As I was reading Dewey and finding myself at home in his writing, I began to think about how his "ideas" are sometimes "utilized" in education. Like the other theorists we have read this quarter, it appears that pieces of his writing are often taken out of context and applied in a way that is counterproductive to the rest of his message.
A little story to explain. In undergrad I took a class about "mind and body" going to school - exploring the need to connect the mind and the body in educational exploration. However, as I look back on the experiences my classmates and I created, these "active learning" lessons were devoid of the children's interests... so in a way, while they incorporated movement (i.e., the body), they were not born out of the social life of the school community -so how were we really capitalizing on the whole idea of experience, thinking and learning? Our work was tied back to Dewey (among others), but I'm left here wondering what we created... and ultimately, the value in teacher training as it is currently structured. To create "lessons" in isolation, is not to take advantage of the all the knowledge (the data) of the particular classroom and group of students with who you wish to work - then how can your really be "thinking" in this endeavor, you could not begin to predict or for hypotheses about how your work with them will flow?
This misunderstanding of Dewey has really been one of the things that has led his educational theory falling out of favor. Many people believe Dewey is child centered in his educational approach, but really he is not. As a matter of fact as I think about it more he is not really "centered" anywhere because that suggests that education is in some way a place, rather than a process. I think that Dewey believe in a type of education that can be be thought of as branching, that there is no linear, central way to understand how we learn, it is instead a non-linear problem solving approach, directly based on the real world in which members of a community, with teacher as a facilitator, offer possible solutions. The key is, always is, figuring out which one of these branches of thinking to follow to give you the best possible solution. These branches of thinking comes from interest, by following something that is important to you. It is as easy as this - we tend not to think very much about things that don't interest us. We tend to be generally thoughtless. So easy and yet for some reason so difficult to comprehend.
ReplyDeleteI misunderstood that Dewey is child centered as well. He believed the importance of individual's interest and psychological structures in education so I thought that it is came from child-centered idea. It is still confusing and can we talk more about non-linear approach in the class?
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