Progressive Theory Of Progressive Education

John Dewey is considered to have been a pedagogical progressivist, meaning he focused on education reform by first reforming the way that the teaching was actually done. In the past education focused on teaching children facts, mostly by learning with repetition. This was a problem because it taught children information but not how to use that mindfulness with critical thinking in real-world situations. These problems led John Dewey to write a series of articles that described his views on teaching and how it should be improved upon, this is called “My Pedagogic Creed”. Dewey wanted to equally incorporate a psychological, the abilities and interest of the student, and sociological, the needs and commitments of the society, aspect into teaching. He believed that children were born with blank slates and throughout their lives they would receive guidance “unconsciously” and be molded into adults (Dewey, 1). So the introduction of these aspects would help the molded children into better citizens and that would help drive the social economy into prosperity and overall a better democratic society.

Before the Progressive Era, during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries education was for necessary for everyone nor was it a necessity. Before this era going to school was not the norm, especially for women. Women usually only attended elementary school, since they only need basic literacy skills for the time. Whereas men usually finished middle school and some even men went high school and some perhaps went on to college. The Progressives had new

In this paper I will show my research on how theories of education have changed thought the years and how teachers and students adapt to these changes. With the changes in multicultural classrooms and how students with disabilities have rights in public education.

Throughout the master 's program, I have learned from a variety of classes about educational reforms, shifts in pedagogical practices, technology integration and the role of American education among other things. Authentic intellectual work has an important role to play in all of those areas. In BEF 503, we studied reform movements during the Progressive Era which called for school centralization, curriculum differentiation, and social reform through education. Those reform movements laid the foundation for future educational changes, and many of the things that drive politics in education today saw their beginnings during the Progressive Era. Even today, educational reformers are pushing for a change in educational standards and practices through common core. The biggest affect the common core has had on social studies is through the literacy standards, and the implementation of authentic intellectual work could increase the rigor, as well as student engagement in the social studies classroom. We also studied the National Assessment of Educational Progress which is a national report of student progress over time. Researchers argue that students who engage in authentic intellectual work show an increase in their standardized test scores. Therefore, students can only benefit from authentic intellectual work if implemented and assessed correctly. Since authentic intellectual work provides students with the opportunity to present information in a variety of

John Dewey’s Progressive Learning Theory is defined as any various reformist educational philosophies and methodologies since the late 1800s, applied especially to elementary schools, that reject the rote recitation and strict discipline of traditional, single classroom teaching, favoring instead more stimulation of the individual pupil as well as group discussion, more informality in the classroom, a broader curriculum, and use of laboratories, gymnasiums, etc. in the school. It is essentially an umbrella theory for many theories that have contributed to what is known as, Progressive Education.

During the early twentieth century in the United States of America there were several national reform movements that comprise the Progressive Era. There are a few different varieties of Progressivism that focused on receiving governmental aid in improving American life. Individuals involved in the reforms associated themselves as Progressives and focused on issues such as education, labor matters, inequality, women’s rights, and political and government corruption. The impact of education on the American youth in the early twentieth century was based on methods to produce useful American citizens. Progressives struggled to extend school programs to include realistic components into the education young children should receive.

During the Industrial Revolution, America became industrial, machinery, factories, and mass production, and shortly after, progressivism (1890-1920) began. Progressivism was a period of social activism and political reforms across the United States of America. Progressivism purpose was to eliminate the corruption in the government that the Industrial Revolution had caused. A lot of change, reforms, and laws were made during this period. Food regulations, prohibition laws, labor laws, and women suffrage was huge issues during the Progressive Era. The pictures support progressivism because progressivism was all about changing the United States, and some ways they did that was with child labor laws and women suffrage and the pictures show that

Many Americans are affected by education. Almost everyone knows others that regularly participate in public education through jobs, siblings, grandchildren and the large percentage of the nation’s youth attending school. In The New York Times Newspaper an article appeared on April 20, 2012 expresses concerns related to standardized testing. Standardized testing is used in The article was written by Clara Needle Hollander a teacher at a public middle school in Manhattan.

