Dewey's core view on education can be summarized as three sentences:
Education is life, education is growth and education is experience.
Characteristics of Dewey's research:
1. Multidisciplinary perspective: 1885, Dewey published his first educational paper. From the beginning, he did not study education in isolation, but tried to integrate pedagogy, psychology and philosophy. From 65438 to 0894, he was hired as the department head of philosophy, psychology and education at the University of Chicago, 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 make his research on educational issues have a high academic starting point. Dewey's educational theory has been quite deep and extensive since its formation.
3. Concern for social problems: Dewey's educational theory was formed in the 1990s of 19, which was a 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 fit children's own lives, meet their needs and interests, make the campus a paradise for children instead of a cage and prison, and let children have fun in real school life.
(2) School life should adapt to the social life outside school and 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 has to do is to make school life the intersection of children's life and social life, and let education 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 make school a society that conforms to 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 activity courses representing social life is the basic guarantee for the connection between school and 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 the requirements of 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 children should be respected but not indulged.
The concept of children's development embodied in "education is growth" is also the embodiment 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, and it is also conducive to the realization of social goals. However, Dewey not only regards the full growth of children as a means and tool to achieve social goals, but also 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) overcomes the opposition between experience and reason.
(2) Broaden the extension of experience: experience is no longer regarded as sensory function and perceptual knowledge, but a kind of behavior and action, which includes the function of knowledge, but also the joys and sorrows, ups and downs. It is no longer only related to cognition, but also includes rational and irrational factors such as cognition, emotion and will. Students learn through experience, and learn by doing, not only learn knowledge, but also experience becomes the carrier of children's development and growth in all aspects, forming ability and morality. 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 empirical principle: 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 educational process. In addition, it is very important to provide external conditions in the process of experience. 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 essentially the same, and the process of life, growth and experience (transformation) is a process.
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