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.