First, the philosophical basis of Dewey's educational thought
To understand the thinking mode of Dewey's educational philosophy, we must understand the ideological origin of Dewey's educational philosophy. Theoretical circles have a relatively consistent view on the ideological origin of Dewey's educational philosophy, namely Hegel's theory, evolution theory and pragmatism. Hegel's theory is the original ideological source of Dewey's educational philosophy; Empirical naturalism based on evolution theory constitutes the core concept of Dewey's educational philosophy; Pragmatism is the most direct ideological source of Dewey's educational philosophy. Under its influence, Dewey gradually became the most outstanding representative of pragmatism.
1 Hegel's absolute spirit and the influence of dialectics
Dewey came into contact with German Hegelian philosophy under the influence of famous American Hegelian experts Tory, Harris, George, Morris and others at that time, and was deeply attracted by it. Hegel's concept of absolute spirit and dialectical thought had an important influence on Dewey's way of thinking. Professor Zhao Xianglin believes that "Hegel's idealistic philosophy has left an indelible mark on his thoughts, and dialectical factors pervade his works", and we can see his Hegelian dialectical reasoning everywhere. Dewey himself admitted: "My early philosophical research was an intellectual aerobics. Hegel's unity of subject and object, matter and spirit, god and man is not only an intellectual formula, but also a great release and freedom. Hegel's exposition of human culture, social system and art also contains a unified thought, which has a special appeal to me. " Hegel's pursuit of unity, as a profound and urgent desire, inspired and helped Dewey to find a way to oppose the dualism of traditional philosophy, which is different from rational metaphysics. Dewey developed Hegel's idea of "absolute spiritual unity" into an absolute "empirical unity" and established the concept of unity of opposites with reference to Hegel's "dialectical intuition" thought, thus dispelling traditional experience and rationality, subject and object, matter and spirit, knowledge and action, means and means. This constitutes an important ideological source of Dewey's holistic thinking mode of educational philosophy.
2 the influence of evolutionary thought
From 65438 to 0859, Darwin's Origin of Species was officially published, which dealt a heavy blow to the theory of species invariance and creationism, caused a fundamental change in people's world outlook and had a far-reaching impact on Dewey's thought. When Dewey recalled his college life, he mentioned that he was particularly interested in a physiology course based on a book by Huxley, from which he learned the concept of an interdependent and interrelated unity. This interdependent and interrelated concept provided guidance for his previous academic activities from the way of thinking. In addition, Dewey also carefully studied Darwin's immortal masterpiece "The Origin of Species" and wrote a book called "Darwin and Its Influence". Under the influence of the theory of evolution, Dewey transcended the traditional philosophy's pursuit of eternal, pre-existing ultimate truth, put himself in the ever-changing human life, and put forward the viewpoint that organisms must have continuous interaction with the environment in order to survive, and this interaction is experience, which includes positive actions and the consequences of actions. This kind of experience makes the subject and object of cognition, organism and environment, experience and nature become an inseparable unity. On this basis, Dewey constructed his empirical naturalism thought and his social (evolutionary) "reformist" political philosophy.
3 the influence of pragmatic philosophy
Pragmatism directly influenced Dewey's thought and made him move from Hegel's absolutism to experimentalism. The famous representatives of pragmatism, Pierce and James, helped Dewey complete this ideological transformation. Dewey was deeply influenced by Peirce's lecture on logic when he was studying for his doctorate at Hopkins University. In the aspect of belief theory, Peirce put forward a set of exploration theory of "doubt-belief". Peirce believes that the methodological significance of pragmatism lies in helping people make assumptions, explore, get rid of doubts and determine beliefs. On this basis, Dewey put forward the famous five-step thinking method. Dewey publicly stated that this thought was "a free translation of Peirce's viewpoint".
James has a greater influence on Dewey's thought. Recalling James's influence, Dewey said: "As far as I can find, a factor that can be specifically pointed out and give my thoughts a new direction and nature can be regarded as James's influence." On the basis of predecessors, James put forward thorough empiricism, "stream of consciousness" theory and pragmatic view of truth. James's thorough empiricism combines scattered experiences into a unified whole, making the whole object world a unified and pure experience world. When describing the characteristics of pure experience, he summarized it as an eternal and continuous "stream of consciousness". On this basis, Dewey defined experience as the interaction between organism and environment, which maintained the integrity, variability and continuity of James's experience and emphasized that experience is an activity process, not a spiritual thing. In the view of truth, James believes that effectiveness, usefulness and success are the fundamental signs of truth. He said: "an idea,' useful because it is true' or' true because it is useful', these two sentences have the same meaning." Truth is useful, and usefulness is truth. Dewey inherited and surpassed James' thought, proposed to test the validity of truth through the effect of behavior, and then put forward his instrumentalism theory.
