Carl Rogers

Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an influential American psychologist. Along with Abraham Maslow, Rogers was the founder of the humanist approach to psychology and was instrumental in the development of non-directive psychotherapy, which he initially called Client Centereted Therapy. However later in his career he changed the name to the Person Centered Aproach (PCA) to reflect that his theories applied to all interactions between people, not just therapist/client relations. It is also called person-centered psychotherapy.

Biography

Carl Rogers was born on January 8, 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. His father was a civil engineer and his mother was a housewife and devout Christian; Carl was the fourth of six children.

He could already read by the age for entering kindergarten, and so he started his education directly in the second grade. When Carl was 12, his family moved to a farm, where he spent his adolescence in a strict religious and ethical environment. He became a rather isolated, independent, and disciplined person, acquiring an appreciation for the scientific method in a practical world.

He entered the University of Wisconsin initially studying agriculture, and later changing to religion. At age 20, he spent time in Beijing, China, at an international Christian conference, which led him to broaden his thinking and he started to doubt his religious convictions. However, after graduation in 1924, he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in New York to continue his religious studies. At that time he also married Helen Elliot.

While at Union Theological Seminary, he attended a seminar entitled Why am I entering the ministry?, after which he changed his major to psychology. He graduated with a Masters degree in Clinical psychology, and in 1931, received his Ph.D. in psychotherapy.

After two years he left the seminary and took his M.A. (1928) and his Ph.D. (1931) from Columbia University's Teachers College. While completing his doctoral work, he engaged in child study at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in Rochester, New York, becoming the agency's director in 1930.

He was offered a full professorship at Ohio State University in 1940. In 1942, he wrote his first book, Counseling and Psychotherapy. In it, Rogers suggested that the client, by establishing a relationship with an understanding, accepting therapist, can resolve difficulties and gain the insight necessary to restructure his life.

Then, in 1945, he was invited to set up a counseling center at the University of Chicago. It was while working there, in 1951, he published his major work, Client-Centered Therapy, wherein he outlines his basic theory. In 1956 Rogers became the first President of the American Academy of Psychotherapists. In 1957 he arrived at the University of Wisconsin. However, following several internal conflicts at the department of psychology at Wisconsin, Rogers became disillusioned with academia.

In 1964, Rogers was selected 'humanist of the year' by the American Humanist Association, and he received an offer to join the staff of the Western Behavioral Studies Institute (WBSI) for research, which he accepted and then moved to La Jolla, California. He remained in La Jolla, doing therapy, speeches and writing until his sudden death 23 years later.

Work

Contributions to psychology

'Rogerian psychotherapy' became widely influential, embraced for its humanistic approach. Rogers also made significant contributions to the field of adult education, with his Experiential theory of learning. Rogers maintained that all human beings have a natural desire to learn. He defined two categories of learning: meaningless, or cognitive learning (e.g., memorizing multiplication tables) and significant, or "experiential learning" (applied knowledge which addresses the needs and wants of the learner).

Rogers' basic tenet was that if unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathic understanding, was present in any relationship (though he started out by focusing on counselor-client relationships), that growth and psychological healing would occur. According to Rogers, these tenets were both necessary and sufficient to create a relationship conducive to enhancing the client's psychological well being, by enabling the client to fully experience all of themselves. He saw one of the chief causes of mental, emotional and existential suffering as people not being able to accept or allow themselves to fully experience all of who they are—which includes aspects that are not always socially acceptable.

Writing about the role of the clinician, he remarked that, "In every respect in which we make an object of the person—whether by diagnosing him, analyzing him, or perceiving him impersonally in a case history—we stand in the way of our therapeutic goal. [...] We are deeply helpful only when we relate as persons, when we risk ourselves as persons in the relationship, when we experience the other as a person in their own right. Only then is there a meeting at a depth that dissolves the pain of aloneness in both client and therapist."

Rogers' idea of the fully functioning person involved the following qualities, which show marked similarities to Buddhist philosophy:

• Openness to experience: The accurate perception of one's feelings and experience in the world

• Existential living: Living in the present, rather than the past (gone) or the future (yet to come)

• Organismic trusting: Trusting one's own thoughts and feelings as accurate; do what comes naturally

• Experiential freedom: To acknowledge one's freedoms and take responsibility for one's own actions

• Creativity: Full participation in the world, including contributing to others' lives

Rogers and some colleagues founded the 'Group Encounter' (for young people, managers etc.) and 'Marriage Encounter' (ME).

Experiental education

A child learning the countries of Asia by experience rather than by rote learning.

Experiential education (or "learning by doing") is the process of actively engaging students in an authentic experience that will have benefits and consequences. Students make discoveries and experiment with knowledge themselves instead of hearing or reading about the experiences of others. Students also reflect on their experiences, thus developing new skills, new attitudes, and new theories or ways of thinking (Kraft & Sakofs, 1988). Experiential education is related to the constructivist learning theory.

