Person-centered approaches developed in the 1960s in response to institutional and behaviorist views of humans as objects. It is based on Carl Rogers' view that people have an innate drive for self-actualization. The role of the facilitator is to provide unconditional positive regard and empathy to enable learning and growth from within the individual. Key principles include focusing on the learner's interests, minimizing external threats to learning, and sharing power between individuals and professionals.

1. Person Centred Approaches
TITLE
Nathan Loynes

2. Historical Context
We only really began to hear about
any organised services for people
during the industrial revolution at the
turn of the twentieth century” (Kilbane
& McLean in Thompson et al)

3. People are not ‘things’!
1. Person Centred approaches evolved in
the 1960’s as a critical response to the
institutional and overly materialistic
methods that had developed for dealing
with ‘humans’.
2. It also sought to criticise the mechanistic
methods that had evolved in behavioural
psychology

4. Carl Rogers(1902-1987)

5. Title
Carl Rogers(1902-1987)
Principally known as the founder of
person-centred psychotherapy and
almost the inventor of counselling.

6. Title
To Rogers, experiential learning is
equivalent to personal change and
growth.
All human beings have a natural
propensity to learn; the role of the
teacher is to facilitate such learning.

7. Title
What is Humanistic
Teaching?

8. Title
• Setting a positive climate for
learning.
• Clarifying the purposes of the
learner(s)
• Organizing and making available
learning resources.
• Balancing intellectual and
emotional components of learning.
• Sharing feelings and thoughts with
learners but not dominating.

9. Title
What is Humanistic
Learning?

10. Principles:
1. Significant learning takes place when
the subject matter is relevant to the
personal interests of the student
2. Learning which is threatening to the self
(e.g., new attitudes or perspectives) are
more easily assimilated when external
threats are at a minimum
3. Learning proceeds faster when the
threat to the self is low
4. Self-initiated learning is the most lasting
and pervasive.

11. A thought:
“The hard part of figuring out how
to teach is learning when to keep
your mouth closed, which is most
of the time” (Carl Rogers, 1960,
cited in Joyce, 2009, p105)

12. Reference: Rogers, C.R. &
Freiberg, H.J. (1994). Freedom
to Learn (3rd Ed). Columbus,
OH: Merrill/Macmillan.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rog

13. De Bono’s Thinking Hats

14. Listening
“Listening is a magnetic and strange
thing, a creative force… When we are
listened to, it creates us, makes us
unfold and expand”. (Ueland, 1992,
cited in Thompson et al 2008, p.30)

15. “Listening carefully often results in an
unleashing of energy in the person
being listened to. Person centred
planning seeks to utilise that energy
for movement towards a chosen
direction” (Ibid, p31)

16. Sharing Power
“Person centred planning
supports self determination…
(and)… challenges power
balances between people… and
professionals”. (Ibid, p.32)

17. Examples of professional “power
sharing”:
• Setting appointments around the person’s
preferences and routines.
• Agreeing together the outcomes for
professional support.

18. Conditional Positive Regard
• The behaviourist view - extrinsic rewards are
most effective.
• Extrinsic rewards are rewards from the outside
world, e.g. praise, money, gold stars, etc.
Contrast: Intrinsic rewards - from within oneself,
rather like a satisfaction of a need. This is the
humanistic approach:
• Education is really about creating a need within
the child, or instilling within the child self-
motivation. Behaviourism is about rewards from
others. Humanism is about rewarding yourself!

19. Unconditional Positive Regard
“I might not like what you do, but I
continue to like you”.
“This is the stance adopted by the person
centred practitioner”
Cf: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me
twice, shame on me”

20. Rogers’ 6 Necessary Conditions for
Change (Mearns & Thorne)
• 1. In psychological contact
• 2. The client is anxious.
• 3. The mentor is integrated into the relationship.
• 4. The mentor is experiencing UPR towards the
client.
• 5. The mentor can empathise with the clients
internal frame of reference.
• 6The client can perceive the mentors empathy
and UPR

21. Breaking Patterns of Behaviour

22. Conclusion
• Person Centred practice developed as a
reaction towards mechanistic behavioural
theories of human development.
• Human beings have an innate drive
towards self-actualisation.
• The goal of person centred helping is to
enable self actualization.

23. Conclusion, continued
• Although perhaps perceived as ‘lacking
teeth’ or not fully appreciative of
‘consequences’ or cause and effect, PC
approaches require a great deal of
discipline to maintain as they can
challenge the mentors own self-concept
and concepts of ‘human worth’ that have
developed through conditional positive
regard socialisation processes.

24. • Nevertheless, PC approaches can be useful if
the mentor is seeking to break an impasse in the
mentoring relationship, or develop an new
relationship where feelings of ‘worth’ and
‘regard’ are manifest (ie self-esteem).
• PC approaches can also effectively challenge
the mentee’s ‘world view’ by seeking to break
‘self-defeating’ patterns of behaviour which limit
transformational change.