Second, the thinking mode analysis of Dewey's educational philosophy
Dewey's educational philosophy inherits and develops the relevant thoughts of Hegel's theory, evolution and pragmatism, insists on absolute empiricism, regards experience as an inseparable experience unity of the interaction between organisms and the environment, and combines dialectics, evolution, pragmatism and modern psychology to form his unique way of thinking about the world.
1 holistic thinking
Dewey absorbed the essence of Hegel's thought of "absolute spiritual unity", the thought of "interdependence and interrelated unity" of evolution and James' thought of "pure empirical unity", and formed his thinking mode of system holism, which was used to reject any form of binary opposition and either-or thinking mode in philosophy. This is reflected in his understanding of the wholeness of life and children. Dewey believes that children's life is complete, so children's life cannot be opposed to adults' life, nor can children's school life be separated from social life. His idea of "education is life" is to build a bridge between children's social life and school life. Dewey said: "Schools must present the present life for children-that is, a real and energetic life. For example, the life he experienced at home, neighbor's house and playground. " Only in this way can children's experience become a "continuous and complete life", thus maintaining the continuity of development. At the same time, Dewey criticized the traditional psychological classification of children's psychological machinery according to feelings, movements, concepts and emotions. He believes that traditional psychology denies the integrity of organisms and the interaction of various functions, and the typical performance in education is the separation of body and mind. Children's mind is regarded as a purely rational and cognitive factor, while active body organs are regarded as an irrelevant and interfering material factor. The bad consequences are: on the one hand, sports activities become sports activities that are far away from the interference of students' homework or are used by machinery, and students cannot get educational experience; On the other hand, "mind" and direct homework are separated, and students can only get fragmentary and fragmented "knowledge", regardless of the relationships and connections between things. "It is these relationships that enable us to understand the meaning."
Dewey believes that traditional education is full of this kind of thinking mode of binary separation that ignores children's integrity, such as the opposition between individuals and society. In "My Education Credo" published by 1897, Dewey wrote: "I think the educated individual is the social individual. And society is an organic combination of many individuals. If we take social factors away from children, we will only have an abstract thing left; If we give up personal factors from the social aspect, we will only have a rigid and lifeless collective. " It can be seen that Dewey opposes the binary philosophy of either/or in the relationship between children and society. On the relationship between children and curriculum, Dewey also pointed out that "subject-centered theory" and "child-centered theory" set a gap between children and subjects, which made them oppose each other. Subject-centered theory makes children obey different subjects, and the experience of children's complete unity is dismembered; The child-centered theory is satisfied with the spontaneous impulse of children's interests and abilities, excludes the training of children's minds, and also hinders children's development. He warned us: "If we don't firmly treat all the factors of education as a whole, we can only see various conflicting terms." He investigated the relationship between children and curriculum from the perspective of system as a whole, and wisely concluded: "We realize that children and curriculum are only the two poles of a single process. Just as two points form a straight line, children's current views and the facts and truths that constitute various subjects constitute teaching. From children's current experience to the truth of organized system, that is, the progress of various disciplines we talk about, is a process of continuous transformation. "
In Dewey's educational philosophy, he discussed the relationship between school and society, experience and education, knowledge and practice, interest and training, teaching materials and methods, labor and leisure, body and mind, purpose and means with the same thinking mode of system holism, and eliminated the binary opposition between them, thus surpassing the traditional thinking mode of binary opposition and either-or. At the same time, Dewey unified subject and object, experience and nature, material and spirit with an all-encompassing concept of "experience", and formed his complete natural empiricism educational philosophy system.
