Humanistic Approach in Student Management: Building Discipline Awareness in Vocational Schools

Abstract

Discipline formation in vocational education remains a persistent challenge, as punitive and compliance-oriented student management approaches have proven inadequate in cultivating intrinsic awareness and responsibility among students. This study investigates how humanistic student management is implemented across five POAC dimensions (planning, organizing, actuating, evaluating, and follow-up) and its role in enhancing student discipline at the vocational school level.  A qualitative case study design was employed at two purposively selected vocational high schools in Cianjur Regency, Indonesia: SMKN 1 Pacet and SMKN PP Cianjur. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with twelve informants, participatory observation, and documentary analysis, then analyzed using the interactive model of Miles et al. (2014) with source, technique, and time triangulation.  Findings reveal that SMKN PP Cianjur demonstrated substantially higher humanistic alignment across all five dimensions, characterized by participatory planning, synergistic inter-unit coordination, dialogic actuating, reflective evaluation, and restorative follow-up, while SMKN 1 Pacet remained predominantly coercive and administratively oriented. Two unexpected findings emerged: voluntary student self-disclosure of behavioral improvement and peer role-modeling as ripple effects of humanistic follow-up.  These findings affirm that genuine disciplinary formation requires institutional humanization rather than rule stringency, extending the POAC framework with humanistic principles as a theoretically generative model for vocational student management reform.