Standardized testing had only been added to America’s public education curriculum when “the common school movement began in earnest in the 1830s in New England as reformers… began to argue successfully for a greater government role in the schooling of all children” (“Common School”). “By 1845 in the United States, public education advocate Horace Mann was calling for standardized essay testing” (Mathews), because he believed that “political stability and social harmony depended on universal education” (“Common School”), and that these tests would help teachers “find and replicate the best teaching methods so that all children could have equal opportunities” (Gershon). There weren’t any other well known attempts at standardized testing until “the College Entrance Examination Board—… or SAT—began in the 1920s” (Gershon). Later “in the 1960s, the federal government started pushing new achievement tests designed to evaluate instructional methods and schools” (Gershon), because the Cold War “fueled a space race and increased pressure on U.S. schools to show improvement” (Mathews). However, it wasn’t “until the mid-1970s, when the College Board revealed that average SAT scores had been falling since 1963” (Mathews), that the country realized “public school standards were too low” (Mathews). This is the reason why “Congress created the National Assessment Governing Board” (Mathews), an organization which ”established new standards for the National Assessment of Educational

Standardized testing began back in the mid-nineteenth century, when a man Horace Mann introduced the idea of using standardized testing in Boston schools to gain, “objective information about the quality of teaching and learning in urban schools, monitor the quality of instruction, and compare schools and teachers within each school” (Gallagher, p.85). The tests showcased the differences in student’s knowledge and in turn, more testing was put into effect to make reliable conclusions to a students progress. Since Mann’s exams were so positively

Possibly one of the most critical issues the nation is faced with is public education in the United States. One time declaring the United States as a “Nation at Risk”, the educational commissions started to carry out one reform policy after another. With attempts to improve education, there have been reformers have modified class sizes, graduation requirements have been revised, and standardized testing implemented. Proponents of the policy feel that America’s public education system has improved, children are receiving the best instruction from the most qualified teachers, because of the increase in funding students receive extra help and parents now have a choice in what is best for their students education.

Throughout education there are six main philosophies to take into consideration, and they are as followed. From a teacher centered classroom approach they include Essentialism, Behaviorism, and lastly Positivism. In a student centered classroom approach they are Progressivism, Humanism, and Constructivism. What do these terms mean? Essentialism is and educational philosophy that there is a common core of information and skills that an educated person must have. Behaviorism is a psychological theory and educational philosophy that asserts that behaviors represent the essence of a person and that all behaviors can be explained. A person acts the way they do for a reason. Finally positivism is a social theory and educational philosophy that limits truth and knowledge to what is observed and measured. These are all important for a teacher to take into consideration. Progressivism is an educational philosophy that emphasizes that ideas should be tested by experiments and that learning is better developed in questions developed by the learner. Humanism is an

Reflecting on past education reform movements, particularly the Sputnik era education reform movement reveals several keys to successful reform. These keys include, but are not limited to, a shared political and economic goal, clear competitor, metaphor, timeline, symbol, and legislative support. The shared goal or contemporary vision of the Sputnik era education reform movement was framed around sending a man to the moon and returning him safely. This large, understandable, and goal specific challenge was spurred by the USSR’s launching of the Sputnik satellite (Bybee, 2013). While the contemporary Sputnik moment remains “poor levels of achievement on national and international assessments, these issues are not major events perpetrated by

Alfie Kohn is an educator that pedagogically aligns his method of instruction with progressive education. What is progressive education? In the attempt to explain what a progressive education embodies, we must first observe the traditional approaches to education. For example, in a traditional educational setting, the teacher is the ultimate leader in the classroom. The teacher controls classroom expectations, sets rigid curriculum many times disconnected to the lived experiences of the students in the classroom, and positions a learning system in which students robotically memorize information for the sole of testing where information is merely to be regurgitated. In a couple of weeks, if days after, students do not retain this information because it lacks meaning, connection, and relevancy. Students are not able to connect to the information that they have just learned. So, we should ask ourselves, “Are our students learning for the love of learning, or learning for the purpose of testing?” Alfie Kohn in, “Progressive Education Why It’s Hard to Beat, But Also Hard to Find,” conveys progressive education as “the thoughtful school practices that include hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships.” A progressive education includes having collaborating activities with students to be able to learn from and which each other. In order to prepare our students in the 21st century, we must teach about becoming more globally conscious about the

John Dewey is known as leader of the progressive movement in the history of the American education system and his book, Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education, could be used as a textbook to teach the foundations of the movement. Discrediting all previous educational and philosophic approaches as intellectually incomplete or inaccurate, Dewey first presents a new perspective on the nature of knowledge, education, society and philosophy. One fundamental theme of Dewey’s progressive movement is that education is growth and that growth is, in and of itself, the objective. Rejecting any notion of innate knowledge or of an ideal goal to strive for, the progressive