Interdisciplinary Applications of the Person-Centered Approach by Jeffrey H. D. Cornelius-White Renate Motschnig-Pitrik & Michael Lux

Author:Jeffrey H. D. Cornelius-White, Renate Motschnig-Pitrik & Michael Lux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer New York, New York, NY

Learning on three levels. Across various PCeL courses, students indicate that—compared to traditional courses—they tend to learn about the same at the level of intellect, but significantly more at the level of skills and the level of attitudes (Derntl and Motschnig-Pitrik 2007; Motschnig-Pitrik and Derntl 2008).

Motivation. Empirical evaluations indicate that facilitators, who are perceived as highly congruent, respectful, empathically understanding and competent in the subject area, can motivate students more strongly than educators who are rated lower on these dimensions (Motschnig-Pitrik and Mallich 2004).

Profitable elements. From 24 features, those that students indicated to benefit most from and that were rated to be present in PCeL classrooms significantly more strongly than in traditional courses were: active participation in the course; exchange and discussion with peers and instructor; the opportunity of bringing in personal interests and contributions; and the support via a web-based platform (Derntl and Motschnig-Pitrik 2007; Motschnig-Pitrik 2006; Motschnig-Pitrik and Derntl 2008).

Online-learning contracts. When asked how much they learned from employing learning contracts, the vast majority of students responded that they had learned more or much more than through learning for traditional examinations (Derntl 2006; Derntl and Motschnig-Pitrik 2005).

Feeling of community. From the 14 features of Barrett-Lennard’s community questionnaire (Barrett-Lennard 2005), the most significant increases tended to happen in: “Attentive listening to others,” “climate of respect, caring, trust,” and “experience of connectedness and community,” across all PCeL courses (Motschnig-Pitrik and Figl 2008).

Team competencies, team orientation. Although students experience a significant rise in team skills, their team orientation and team attitudes do not change statistically significantly as the result of attending one person-centered course (Figl 2009; Figl and Motschnig-Pitrik 2008; Motschnig-Pitrik 2006; Figl and Motschnig-Pitrik 2007).

The students’ voice. In the following, I share a sample of students’ reactions taken from the most a recent PCeL course on “Communication and Soft Skills” conducted by the author at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, in 2011. These excerpts are intended to illustrate the versatile kinds of learning students reflect.The most important lesson for me is that teaching should not be done in an authoritative way, but the teacher should instead be a motivator and moderator and just connect the crowd and point them in the right direction. [..] I learned other opinions on the same problem and also gained neat slides that I can look into when I need a solution to a problem. Thanks for the Course!

The most important thing that I learned from this course was my opinion about this country and local people according to the impression I had in the beginning. Maybe someone will think that this is not something that has to do with this course, but for me it is! Because, I will stay, live and study in this place for two years, and I had the chance to be and to communicate with local people, now I have an idea how they are, and how can I communicate with them, and I have a good and a positive feeling being in this country.

The discussions were

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