Historical development

John Dewey, an American educational philosopher, was an early twentieth century promoter of the idea of learning through direct experience (action and reflection). Experiential education differs from much traditional education in that teachers first immerse students in action and then ask them to reflect on the experience.

In traditional education, teachers set the knowledge to be learnt (including analysis and synthesis) before students. They hope students will subsequently find ways to apply the knowledge.

Despite the efforts of many efforts at progressive educational reform, reports by researchers such as Goodlad (1984) and Sizer (1984) suggest that most teaching, particularly at the high school level, still involves the teacher as purveyor of knowledge and the student as passive recipient.

Examples

Examples of experiential education abound in all disciplines. In her 1991 book Living Between the Lines, Lucy Calkins states, "If we asked our students for the highlight of their school careers, most would choose a time when they dedicated themselves to an endeavor of great importance...I am thinking of youngsters from P.S. 321, who have launched a save-the-tree campaign to prevent the oaks outside their school from being cut down. I am thinking of children who write the school newspaper, act in the school play, organize the playground building committee.... On projects such as these, youngsters will work before school, after school, during lunch. Our youngsters want to work hard on endeavors they deem significant."

There are other examples. High school English classes in Rabun Gap, Georgia have published the Foxfire books and magazines for over 25 years (Wigginton, 1985). Students research the culture of the Appalachian mountains through taped interviews and then write and edit articles based upon their interviews. Foxfire has inspired hundreds of similar cultural journalism projects around the country.

One widely adopted form of experiential education is learning through service to others (Kielsmeier & Willits, 1989). An example is Project OASES (Occupational and Academic Skills for the Employment of Students) in the Pittsburgh public schools. Eighth graders, identified as potential dropouts, spend three periods a day involved in renovating a homeless shelter as part of a service project carried out within their industrial arts class. Students in programs such as these learn enduring skills such as planning, communicating with a variety of age groups and types of people, and group decisionmaking. In carrying out their activities and in the reflection component afterward, they come to new insights and integrate diverse knowledge from fields such as English, political science, mathematics, and sociology.

Other approaches at the university level include laboratory courses in social sciences and humanities that seek to parallel laboratory courses in the natural sciences. In social science laboratory courses, students combine theory with tests of the theory in field settings and often develop their own social models in disciplines as far ranging as history and philosophy to economics, political science and anthropology (Lempert, 1996).

Friends World Program, a four-year international study program operating out of Long Island University, operates entirely around self-guided, experiential learning while immersed in foreign cultures. Regional centers employ mostly advisors rather than teaching faculty; these advisors guide the individual students in preparing a "portfolio of learning" each semester to display the results of their experiences and projects.

Other projects and "capstone" programs have included everything from student teams writing their own international development plans and presenting them to Presidents and foreign media and publishing their studies as textbooks, in development studies, to running their own businesses, NGOs, or community development banks (Lempert, 1996).

At the professional school level, experiential education is often integrated into curricula in "clinical" courses following the medical school model of "See one, Do one, Teach one" in which students learn by practicing medicine. This approach is now being introduced in other professions in which skills are directly worked into courses to teach every concept (starting with interviewing, listening skills, negotiation, contract writing and advocacy, for example) to larger scale projects in which students run legal aid clinics or community loan programs, write legislation or community development plans.

Change in Roles and Structures

Whether teachers employ experiential education in cultural journalism, service learning, environmental education, or more traditional school subjects, its key idea involves engaging student voice in active roles for the purpose of learning. Students participate in a real activity with real consequences for the purpose of meeting learning objectives.

Some experts in the field make the distinction between "democratic experiential education" in which students help design curricula and run their own projects and even do their own grading (through objective contracted standards) and other forms of "experiential education" that put students in existing organizations in inferior roles (such as service learning and internships) or in which faculty design the field work (Lempert, 1996).

Besides changing student roles, experiential education requires a change in the role of teachers. When students are active learners, their endeavors often take them outside the classroom walls. Because action precedes attempts to synthesize knowledge, teachers generally cannot plan a curriculum unit as a neat, predictable package. Teachers become active learners, too, experimenting together with their students, reflecting upon the learning activities they have designed, and responding to their students' reactions to the activities. In this way, teachers themselves become more active; they come to view themselves as more than just recipients of school district policy and curriculum decisions.

As students and teachers take on new roles, the traditional organizational structures of the school also may meet challenges (Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde, 1998). For example, at the Challenger Middle School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, service activities are an integral part of the academic program. Such nontraditional activities require teachers and administrators to look at traditional practices in new ways. For instance, they may consider reorganizing time blocks. They may also teach research methods by involving students in investigations of the community, rather than restricting research activities to the library (Rolzinski, 1990). At the University Heights Alternative School in the Bronx, the Project Adventure experiential learning program has led the faculty to adopt an all-day time block as an alternative to the traditional 45-minute periods. The faculty now organizes the curriculum by project instead of by separate disciplines. Schools that promote meaningful student involvement actively engage students as partners in education improvement activities. These young people learn while planning, researching, teaching, and making decisions that affect the entire education system.

