Influence on Educational Practices Today

FOCUS How did Dewey think of the school as an educational laboratory? How did Dewey relate the learner’s experience to problem-based learning? In your educational experience, were there teachers who used Dewey’s problem-solving methods? Do you plan to include Dewey’s experimentalism in your teaching? education’s sole purpose as social growth, Dewey said, “(i) the educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end; and that (ii) the educational process is one of continual reorganizing, reconstructing, transforming.”34

Dewey’s curriculum consists of three levels of learning activities and processes. The first level, “making and doing,” engages children in projects in which they explore their environment and act on their ideas. These activities develop sensory and motor skills and encourage socialization through collaborative group projects. The second level, “history and geography,” broadens students’ concepts of space and time through projects in those areas. The third level, “science,” brings students into contact with various subjects such as biology, chemistry, and social studies that they can use as resources in problem solving. These three curricular levels move learning from simple impulses to careful observation of the environment, to planning actions, and finally to reflecting on and testing the consequences of action.

Dewey saw democratic education and schooling as open-ended processes in which students and teachers can test all ideas, beliefs, and values. Opposing the separation of people from each other because of ethnicity, race, gender, or economic class, Dewey believed that democratic communities encourage people to share their experiences to solve common problems.

4-7c influence on educational Practices Today

By applying pragmatism to education, Dewey worked to open schools to social reform and change. His ideas about socially expanding children’s experience stimulated progressive education, which emphasized children’s interests and needs. Today, educators who work for social change and reform are often following Dewey’s pioneering educational concepts.35

Dewey’s influence can be seen in “hands-on” or process-oriented teaching and learning. Dewey would construct the preservice education of teachers on the principles of (1) seeing education in broad social terms, and (2) developing competencies in using the scientific method to solve problems. Practicing teachers would use group activities, collaborative learning, and process-centered strategies in their classrooms.

34Ibid., p. 54. 35For analyses of Dewey’s work in educational philosophy, see Matt Parmental, “The Structure of Dewey’s Scientific Ethics,” and Eric Bredo, “Understanding Dewey’s Ethics,” in Philosophy of Education (Urbana: Philosophy of Education Society/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000), pp. 143–154. Also, see Douglas J. Simpson, ed., and Sam F Stuck, Jr., ed., Teachers, Leaders, and Schools: Essays by John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010).

TiMeLine

JAnE AddAms

a n d Pho tog raphs Division [LC-DIG-ggbain-12065] s t n P r i Lib rar y of C on gress

1850 1860

1860 Born in Cedarville, Illinois

1870

1877 Enters Rockford Female Seminary

1881 Graduates from Rockford Seminary

1888 Visits Toynbee Hall in London, UK

1889 Founds Hull House in Chicago, with Ellen Gates Starr