John Dewey and His Contributions in Education

John Dewey (1859-1952) studied philosophy at John Hopkins University and had a position in the department of philosophy at Michigan University. He was the very first person who was influenced by  German Idealism as it was prevailing in the then academia. Dewey took philosophy as comprehensive psychology. Later on, he shifted it from German Idealism to his theory of Pragmatism. He started his program for education (now called the  Department of Education) as an Educatholarship which earned him the title of educational philosopher. Dewey was fascinated by epistemology. Traditional epistemologies drew a too sharp distinction between MIND and WORLD.

Dewey proposed a new model of epistemology “The objective world is not separate from the thought but it is defined within a thought as its objective manifestation”. Being influenced by the  Origin of the Species of Darwin, Dewey thought that “human knowledge was an adaptive response to the environment” and  “Whatever conditions interact with personal needs, desires, purposes and capacities to create an experience which it d.” (Dewey, 1938 p.44). Interaction gives birth to previous epistemologies that consider thought as primitive of mind.

But Dewey said thought is an effect of interaction between organism and environment. The organism interacts with the environment through a self-guided activity that coordinates and integrates sensory and motor responses knowledge and learning are thus produced through active manipulation of the environment.  Thoughts are instruments for solving

problems. Truth is not fixed but changes as the problems change. Dewey used the term  “instrumentalism” to refer to his epistemological approach. According to  Dewey, inquiry involves three phases: (a)  a problematic situation, (b) identification of the parameters of the situation, and (c)  reflection upon those parameters and the situation itself to generate a  solution.

Dewey claimed Fallibilism [the human  knowledge is never certain and it can be  corrected, knowledge is provisional]

He later replaced “fallibilism” with the notion of “warranted assertability” as the acid test for the “truth” of ideas generated from successful inquiry (Greg Dimitriadis and George Kamberelis “Theory for education”, Routledge, New York 1969).  For Dewey, knowledge is an effect of goal-directed activity (not a priori or psychological phenomenon). Dewey introduced his pragmatic metaphysics in  “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism”  (1905) and “Does Reality Possess Practical  Character?” (1908).

Dewey’s proposition about the reality of knowledge: [pragmatic metaphysics] “A  person hears a noise in a darkened room.  Initially, it is experienced as frightening.  After inquiry (for example, turning on the lights and looking around), the noise seems to be caused by a shade tapping against a  window and thus is not a reason to be afraid.  The inquiry does not change the initial knowledge status of the noise because it was experienced as scary, it was scary.

The point here is that knowledge is constituted in and through our relations with the world. The noise was initially frightening, but this fear was an effect of the inadequacy of then-present knowledge to deal effectively with the pragmatic demands of the present circumstances.  The further inquiry did not disclose a new reality underlying mere appearance.  Instead, it changed the dynamic relations between self and percept, and thus effected a change in reality. It put the initial  experience of fear in context, changing its  meaning and force.” (Greg Dimitriadis and  George Kamberelis “Theory for education”,  Routledge, New York 1969).

Dewey’s perspective implications for  metaphysics 

First, it renders unstable and contingent knowledge as valid or legitimate, thus casting doubt on idealist versions of metaphysics (for example, Plato’s eidos or  Kant’s pure reason) Second, the fact that knowledge changes with renewed inquiries lead to more adequate understandings of natural events suggest that our experience of the world at any given time is never entirely wrong. With successful inquiry, these mediators drop out and disclose the real knowledge.

All modes of experience are valuable and valid in the construction of knowledge.  Experience and Nature (1925) contains the fullest statement of Dewey’s pragmatic metaphysics. “Social relationships are  significant not only for developing social  theory but also for developing metaphysics because it is through a collective human  activity that the mind itself emerges.”  Traditional metaphysics say the mind is: a primitive, individual attribute te, a precondition for intentional action. For Dewey mind is  an effect of collective activities that are  mediated through symbols (language)

Pragmatic Ethics: He rejected rationalist interest-based systems of ethics. He  believed that individual thought and action

issue from social experience in the first place. His approach to ethics was: a democratic form of life, cultivation of cooperation, public interest, making life better for all through experimentation and inventiveness rather than subscribing to my dogma. Therefore the development of democratic habits must start in early childhood. Pedagogical activities should be organized to develop collaborative activity  Pragmatic Aesthetics: Like his epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical theories, his aesthetic theory is both genetic and pragmatic. He argued that the roots of aesthetic experience lie in commonplace experiences of everyday life. Whenever one experiences a qualitative unity of meanings and values drawn from previous experience and present circumstances, one’s experience has a distinct aesthetic quality.  The creative work of the artist is not necessarily any more remarkable than certain everyday experiences of ordinary people.

The imaginative development of possible solutions to problems, which leads to a  satisfying reconstruction of experience, is a creative activity. The artist concentrates,  clarifies, and vivifies these elements in the work of art through emotion not immediate,  raw emotion, but the emotion that is highly reflexive and guides the process of creation.  Art, he argued, is a cultural product through which people express what is significant about their lives, as well as their joys,  suffering, hopes, and ideals.