2 process thinking
Dewey inherited the concepts of variability and continuity from the biological evolution theory and James's "stream of consciousness" theory, and always looked at the world with the concept of process. He pointed out many times: "I think education is a process of life, not preparation for future life." His thoughts of "no purpose beyond education", "education is growth" and "education is the reorganization and transformation of experience" actually emphasize the process of education and regard education as the process of children's sustainable development, life and growth. "No purpose outside education" does not mean that education has no purpose or no purpose, but opposes pre-existing, fixed and unattainable purposes. The purpose of education is constantly generated in the process of education, and the transformation of life, growth and experience all occur simultaneously in this process. As a process, education is to create conditions for children's development, to ensure that children constantly transform and reorganize their own experiences, and to achieve sustained growth.
In addition, Dewey's process thinking is also reflected in his interpretation of the essence of experience, thinking and knowledge. When talking about the understanding of experience, Dewey believes that experience "includes not only what people do, what they encounter, what they pursue, what they love, what they believe and what they insist on, but also how people exercise, how they are echoed, how they operate, how they encounter, how they desire and enjoy, and the way they watch, believe and imagine-in short, the process of experience." In this way, "experience is first of all a process of experience, a process of experiencing something, a process of encounter and passion, an emotional process-in the original sense of these words ... in other words, experience is nothing more than doing and meeting at the same time." From here, we can clearly understand Dewey's fascination and admiration for the process. Everything is produced and exists as a process and activity.
When discussing thinking, Dewey thinks that thinking is produced in uncertain, doubtful, confused and troublesome situations, and thinking always tends to a certain situation. Therefore, thinking is a process of inquiry, observation and investigation. In this process, the result is always secondary, and it is a means of exploring action. Dole, a famous American curriculum expert, quoted two paragraphs from Dewey's How We Think in his masterpiece Postmodern Curriculum View: "Practical thinking is a process ... as long as one thinks, it is constantly changing." "The real problem of intellectual education is to transform natural ability into expert and measurable ability: to transform more or less random curiosity and scattered enlightenment into observation, caution and complete inquiry attitude." Professor Dole believes that these two paragraphs typically express Dewey's "process theory" curriculum philosophy.
Dewey also expressed his process thinking when discussing his knowledge view. He believes: "knowledge is the result of turning a problematic situation into a situation to solve the problem through operation." The word "knowledge" has both positive and negative meanings. Knowledge refers to both operation or behavior, that is, the process of cognition, and the result, that is, the content of cognition. "Visible, in Dewey's view, knowledge is not fixed, it is not only a process of inquiry, but also a result of inquiry and the starting point of another inquiry process. Knowledge is not something we take for granted, decide, confirm and wait for students to accept. It always needs to be re-examined, re-tested and reconfirmed. So in Dewey's view, knowledge is the process of inquiry. As American scholar Fox said: "When we understand Dewey's answer to what knowledge is, it is important for us to remember that this question is meaningless except the process. "
3 Practical thinking
Dewey's educational philosophy is based on his practice, and paying attention to practice is his consistent philosophical belief. Dewey has always expressed an idea in his classic book The Change of Philosophy. Philosophy is not imagined in the minds of philosophers, and philosophy must find its own growth point in the profound changes and crises of science, politics, religion and industry. Traditional philosophy is far away from people's life and practice because of the philosopher's meditation, lacking a practical attitude and having no guiding significance to people's life. Therefore, traditional philosophy must be reformed and philosophy must have a practical attitude. "It must present the essence of practice; It must be effective and experimental. " The method of transformation is practice, which is the experimental method advocated by Dewey. He believes that any philosophy must be tested by practice. He said: "Any concept, theory and system, no matter how exquisite and solid, must be regarded as a hypothesis. They should be regarded as the basis of verification actions, not the end of actions ... They are tools. Like all tools, their value lies not in themselves, but in the efficacy they can produce. "
Dewey also expressed his process thinking when discussing his knowledge view. He believes: "knowledge is the result of turning a problematic situation into a situation to solve the problem through operation." The word "knowledge" has both positive and negative meanings. Knowledge refers to both operation or behavior, that is, the process of cognition, and the result, that is, the content of cognition. "Visible, in Dewey's view, knowledge is not fixed, it is not only a process of inquiry, but also a result of inquiry and the starting point of another inquiry process. Knowledge is not something we take for granted, decide, confirm and wait for students to accept. It always needs to be re-examined, re-tested and reconfirmed. So in Dewey's view, knowledge is the process of inquiry. As American scholar Fox said: "When we understand Dewey's answer to what knowledge is, it is important for us to remember that this question is meaningless except the process. "
Dewey criticized traditional philosophers for thinking and acquiring knowledge in the way of onlookers watching a complete picture, rather than in the way of painters painting. Therefore, Dewey regards "learning by doing" as an important source of knowledge for students. He said, "I think the real center of school subjects is not science, literature, history or geography, but children's own social activities", because "epistemology must come from practice, and practice is the most successful way to acquire knowledge". Meanwhile. Dewey believes that not only does knowledge come from practice, but also the meaning and value of knowledge are reflected in practice. He said: "Atoms, molecules, chemical formulas and mathematical propositions in physical research all have the value of knowledge at first, but only indirectly have the value of experience ... Their meanings can only be learned through application ... Only through their work and taking them as part of the method of acquiring knowledge can we understand their meanings." If the existing knowledge has nothing to do with the actions of individual actors, then this knowledge is meaningless to individual actors. Only when knowledge plays a role in practice, empirical activities and reflective thinking can it reflect its significance and value.
