption that people are good.

Two of the psychologists who have contributed most to our understanding of learning within humanism are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Maslow’s (1970) theory of human motivation is based on a hierarchy of needs, where self- actualisation is the ultimate need. Rogers’ theory of learning (1983) is a theory in both education and therapy. This theory is student-centred and client-centred therapy, with a focus on significant learning that leads to personal growth and development. Rogers’ (1983 p.

20) significant learning (also called: experiential learning or meaningful learning) contains five elements described in Freedom to learn for the 80’s as:

• Personal involvement, the affective and cognitive aspects of a person should be involved in the learning event.

• Self-initiated, a sense of discovery must come from within.

• Pervasive, the learning makes a difference in the behaviour, the attitudes, perhaps even the personality of the learner.

• Evaluated by the learner, the learner can best determine whether the experience is meeting a need.

• Essence is meaning, when experiential learning takes place, it’s meaning to the learner becomes incorporated into the total experience.

Many of Maslow and Rogers’ concepts have later been picked up by educators and adopted into adult education. Knowles (1990) has extended several of them.

Andragogy, facilitation, and self-directed learning, are concepts that have been transformed into general theories in adult education. In the 1970-80’s Knowles

became the apostle of andragogy when he concerned himself with what self-directed learning implied for teachers and learners, and for the theory of adult education and lifelong learning.

Andragogy is, by Knowles, defined as ‘the art and science of helping adults to learn’

(Knowles 1980 p. 43). He differentiates clearly between andragogy and pedagogy and claimed first four, later six, assumptions to distinguish between how adults and children learn (Jarvis 1995 p. 90; Finger and Asun 2001 p. 70-71):

• A change in self- concept, since adults need to be more self- directive.

• Experience, since mature individuals accumulate an expanding reservoir of experience, which becomes an exceedingly rich resource in learning.

• Readiness to learn, since adults want to learn in the problem areas with which they are confronted and which they regard as relevant.

• Orientation towards learning, since adults have a problem centred orientation they are less likely to be subject centred.

• Motivation to learn is intrinsic to the learner.

• The need to know, where the facilitator helps the learner to articulate his or hers needs, and contributes to satisfying them.

Knowles has later been heavily criticized and one of the essential weaknesses is that andragogy (only) assumed that self-actualisation leads to a better society. But he is still seen as one of the most important subscribers, not only in the humanistic

orientation, but in general, within the field of adult education. Stephan Brookfield, who has furthered Knowles ideas, took the concept of self-directed learning into critically reflection/ thinking (Brookfield 1985). He believes one should begin to think critical about the social world, and see how it can contribute to your needs. It is a learning

seen as a groundbreaker in the field, but his work has been of great importance for defining what adult education is and what it should be in the future.

Peter Jarvis and Jack Mezirow are two of the most fundamental educators of today and they have both contributed with profound adult learning theories. I have not categorised Jarvis in this orientation, because of his focus on the relationship

between the individual and society. I will therefore examine his theories in the Social learning orientation, but he and Jack Mezirow (who is something between the

cognitive and the humanist orientation), do have common features/ideas which are building on a version of American pragmatism. I will therefore in order to fully

understand Jarvis and Mezirow’s theories, that have its origin from Mead (1934) and especially Blumer (1969), first present ‘symbolic interactionism’, before I examine their respective theories.

Symbolic interactionism

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, during the period when pragmatism emerged as a distinct philosophical formation in America, symbolic interactionist texts saw the gleam of daylight. Works of G. H. Mead, Charles H. Cooley, John Dewey, and W. I.

Thomas have today become canonical texts developed during the heyday of the University of Chicago (Prus 1996).

The theory of symbolic interactionism is a sum of four sub-traditions, these are: (1) The hermeneutics (interpretative understanding) of Whilhelm Dilthy; (2) American pragmatism (which emphasised the practical accomplishment of human activity) of Dewey; (3) Cooley’s (1909) methods of “sympathetic introspection” (field research);

and (4) the body of ethnographic research, which has developed dramaturgical approach (Goffman), and ethnomethodology (Garfunkel). All these traditions appear to be clearly distinct orientations within symbolic interactionism. Common to the four varieties of the theory are Blumer's (1969 p. 2) three fundamental premises:

• The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meaning that things have for them.

• The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that human beings have with one another.

• The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.

In this image the most basic element is the idea that the individual and the society are inseparable units. For a complete understanding of either one of them, one demands a complete understanding of the other. It is a mutually interdependent relationship and not a one-sided deterministic one. (Meltzer, Petras and Reynolds 1975 p. 2).

Jack Mezirow (1991) has made us of writings from several various theoretical contributions, mainly from Dewey, Blumer and Kuhn, but also from Freire and Habermas. His theory of ‘perspective transformation’ is one of the most elaborated conceptualisations of adult learning. Mezirow sees ‘perspectives’ to be something everyone has. It is a construction of reality that transforms when a persons

perspective is not in harmony with his/hers experience. Javis (1995 p. 94) state:

“In this situation of disjunction, the individual’s construction of reality is then transformed as a result of reflecting upon the experience and plotting new strategies of living as a result of this assessment of the situation”.

According to Mezirow, perspective transformation is identical to the process of adult development and true learning occurs when a perspective transformation happens.

One of the major critiques of Mezirow is his lack of explanation of social action and social change. He assumes like the other educationalist in the humanist orientation, that their theory automatically leads to social action and social change.