Dewey’s Theory of education and  Experience: 

Dewey’s theory of education and experience flowed seamlessly from his pragmatic epistemology, metaphysics,  ethics, and aesthetics. The purpose of education is the intellectual, social,  emotional, and moral development of the individual within a democratic society.  “Social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing social disorder”  (1916/1944, p. 99).

Education and experience are cut from the same cloth: “a reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which creases the ability to direct the course of subsequent experience” (1916/1944, p. 74).  Education must thus be experienced-based externally imposed because “there s an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of experience and education” (1938, p. 20). Dewey’s insistence on experience as the heart and soul of education is founded on principles of interaction and continuity which help build the new experience on previous experiences.

The teacher should determine the direction in which an experience is heading.  According to Dewey, there are two types of experiences. Educative Experiences and  Reflective experiences. Educative experience broadens one’s horizon of knowledge that leads in the constructive direction towards intelligible action. Intelligent action reflects deliberate reflection. Reflective experience arrests and distorts development cultivating a callous,  unreflective self-absorbed disposition. It inclines towards routine actions like life, narrows his field, limits the meaning horizon, and eclipses the possible solutions to problematic experiences. It neither suggests nor promotes the self-awareness social relationship.

The function of inquiry is to lead the child towards educative experiences. His theory f inquiry got fame in 1953 that posits a  continuum of inquiry from nonhuman organisms to beings. Human

inquiry “intelligent inquiry,” is the hallmark of which is mediation by language. All forms of inquiry are as adaptive responses to environmental conditions for the attainment of organic needs. He defined reflection as an “active,  and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions toward which it tends” (1938,  p. 9).

Reflection lies at “the heart of the intellectual organization and the disciplined mind”  (1938, p. 87). For Dewey, reflection is a  kind of thinking “that consists in turning a  subject over in the mind and giving it serious and consecutive consideration.” It is disciplined yet imaginative thinking. It involves “sustained movement to a  common end” (1933, p. 5).

According to Dewey, there are four criteria for reflection. First, it involves the continual construction of meaning and purpose, moving the learner from one experience to the next with a deeper understanding of the connections between and among related experiences and ideas. It helps to form the thread of continuity that constitutes the deepening and thickening of understanding.

Second, reflection is deliberate, disciplined,  and rigorous. Third, reflection I participatory; it happens within communities of committed practice and leads toward the accomplishment of shared goals. Finally, reflection is grounded in attitudes that value and celebrate both personal and collective growth and well-being.

Reflection, for him, is the elevated form of inquiry. The six phases of inquiry are mentioned below. (a) a problematic lived experience, (b) an intuitive or spontaneous interpretation of the experience, (c)  defining or naming the specific problems presented by the experience, (d) generating possible explanations for and solutions to these problems, (e) pondering these explanations to generate hypotheses for dealing with the problematic situation, (f) testing these hypotheses to determine their intellectual purchase and pragmatic value (intelligent action).

His proposition on learning and  education & the role of school

Learning, for Dewey, was thus “learning to think,” and “education consists in the formation of wide-awake, careful, thorough habits of thinking” (1933, p. 78). In this regard, Dewey was critical of schooling in which the connection between process and product is overlooked, and where logically formulated, ready-made information is transmitted to the learner and instruction is delivered in lock-step fashion with the “cut and dried” logic of an adult. In contrast, he valued education in which thinking is considered an art, and the goal is to provide  “systematic care to safeguard the processes of thinking so that it is truly reflective”  (1933, p. 85).

Role of the teacher

Dewey proposed a unique way for teachers  to cultivate reflective habits of mind in their  students, which he referred to with the  somewhat odd term “social control.” When a teacher acts as “a director of processes of exchange in which all students have a share,  he or she loses the position of external boss or dictator and takes on that of the leader of group activities” (1938, p. 59).

In other words, the goal of the teacher is to provide opportunities for experiential learning to happen. Teachers and students exist in a dialogic partnership (in Bakhtin’s sense) or perhaps operate in a zone of proximal development (in Vygotsky’s terminology). Teachers and students both are learners within a social group or community of practice. The teacher may have more knowledge or experience (at least about some things), but her role is that of a shepherd or facilitator and not an expert and authority figure. Within such a context,  learners act cooperatively with teachers and peers to construct their purposes for learning, as well as what and how they learn.

Dewey used the metaphor of the map to drive this point home: “The map, a  summary, an arranged and orderly view of previous experiences, serves as a guide to future experience; it gives direction; it facilitates control, it economizes effort” but the map “does not take the place of the actual journey” (1902, p. 199).

Progressive education 

Dewey believed that education and social democracy are mutually constitutive. He thought that schools should focus on judgment rather than knowledge that they should help students learn to live and to work cooperatively with others, and that students should participate in decisions that affect their learning.

He realized that schools are often repressive institutions that do not encourage (or even allow) exploration and growth. He promoted several new schools and school reforms to help make schools sites where students could develop creativity,  problem-solving abilities, and open-mindedness; his most notable act was the founding of the University of Chicago’s  Experimental Laboratory School.  Dewey also advocated for the rights and academic freedom of teachers.

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