Examine five main ideas of Maslow’s theory of motivation showing their relevance to tertiary education.

The essay is going to look at the five main ideas of Maslow’s theory of motivation as follows; the physiological needs, the safety needs, self actualisation, belonging and love needs and the esteem needs. However, key terms like motivation and tertiary education would be clearly defined for the benefit of the essay. Again the relevance of Maslow’s theory of motivation to tertiary education would be discussed with clearly cited examples drawn from what happens at Midlands State University. The term “motivation” is derived from a Latin word “Movere” or “Motum”, which means to move which was the original source for the word motivation (Webstera Collegiate Dictionary, 1941) Motivation has been described as what energizes, directs and sustains behaviour (Porter, Bigley and Steers 2003) Maslow (1970) claims that people move up a need hierarchy as they satisfy each of them. Unsatisfied needs motivate until they are fulfilled. According to Woolfolk (2013:465) motivation is an internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains behaviour. It is clear from the above definition that the study of motivation focuses on how and why people initiate actions directed towards specific goals, how long it takes them to get started in the activity. Student’s motivation to learn at tertiary institutions like colleges and universities is both a trait and a state. That is, it involve taking academic work seriously, trying to get the most from it, and applying appropriate learning strategies in the process. It is imperative in this essay to check how Maslow’s five main ideas motivate students at tertiary institution to achieve the intended goals in life. Maslow (1970) conceives a human being, not as an empty organism, but as an active being whose behaviour is being propelled by some potent forces. He postulates that unsatisfied needs creates tension within an organism and serves as a force to direct behaviour towards reduction of the tension. Maslow arranges the human needs into a hierarchy in their order of prepotency. Maslow (1970) placed the needs in five stages. He formulates the principles under which they operate thus (a) it is only when a person partially gratifies a more basic and pressing need that the next level on the hierarchy rears up its head, (b) deprivation of a satisfied need best equips one to seek a way to restore the gratification of the need in future; and (c) when basic needs have been met, people become healthy and motivated to actualizes their highest potentialities. It is important to establish how gratification of these needs at tertiary institution like Midlands State University can make one to have emotional satisfaction and stability. Students, lectures and administrative personnel can gratify their needs. It cannot be refuted that failure to attain the five needs can result in poor self-concept and loss of age identity. It can also be noted that failure to achieve this five needs in tertiary institution can make the tertiary institutions to fail meeting the goals and mission of an institution. The physiological Needs: Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most pre-potent of all needs (Marlowe and Canestrari 2006:219). What it means specifically is that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological need rather than any other. A student from tertiary institution like Midlands State University who lack food, safety, love and esteem would most probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else. All capacities are put into the services of hunger-satisfaction, and the organisation of these capacities is almost entirely determined by the one purpose of satisfying hunger. The receptors and effectors, the intelligence, memory, habits, all may now be defined simply as hunger gratifying tools. This factor is salient both to students and workers in tertiary institution since lack of it will disturb effective learning and concentration in lecturers. On the other hand, if lectures are faced up with this challenge of hunger, it means that they would spend most of their time elsewhere and students would not be fairly accorded their time. Marlowe and Canestrari (2006) state that a man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food. He dreams good, he remembers food, he thinks about food, he perceived only food, and he wants only food. Another perculiar characteristic of the human organism when it is dominated by a certain need is that the whole philosophy of the future tends also to change. Physiological need is relevant and important to tertiary institution like Midlands State University. For instance, students who cannot satisfy the hunger need may end up resorting to prostitution or falling in love with many partners. Such students be it female or male may be infected by sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/Aids and that can cut short the life span for the learners. Female students may end up falling pregnant and loosing focus and concentration to their studies. The safety Needs: Safety needs include security, stability, dependency, protection, freedom from fear, from anxiety and chaos, need for structure, order, law, limits, strength in the protector and so on. Safety needs may serve as the most exclusive organiser of