4 Relationship thinking
A remarkable feature of Dewey's empirical naturalism education philosophy is that he always grasps the holistic understanding of things in the dynamic relationship of things and in the process of interdependence and interaction of things. This is reflected in Dewey's understanding of "experience". He believes that experience is the process and result of the interaction between organism and environment, and the so-called experience is to discover and establish the connection between things. For example, he said: "For a child, just putting his finger in the flame is not an experience;" When this action is related to the pain he suffered, it is experience. Dewey put forward two principles of "continuity" and "interaction" for his "experience", and expounded the universal relationship between things from vertical and horizontal dimensions. It can be said that the core and foundation of Dewey's educational philosophy is "experience", and the core and foundation of "experience" is to grasp the "interdependent and interrelated vertical and horizontal relationship" of things. His educational philosophy is discussed in this way of thinking. For example, in Democracy and Education, Dewey first discussed that "education is the need of life" in this way of thinking, and clarified that education is first and foremost the relationship between people from both vertical and horizontal angles. From a vertical perspective, Dewey pointed out that education is the need of intergenerational continuity between individual members of society and a continuous relationship; Dewey pointed out from a horizontal perspective that education is the need for society to communicate in order to survive, and communication is the interactive relationship between individuals and society and other members of society. In the second chapter of Democracy and Education, Dewey put forward that "education is the function of society" and discussed the relationship between people and environment in education. And education is carried out in this complex relationship between man (society), man and nature, and man and self. Dewey's dialectical exposition of this relationship can be found everywhere in his educational philosophy works, such as "school and society", "experience and education", "children and curriculum", "interest and training", "labor and leisure", "individual and the world" and "education and occupation". This fully embodies Dewey's thinking mode of grasping the integrity of things in the dynamic relationship of things and in the process of interdependence, interconnection and interaction of things.
Thirdly, the enlightenment of Dewey's thinking mode of educational philosophy.
The author believes that Dewey's educational philosophy not only provides us with his brilliant educational thoughts, but also provides us with a thinking method to understand educational activities and educational phenomena, that is, in the dynamic relationship of things, in the process of interdependence and interaction of things, we can realize the overall grasp of things in practice. This way of thinking can help us to clarify many theoretical ambiguities and deviations in practice. For example, the curriculum reform of basic education is being vigorously carried out. It can be said that from the start of the basic education curriculum reform to the present, there have been many different voices, and there have been many heated debates during the period. Experts and scholars from all walks of life are unable to agree on this and have different opinions. So how should we treat the curriculum reform? What kind of thinking mode should theorists hold when they speak out about the problems in reform? I think Dewey provides us with a good way of thinking.
The curriculum reform of 1 should have a holistic thinking.
The so-called holistic thinking of curriculum reform means that, conceptually, we must have a complete understanding and comprehensive grasp of the background, scheme and concept of curriculum reform; In behavior, we should coordinate all kinds of factors that affect the reform. At present, there are many misunderstandings and behavioral deviations about the new curriculum, most of which are caused by the incomplete understanding of the new curriculum. For example, some people think that the new curriculum emphasizes that practical activities are "ignoring knowledge" and "returning teaching to life", which is the original reproduction of life, and that the learning method of autonomy, cooperation and inquiry is a complete denial of traditional teaching methods. Some people even think that curriculum reform is to overthrow all traditions, or that curriculum reform is to change a set of teaching books and so on. These are the manifestations of traditional binary opposition and linear thinking mode, so we don't fully understand and understand the new curriculum as a whole. Therefore, we must fully understand the concept, objectives, content, structure, implementation, evaluation and management of the new curriculum as a whole.