At the university level, including universities like Stanford and the University of California Berkeley, students are often the initiators of courses and demand more role in changing the curriculum and making it truly responsive to their needs. In some cases, universities have offered alternatives for student-designed faculty approved courses. In other cases, students have formed movements or even their own NGOs like Unseen America Projects, Inc., to promote democratic experiential learning and to design and accredit their own alternative curricula (Lempert, 1996).

Helping with the transition

At first, these new roles and structures may seem unfamiliar and uncomfortable to both students and adults in the school. Traditionally, students have most often been rewarded for competing rather than cooperating with one another. Teachers are not often called upon for collaborative work either. Teaching has traditionally been an activity carried out in isolation from one's peers, behind closed doors. Principals, used to the traditional hierarchical structure of schools, often do not know how to help their teachers constitute self-managed work teams or how to help teachers coach students to work in cooperative teams. The techniques of experiential education can help students and staff adjust to teamwork, an important part of the process of reforming schools.

Adventure education is one form of experiential education that is highly effective in developing team and group skills in both students and adults (Rohnke, 1989). Initially, groups work to solve problems that are unrelated to the problems in their actual school environment. For example, in a ropes course designed to build the skills required by teamwork, a faculty or student team might work together to get the entire group over a 12-foot wall or through an intricate web of rope. After each challenge in a series of this kind, the group looks at how it functioned as a team. Who took the leadership roles? Did the planning process help or hinder progress? Did people listen to one another in the group and use the strengths of all group members? Did everyone feel that the group was a supportive environment in which they felt comfortable making a contribution and taking risks?

The wall or web of rope can becomes a metaphor for the classroom or school environment. While the problems and challenges of the classroom or school are different from the physical challenges of the adventure activity, many skills needed to respond successfully as a team are the same in both settings.

These skills — listening, recognizing each other's strengths, and supporting each other through difficulties — can apply equally well to academic problem-solving or to schoolwide improvement efforts.

For example, the Kane School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Massachusetts has been using adventure as a tool for school restructuring. The entire faculty — particularly the Faculty Advisory Council, which shares the decisionmaking responsibilities with the principal — has honed group skills through experiential education activities developed by Project Adventure. These skills include open communication, methods of conflict resolution, and mechanisms for decision making (High Strides, 1990).

Summary

Experiential education can change schools because it requires new roles of students, teachers, and administrators. It can provide a different, more engaging way of treating academic content through the combination of action and reflection. Experiential education empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning. Experiential education can also provide a process for helping all those involved in schooling become more comfortable with the unfamiliar roles commonly proposed for restructured schools.

Quotes from Carl Rogers

"Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets – neither Freud nor research – neither the revelations of God nor man – can take precedence over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction." Carl Rogers, from 'On Becoming a Person

"If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-intitiated learning." Carl Rogers

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Calkins, L. (1991). Living between the lines. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, Inc.
• Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books.
• Educational Writers Association. (1990). Lawrence grows its own leaders. High Strides: Bimonthly Report on Urban Middle Grades, 2 (12). Washington, DC: Author.
• Fletcher, A. (2005). Meaningful student involvement: Students as partners in school change. Olympia, WA: HumanLinks Foundation.
• Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. NY: Continuum.
• Goodlad, J. (1984). A place called school: Prospects for the future. NY: McGraw Hill.
• Kielsmeier, J., & Willits, R. (1989). Growing hope: A sourcebook on integrating youth service into the curriculum. St. Paul, MN: National Youth Leadership Council, University of Minnesota.
• Kraft, D., & Sakofs, M. (Eds.). (1988). The theory of experiential education. Boulder, CO: Association for Experiential Education.
• Lempert, D. and others (1996). Escape from the ivory tower: Student adventures in democratic experiential education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
• Rohnke, K. (1989). Cowstails and cobras II. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company.
• Rolzinski, C. (1990). The adventure of adolescence: Middle school students and community service. Washington, DC: Youth Service America.
• Sizer, T. (1984). Horace's compromise. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Wigginton, E. (1985). Sometimes a shining moment: The Foxfire experience. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday.
• Zemelman, S., Daniels, H. & Hyde, A. (1998). Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

External links

• Association for Experiential Education
• Experiential Learning & Experiential Education: Philosophy, Theory, Practice & Resources
• Changing Schools through Experiential Education. ERIC Digest. The original version of the Wikipedia article was based on the public domain text at this site.
• Experiential Learning in Higher Education: Linking Classroom and Community. ERIC Digest.
• Incorporating Student Voice into Teaching Practice. ERIC Digest.
• Improving Evaluation in Experiential Education. ERIC Digest.
• Outdoor, Experiential, and Environmental Education: Converging or Diverging Approaches? ERIC Digest.
• Broadening the Bounds of Involvement: Transforming Schools With Student Voice. New Horizons for Learning.
• nrogers.com - Rogers Biography
• Personality Theories - Carl Rogers
• Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961)
• Carl R. Rogers, Freedom to Learn (1969)

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