behaviour, recruiting all the capacities of the organism in their service, and we may then fairly describe the whole organism as a safety-seeking mechanism (Marlowe and Canestrari 2006:222). Again as in the hungry man, we find that the dominating goals are a strong determinant not only of his current world outlook and philosophy, but also of his philosophy of the future and of values. Practical everything looks less important than safety and protection. For instance, at tertiary institution, injustice, unfairness or inconsistencies in the lecturer seem to make students feel anxious and unsafe. Again if the students lose faith and trust from the lecturer or institution this can work negatively on the side of students and intended goals to be achieved can be thwarted. Students need to be protected from unprofessional male lecturers who will always abuse their power and trade a mark with sex. Again students need to be protected from theft. For instance, at Midlands State University, the security department is there to safe guard the property of students in hostels from being getting stolen. Furthermore, the attitude may be not so much because of the injustice per se or any particular pains involved, but rather because this treatment threatens to make the world look unreliable, or unsafe or unpredictable. Also lecturers out-burst of rage or threats of punishment directed to students, calling names, speaking to them harshly, handling them roughly or chuckle them out of a lecture sometimes elicit total panic and terror that we must assume more is involved than the physical pain alone. The peaceful, smoothly running, stably, good learning environment at tertiary institution ordinarily makes students feel safe enough from criminal assault, chaos and so on. Students in a lecturer need to be motivated through assurance and positive comments so as to enable them to be out standing in their academic pursuance. The safety needs can become very urgent on the social scene whenever there are real threats to law, to order, to the authority of students. Students at tertiary institution can be disturbed by threats to authority like being taken to university disciplinary committee, to legality like security guards and to the representatives of law. The need for self-Actualisation: Self-actualization is the ultimate process of personal growth (Tuchman and Monetti 2011:418). It is based on the belief that “what man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature”. Heyligher (1992:41) asserts that self actualisation is reached when all needs are fulfilled, in particular the highest need, and due to positive feedback, self actualisation in not fixed state, but a process of development which does not end. This is relevant in university so as to make students develop an insatiable appetite of learn and acquiring new knowledge and skills. For instance, at university level like Midlands State University, self-actualisation can be in the form of openness to experiences, to be eager to undergo new experiences, learn new ideas and skills and to try out new things. For example, to be elected as the Students Representative Council (SRC) President or to be chosen to represent you university in AZUSA games. Here students would value and appreciate the talent and capabilities they possess well ahead of others who would have failed to emerge as victors. In addition, through self actualisation students may walk for the thousandth time through the same street, yet suddenly experience beauty and excitement as if he or she saw it for the first time. For instance, a student who can be awarded a scholarship for being outstanding in his or her academic performance can experience the beauty of hard working and as well as being excited for getting nominated. Such sense of beauty, wonder or revivification is usually triggered by the same type of objects or situations, depending upon the individual. Again social interaction and creation of relationships between and among students from other part of the world can lead to self actualisation. For instance, students at Midlands State University can develop self actualisation after mixing and mingling with students from Namibia and Lesotho. Here self actualisation would develop general feeling of empathy and kinship towards humanity as a whole. Students in such multiracial groups of students can listen to other students from other race, age, religion or ideologies, without being inhibited by prejudices which is a form of self actualisation termed by Maslow (1970) as “democratic character structure”. Deducing from the contribution made to this aspect of self actualisation as one of the main five ideas of Maslow motivation tool it is clear that self-actualisation is relevant in university set up for effective learning . The belonging and love needs: If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs. The love or belongingness needs come into play after the physiological and security drive is satisfied. Gratification is a matter of degree rather than and either or accomplishment. Maslow’s concept of belong combines the twine urge to love and give. Giving love is different from the passion of rock music lyrics that announce, “I want you, I need you “. Now the person will feel keenly, as never before, the absence of friends, family, wife, children and sweetheart. The person