There is also a lack of holistic thinking in the implementation of the new curriculum. "For example, in the process of promoting the new curriculum reform, we constantly try to promote the curriculum reform by solving a series of' keys'. The key to curriculum reform lies in the change of ideas, and the key to curriculum reform lies in teachers. The key to curriculum reform lies in evaluation reform, and the key to curriculum reform lies in school culture and so on. " However, what is the "key" in the new curriculum reform? In practice, all regions and schools often pay attention to and attach importance to only one "key" according to their own understanding, so that the reform often fails to make substantial progress. This so-called "key" thinking is actually a mechanical reductionist thinking with separated elements, lacking the concept of overall coordination. In fact, the renewal of ideas, teacher training, evaluation reform, cultural reconstruction, system reform and government investment are all indispensable factors in the curriculum reform chain. Without any link, the curriculum reform will be hindered. Therefore, we need not only to pay attention to some "keys", but also to have the concept of overall coordination, and have a clear understanding and grasp of every factor in the curriculum reform chain, so as to carry out overall layout, overall coordination and optimal allocation, and promote the comprehensive, coordinated and steady development of curriculum reform.
2 Curriculum reform needs process thinking
In the process of curriculum reform, we often hear such a voice, that is, "Is the curriculum reform a success or a failure?" According to this thinking logic, is "successful curriculum reform" the end of curriculum reform? This is actually a pre-formed way of thinking, which sets a fixed standard for reform in advance. But in fact there is no such fixed standard, because change is a dynamic and complicated process. As Michael Fulan, a famous Canadian scholar, said, "Change is nonlinear and full of uncertainty." "Planned change (for educators) is not the result of comprehensive strategic development. In fact, it is only a paragraph in the sequence of changes. " The Outline of Basic Education Curriculum Reform (Trial) is only the starting point of curriculum reform, not the end point. The whole curriculum reform is a process of continuous progress and facing the future, and it is also a process of gradually improving, enriching and perfecting education. It has a beginning, but no end. In fact, the revision of the curriculum of various subjects in the compulsory education stage promoted by the Ministry of Education also shows that the curriculum reform is a long-term process of continuous improvement and gradual improvement. We can't categorically deny the legitimacy and rationality of curriculum reform just because there are some problems.
3 Curriculum reform needs practical thinking
Curriculum reform is produced on the basis of practice, and its ultimate realization must also be implemented in practice. First of all, educational theorists and educational administrative departments should have a sense of practice, go deep into practice and understand practice. However, many theoretical workers and educational administrative departments lack attention to practice, and think that it is enough to set up several programs and issue a number of documents for curriculum reform. However, how effective has the curriculum reform been since the beginning? What are the problems? What are the experiences and lessons? Wait, lack of clear understanding. The education administrative department and relevant experts lack necessary guidance, monitoring, investigation and reflection on the practical process of curriculum reform, which is also an important reason why many front-line teachers have doubts and confusion about curriculum reform.
Secondly, schools and teachers should have a sense of practice and take the initiative to explore and practice. Because curriculum reform is a process of dynamic generation and continuous innovation, as the front-line schools and teachers, they should not expect a perfect operating procedure or model for curriculum reform. Professor Shi Ou believes: "Curriculum reform is not a model, nor is it the object of copying by painters, but an attempt and innovation in development, a practice that pays attention to the all-round and individual development of students and the development of all students." Therefore, each of us should have the sense of participation and practical spirit in curriculum reform, and realize the diversified development and continuous innovation of curriculum reform in participation and practice.
4 Curriculum reform needs relational thinking
In the attitude towards curriculum reform, there are people who agree, criticize, question and even oppose it. All these are inevitable in the course reform. If you only hear the one-sided voice, it just shows the existence of the reform crisis. But the problem now is that some critics and supporters have not exchanged views on this issue in a sincere manner. Mutual accusations and personal attacks are not the attitude of reform. As Michael Fulan said, "Problems are our friends, because only by going deep into the problems can we come up with creative solutions. The problem is a more satisfactory way to achieve deeper changes. " Therefore, we must look at the different voices in the reform from the perspective of relational thinking. Support and criticism are both essential factors in the reform.