Dewey's core view on education can be summarized in three sentences:
Education is life, education is growth, and education is experience.
Characteristics of Dewey's research:
1. Multidisciplinary perspective: In 1885, Dewey published his first educational paper. From the beginning, he did not study education in isolation, but tried to integrate education, psychology and philosophy. In 1894, he was employed by the University of Chicago as the head of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology and Education, teaching philosophy, ethics, psychology and other courses, and paying more attention to studying education from a multidisciplinary perspective.
2. High starting point: Dewey's profound theoretical accomplishment and various academic interests have enabled him to have a high academic starting point in his research on educational issues, which has enabled Dewey's educational theory to have considerable depth and breadth since its formation.
3. Concern for social problems: Dewey's educational theory was formed in the 199s, and this period was the historical watershed of American social change.
Education is a process of life, and school is a form of social life.
The ideal school life should be:
(1) School life should be compatible with children's own lives, meet children's needs and interests, make the campus a paradise for children instead of cages and prisons, and make children have fun in real school life.
(2) School life should be compatible with social life outside the school, adapt to the changing trend of modern society and become an important force to promote social development. Campus should not be a paradise, but should actively participate in social life.
what Dewey wants to do is to make school life a meeting point between children's life and social life, so that education can meet the needs of children and society at the same time.
School is society, which aims to make school life a selected, purified and ideal social life, and to make school a society in line with the embryonic form of children's development.
"School is society" is a further extension of the proposition that "education is life", and the introduction of active courses representing social life is the basic guarantee to link schools with social life. From "education is life" to "school is society" and then to curriculum reform ("learning by doing"), it is progressive step by step.
Get rid of things that suppress and hinder children's free development, and make all education and teaching meet children's psychological development level, interests and needs.
Growth is the result of interaction between organism and external environment, internal conditions and external conditions, and it is a continuous socialization process. In particular, it is an important difference between Dewey and progressive education practice that he demands respect for children but does not agree to indulge them.
The concept of children's development embodied in "education is growth" is also a reflection of Dewey's democratic ideal. Respecting the characteristics of children's physical and mental development is an important condition for children's full growth and development, which is also conducive to the achievement of social goals. However, Dewey not only regards the full growth of children as a means and tool to achieve social goals, but he believes that the full growth of children is itself a requirement of democracy.
"experience" is an important concept in the history of western philosophy, and Dewey reformed it.
(1) Overcome the opposition between experience and reason.
(2) It broadens the extension of experience: experience is no longer regarded as sensory function and perceptual knowledge, but as a kind of behavior and action, which contains the function of knowledge, but also the joys and sorrows, ups and downs. It is no longer only related to cognition, but also rational and irrational factors such as cognition, emotion and will. Students learn from experience and learning by doing, not only learn knowledge, but also experience becomes the carrier of children's development and growth in all aspects, forming ability and moral character. It is not only the accumulation of knowledge, but the comprehensive transformation, development and growth of various factors that constitute people's body and mind.
(3) emphasize the initiative in the process of experience. Dewey believes that the principle of interaction is an important principle of experience: the interaction between the body and the environment. It is required to respect children's physical and mental development conditions and levels, care about children's interests, and improve children's enthusiasm and initiative in participating in the education process. In addition, it is very important to provide external conditions in the process of experience, and Dewey demanded that external conditions be improved to make the experience more educational.
the meanings of the three propositions "education is life", "education is growth" and "education is the transformation of experience" are the same in essence, and the process of life, growth and experience (transformation) is a process.
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