will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely for a place in his group or family, and he will strive with great intensity, to achieve this goal. Alderfer (1972) says that; “human have a desire to live and belong to groups including clubs, work groups, religious group and family. Belong and love is relevant at tertiary education and since it is adult learning this creates the bond and relationship between students and lecturers and as well as other working staff at the tertiary institution. For instance, lecturers need students for their profession to be recognised. On the other hand, students need lecturers for them to achieve their goals. When analysing the student-lecturer relationship the two groups are intertwined and cannot live without appreciating the other. Students would perform better if they know that their lecturers love them and lecturers would be happy to hear their students passing lovely comments about them. Therefore judging from this argument it is clear that belonging and love is necessary at tertiary learning. At tertiary institution students will want to attain such a place more than anything else in the world and may even forget that once, when they were hungry, they sneered at love as unreal or unnecessary or unimportant. Self esteem Needs; All people in our society including students at tertiary institutions desire for a stable, firmly based, usually high evaluation of themselves, for self respect, or self esteem and for esteem of others. These needs may therefore be classified into two subsidiary sets. These are first the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence, for confidence in the face of the world and for independence and freedom.. Secondly, we have what we call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other (people). Status, fame and glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity or appreciation. It can be argued that all the above stated aspect are important and can be applied in tertiary learning in order to achieve the intended goals. For example, lecturers would want to be respected by their students and students on the other hand would want to be recognised by their lectures. Students would also be happy to be given attention by their lecturers. The tertiary institution workers would want to be dignified and highly appreciated by their bosses that is, the Chancellor, vice Chancellor and together with the university administration. Hence self esteem is relevant to tertiary learning and is an important motivator to students, academic staff and none academic staff in their day to day operation.

In addition, satisfaction of the self esteem needs leads to feelings of self confidence, worth, strength, capability, and adequacy, of being useful and necessary in the world. Thwarting of these needs at tertiary institution would lead to inferiority and helplessness. These feeling in turn give rise to either basic discouragement or else compensatory or neurotic trends. The most stable, most healthy self esteem in based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation. It can be argued that self esteem is relevant in tertiary institution in order to assist lecturers, students and other university workers to perform their duties to the maximum benefit and prosperity of the institution. Students would work hard so as to achieve the best grades that they can use to compete in the outside world. Lecturers have to thrive teaching and assisting their students so as to have good profile and the institution MSU have to continue producing well behaved students, who are hard working, competent and productive to the industry so as to gain respect and recognition. Hence this makes esteem need important and relevant to tertiary learning. It can be concluded that all the five main ideas of Maslow’s theory of motivation are relevant to tertiary education. Basing on the examples cited in this essay drawn from Midlands State University, as one good example of the tertiary education it cannot be disputed that Maslow’s motivation five main ideas enables the students, lecturers and other university workers to thrive for the best in improving their plight together with the entire society plight. Key terms such as motivation and each of the five main concepts were clearly defined. Therefore physiological needs, safety needs, the belonging and love needs, the need for self actualisation need and the esteem needs are applicable and relevant in tertiary learning and must be taken seriously in order to meet our intended goals together with the institution goals. References Alderfer, C (1972) Existence. Relatedness and Growth. New York: Free Press. Heylighen, F (1972) A Cognitive Systematic Reconstruction of Maslow’s Theory of Self- Actualisation. PESP Free University of Brussels Marlowe, B.A and Canestrari, A.S (2006) Educational Pyschology in Context: Reading for Future Teachers. London. Sage Maslow, A.H (1970) Motivation and Personality. Second Edition. New York: Harper and Row. Osuji, S.N (2007) Maslovian Theory of Human Needs: Implication for Adult Education Curriculum in Nigeria. Obafemi Awolow University. Nigeria. Tuckman,B.W and Moneti, D.M (2011) Education Psychology. International Edition. USA: Wadsworth Woolfolk , A (2013) Educational Psychology Twelfth Edition. USA. Pearson www.afirstlook.com PDF. A first look at Communication Theory