Herbart's general pedagogy is the representative of traditional pedagogy, which marks the formation of normative pedagogy. He was the first to put forward that in order to make pedagogy a science, ethics and psychology must be the theoretical basis of pedagogy, that is, teaching theory should be based on psychology and moral education should be based on ethics. Herbart is most famous for his "four-stage teaching method", that is, teaching can be carried out through four steps: clarity, combination, system and method. Later, his students developed it into a "five-stage teaching method": clarity, combination, system, method and application. Herbart emphasizes the transmission of systematic knowledge, the role of classroom teaching, the importance of teaching materials and the central position of teachers, which forms the characteristics of traditional education "teacher-centered, teaching materials-centered and classroom-centered".

Dewey is the main representative of pragmatic pedagogy. He once wrote Democracy and Education. Dewey summarized the essence of education as "education is growth", "education is life" and "education is the transformation of experience". The purpose of education is to make students grow continuously. He advocated "learning by doing" in teaching, and formed a teaching idea of taking children as the center, taking active courses and learning by doing.

The ideological differences between Herbart and Dewey are reflected in three different centers: Herbart emphasizes teacher center, classroom center and book center, while Dewey emphasizes children center, activity center and activity operation center.

These two teaching theories have their own advantages and disadvantages, and neither can go to extremes. In the current educational reform in our country, we should try our best to integrate these two teaching theories, absorb their respective advantages, abandon their shortcomings, and make education develop in a rational direction.