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CHAPTER 4: Pioneers of Teaching and Learning
4-7 Dewey: Learning through Experience John Dewey (1859–1952) developed his pioneering experimentalist philosophy of education in the context of the social, political, scientific, and technological changes taking place in the United States in the twentieth century.29 Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy, which encouraged progressive reforms, incorporated elements of the theories of evolution and relativity. Dewey believed that cooperative group activity enhanced social intelligence, and he rejected Spencer’s social Darwinist emphasis on individual competition.30 (For a discussion of pragmatism, see Chapter 6, Philosophical Roots of Education.) In 1896, Dewey established his Laboratory School at the University of Chicago. Dewey saw the school as an experimental setting in which educational ideas were tested in classroom practice. He called the school a “miniature society” and an “embryonic community,” in which children learned collaboratively by working together to solve problems. Dewey organized the curriculum into constructive, experimental, and creative activities to: ●● Develop children’s sensory and physical coordination ●● Provide opportunities for children to make and do things based on their interests ●● Stimulate children to formulate, examine, and test their ideas by acting on them In Dewey’s experimentalist philosophy, using the scientific method to solve problems is the key to both thinking and learning. Problem-solving became the central method of learning at the Laboratory School.31
For a biography of Dewey, see Jay Martin, The Education of John Dewey: A Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Also, see Richard Pring, John Dewey (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 30 For Dewey’s relationship to pragmatism, see Louis Menard, The Metaphysical Club: The Story of Ideas in America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). For Dewey as an American pragmatist, access www.dewey.pragmatism.org. 31 John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum (Toronto: University of Toronto Libraries, 2011). A commentary is Laurel N. Tanner, Dewey’s Laboratory School: Lessons for Today (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997). 29
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John Dewey
1884 Awarded PhD from Johns Hopkins University and Instructor in Philosophy at the University of Michigan 1894 Chair, Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago 1897 Publishes School and Society 1904 Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University
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1908 Publishes How We Think
1850 1865 1880 1895 1910 1859 Born In Burlington, Vermont
1879 Receives A.B. from University of Vermont
1916 Publishes Democracy and Education
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