The Spirit of Healing and HelpingBarbara A. Thompson, PhD Student, Educational Leadership
Whitlowe R. Green College of Education, Prairie View A&M University
In 1970, the hierarchy was adapted to a seventh level
by adding the cognitive need of knowledge and meaning. The
adapted eight level hierarchy emerged after 1990, to include
the aesthetic need for appreciation, a search for beauty and
balance, and transcendence level of helping others to self-
actualize.
The more potent a need is, the more it precedes
other needs in human consciousness and demands to be
satisfied. At the first level in an educational
organization, students may become deprived of basic
needs such as shelter, sleep, food, etc. which become a
motivator. The need for safety and security at the
second level can be come a motivator when school
violence or bullying emerges making it harder to study
when one is frightened. Individuals who seek
relationships with superiors, co-workers or peers
demonstrate a high need to belong at the third level.
For educators, professional memberships or informal
work groups satisfy this need. The need for esteem and
status at the fourth level causes the educator to seek
control, autonomy, respect and professional
competence. At the fifth level, educators are
motivated to be the best they can be through self-
actualization.
Higher-level needs become activated when lower
level needs become satisfied. Lawler (1973) states that
individual behavior is motivated by an attempt to
satisfy the need that is most important at the time.
“Maslow reasons that gratification releases the
person from the domination of one need, allowing for
the emergency of a higher-level need. Conversely, if a
lower-order need is left unsatisfied, it re-emerges and
dominates behavior” (Hoy & Miskel, 2008).
DEVELOPMENT
Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, developed a
theory of needs on human motivation that was first widely
published in his 1954 in Motivation and Personality. The original
theory posits there is a basic innate or inborn set of human needs
arranged in a hierarchical order with five basic categories arranged
in hierarchical levels. These needs motivate us all and are
explained in Maslow’s theory that states that we must satisfy each
need in turn. When lower needs are satisfied, it is then that we
become concerned with the higher order needs of influence and
personal development. If we lose our lower needs, through
disaster, fire, or other hardship, etc. (such as those experienced by
Hurricanes Ike and Katrina), we are no longer concerned about
maintaining higher order needs.
DEVELOPMENT CONTINUEDINTRODUCTION
CONCLUSION
In relation to helping others, some people fall short of self-
actualizing, but why are they still able to help others in a
meaningful and unselfish sense? By helping others, one can help
themselves. This principle can be applied to disaffected school-
children and their own development. When they teach other
younger children, they are helping themselves as in peer-to-peer
tutoring. The disaffected child is satisfying the level three need
of belongingness even though they have their own issues of
negativity. When an individual selflessly helps others, he or she
is actually helping oneself reach the self-actualizing level and
even to the transcendence level of Maslow’s hierarchy.
When schools, employers, and organizations learn that
sustainable success is build on a serious and compassionate
commitment to help people identify, pursue and reach their own
personal unique potential, then they are more effective and
valuable in those roles.
REFERENCESHoy & Miskel (2008). Educational administration
theory, research, and practice. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Koltko, Rivera, M.E. (2006). Rediscovering the later
version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Self-
Transcendence and opportunities for theory,
research, and unification. Review of Central
Psychology, 10(4), pp. 302-317.
Lawler, E. E. III. (1973). Motivation in work
organizations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
