Review article
Self-actualization, Optimal Experience and Reform Pedagogy
Višnja Rajić
orcid.org/0000-0002-5331-835X
; Učiteljski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb
Abstract
This paper brings in relation the theory of self-actualization (by Abraham Maslow), the theory of optimal experience (by Michael Csikszentmihaly) and the opportunities for their realization at school. Maslow (1963) recognizes superior experience and Csikszentmihaly (2006) the moments of rapture as the moments of genuine happiness and self-realization/self-actualization. Maslow, as well as Lev Vigotsky (1978), recognizes the key influence of socio-cultural environment on child development as a precondition for the development and self-actualization of the individual. Having in mind the child’s proximal development and his aspiration for actualization it is necessary to bring closer school experience to superior experience or to rapture as much as possible, in order to enable as successful participation of pupils at school as possible. Reform pedagogues like Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, John Dewey and Maria Montessori even more than a hundred years ago recognized the situations at school when children experienced optimal experience and by their actions they tried to provide conditions at school for realization of this experience. Traditional pedagogy that prevails at schools today, unfortunately, by its organizational elements rarely provides conditions necessary for the realization of optimal and superior experience at school.
Keywords
superior experience; rapture; proximal development; reform pedagogy; progressive pedagogy
Hrčak ID:
82873
URI
Publication date:
15.4.2012.
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