Experience is Pedagogical - John Dewey

John Dewey was a psychologist and philosopher when has had over the decades a profound effect on education. e championed informal learning within the formal education system. These points are taken from 'Experience is Pedagogical', first published in 1897. I present them here as not of historical interest only but helping us to reconstruct what education could become. Here, highly simplified:

Article 1, I believe Education is ...
the individual is a social being, society is an organity unity of individuals. Education must begin with individual capacities, interests and habits. The purpose of education is to improve society.

Article 2. What the school is...
a social institution, involved in a social process, a process of living today and not preparation for living in the future. Schools must represent real life, and grow out of family life. It must encourage children to participate in the process. School should be about personal growth. Examinations are only of use if they determine the potential role the child can play in community life.

Article 3. The curriculum. The child's own social experiences need to be the start of the curriculum. Subjects need to begin with ways in which they are experienced in everyday life.

Article 4. Methods. Only activity can deliver the various aspects of education and learning without dullness or sentimental emotionalism. For activities, interests can be observed.

Article 5. The School and Social Progress. Education needs to be a mechanism to achieve social progress. It should merge arts with sciences. The teachers need to recognise the dignity of their calling as helping to form a better society.

It will be interesting to map this against current educational provision.

Sample quotations from Experience & Education (1938), a lecture series which offers a mature synthesis of his ideas on education:

"basing education on personal experience may mean more multiplied and more intimate contacts between the mature and immature than ever existed in the traditional school, and consequently more, rather than less, guidance by others." [p.21]

"How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a potent agent in the appreciation of the living present?" [p.23]

"Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other. For some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting further experience. An experience may be such as to engender callousness; it may produce a lack of sensitivity and of responsiveness...
It is not enough to insist on the necessity of experience, nor even of activity within experience. Everything depends on the quality of the experience to be had... [It is the task of the educator] to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences." [pp.27-8]

"Every experience is a moving force. Its value can be judged only on the ground of what it moves towards and into" [p.38]

"When education is based upon experience and educative experience is seen as a social process, the situation changes radically. The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities." [p.59].

Powerful Learning

I am reminded, sorting through my papers, of a paper at BERA in Warwick in 2006 by Peggy Lee (peggy@power-ed.co.nz) from New Zealand. Based on interviews with primary and secondary children, she proposes ten principles of powerful learning:
1. Make learning fun
2. Trust us to choose who we work with some of the time.
3. We need to make some choices about what we learn so we can work on things that interest us.
4. Let us walk around when we are learning. Silent static kids are not necessarily learning best.
5. Learning needs to be hands-on, doing things, even teaching things to others.
6. Using technology helps me - we done use computers enough or properly
7. Let us know how we are doing and how to make better progress.
8. We like to set some learning goals for ourselves.
9. Give us time to do things properly, and don't waste it by repeating over complicated instructions.
10. Make learning more real, going out more, meeting people and linking with children around the world. Learning needs to be communal.

A powerful conclusion is to involve children and young people in their own learning and schooling, and make sure they have a proper voice.
Peggy adds: I have continued to work with these ideas and am currently leading a NZ Ministry of Education project working in 10 rural schools looking at student decision-making: teachers and student views and practices. Our revised curriculum here has allowed this kind of investigation with a focus on ‘key competencies for learning’. I am also working in four other primary/middle schools helping with strategic planning, curriculum & assessment practices and implementing the new key competencies for learning.