Toward The Humanistic Paradigm In Education: A Case Study

Abstract

Alongside constructivism, the humanistic approach is a core premise in the Good School Concept (2016), a major document on the educational policy in secondary schools in the Republic of Lithuania. However, the humanistic approach is driven by the psychological, rather than educational, perspective and does not have an educational framework. The present study seeks to explore the theoretical notion of humanism from the educational perspective. We first develop an approach to the humanistic paradigm in education as comprising five other paradigms, viz., instrumental pragmatism, social constructivism, humanism in the narrow sense, postmodernism and care ethics. We then deliver a qualitative case study of a Lithuanian sports and distance learning school, employing Stake’s (1995) triangulation method, thematic analysis by Terry et.al. (2017) and elements of discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995, van Dijk 2008, Wodak and Meyer 2006). The findings of the study summarize the expectations of the participants of the educational process in light of the humanistic model proposed in the work. The proposed framework is hoped to be of interest in the research into humanism in education.