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What is Invitational Education?
Invitational Education is an approach to the teaching-learning process centered on interconnected assumptions offered to understand these myriad positive and negative signal systems that exist within the total educational environment.
It is a theory of practice for communicating caring and appropriate messages intended to summon forth the realization of human potential as well as for identifying and changing those forces in schools which would defeat and destroy potential.
Invitational Education asserts that every person and everything in and around schools adds to, or subtracts from, the process of being a beneficial presence in the lives of students. Ideally, the factors of people, places, policies, programs and processes should be so intentionally inviting as to create an environment in which every person is cordially summoned to develop intellectually, socially, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Invitational Theory
Invitational Theory is a way of thinking about positive and negative signal systems that exist in all human interactions. It is a self-correcting theory of practice based on John Dewey's "democratic ethos," Carl Rogers' "client-centered psychotherapy," Sidney Jourard's "self-disclosure," Albert Bandura's "self-efficacy" and Martin Seligman's "learned optimism."
Based on these and other research-based concepts, Purkey & Novak (1983, 1995), Purkey & Schmidt (1990, 1996) and colleagues have distilled a model for understanding and communicating messages intended to summon forth the realization of human potential as well as for identifying and changing those forces that destroy potential.
Invitational Theory is based on four operating assumptions that give consistency and direction for action: respect, trust, optimism, and intentionality.
Ideally, the four interconnecting assumptions should lead to a total environment in which each person is cordially summoned to develop intellectually, socially, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Five basic assumptions within Invitational Education
| RESPECT: |
People are able, valuable, and responsible and should be treated accordingly. |
| TRUST: |
Education should be a cooperative, collaborative activity. |
| OPTIMISM: |
People possess untapped potential in all areas of worthwhile human endeavor. |
| TRUST: |
Process is as important as product. |
| INTENTIONALITY: |
Human potential can best be realized by creating and maintaining places, policies, processes and programs specifically designed to invite development, and by people who are intentionally inviting with themselves and others, personally and professionally ("The Five P's"). |
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