EDTHP 115 3/31/03

1. EDTHP 1153/31/03 This week: Wednesday: Suet-ling Pong Exam #2 on Friday Next week: Mindy Kornhaber on Monday Jackie Stefkovich—read court cases on student rights, limitations placed on police, teachers, administrators, and schools Next few weeks: How do we provide and “Equal Educational Opportunity”? How do we improve Instructional Practices?

2. Today: Democracy & Education • Images of Schools and Classrooms • Dewey, Democracy, and Schooling • What worked and what did not • The promise of the American common school—how to maintain that promise • Do schools equalize opportunity? From the common school to Coleman • The challenge of individualism • Other perspectives: Conservatism, Critical Theory, Revisionism, Critical Pedagogy

3. Images of Schools and Classrooms • Facilities • Classrooms • Organization • Health • Diversity • New Problems and Crises • What should students be taught, how should teachers teach, and how should students learn?

4. Dewey, Democracy, and Schooling • The questions (and some answers) for educators over the past 100 years: • How do we educate students large numbers of students? • Individualized education vs. mass education • Activity based learning • New Teaching Methods • Tracking

5. Dewey, Democracy, and Schooling(con’t.) • What should students learn and how do we prepare them for a changing society? • Some answers: • Differentiated curriculum • Vocational education • Guidance and counseling • Technology • Rigorous academic curriculum • Problem-based learning • Standards

6. Dewey, Democracy, and Schooling(con’t.) 3. How should teachers teach? • Follow curriculum established by local administrators • Create own curriculum • Follow curriculum set by the state

7. Dewey, Democracy, and Schooling(con’t.) What did Dewey mean when he talked about democracy and education? • Opposed to old approach—led to docility, receptivity, obedience, and to the imposition of adult standards. Learning was seen as static and lifeless. Preparation for a remote future. Old education could be mis-educative (pp. 18-19, 25).

8. Dewey (con’t.) 2. Democracy and true progressive education • Not “planless improvisation” (28) • Clear philosophy of education necessary (28) and education must delve into the roots of the past (29, 77) • Educators must find ways “for doing consciously and deliberately what ‘nature’ accomplishes in the earlier years” (74) • Problems are the stimulus to thinking. Educators must do two things: • That the problem grows out of current experience and that it is within the range of capacity of students • It arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas (79)

9. Dewey (con’t.) • No one course of study for all progressive schools (78) • However, subject-matter very important • This new approach viewed students as citizens—and teachers as professionals and intellectuals • “the road of the new education is not an easier one to follow than the old road but a more strenuous and difficult one” (90)

10. What worked and what didn’t • Dewey very hard to translate into practice • Administrative Progressives offered clear organizational charts, curriculum plans, tests, etc.