AERA Monday: Deweyan Perspectives on Teaching and Teacher Education

SIG-John Dewey Society

Scheduled Time: Mon, Apr 11 - 2:15pm - 4:00pm, Building/Room: Hilton Montreal
Bonaventure / Montreal Ballroom, Section Outremont

David T. Hansen dth2006@columbia.edu Columbia
University Chair

• Democracy in Education (strongest book on education. Dewey's favorite.  A
  tome alongside of Plato's Republic and Rousseu's _________


• knowledge, ethics
  and values with learning, society, etc.


• Dewey suggests
  US is "nominally" a democracy. true democracy
  is always in progress.

Gary D. Fenstermacher, University of Michigan -- Democracy
in Education

• salience of student as (active agent) learner is central in with Dewey.


• not
  a Dewey scholar, barely a student


• Dewey: student's privilege to learn, in Ch. 6 critique of Herbert.


• formation of morals through native acquisition


• we lose sight of how and why students learn (agency of student)


• ch 18 "how shall the individual be rendered...?"


• any approach that separates the student from society ... corrodes the potential
  to be gained.


• (Nell Noddings' Caring) student as passive

Naoko Saito, University of Tokyo --"Growth or Perfectionism:
Dewey after Emerson"

• Dewey's notion of Growth critiqued after Ralph Waldo Emerson's Moral Perfectionism


• "Growth for what?"


• based on anti-foundationalism (rejection of a fixed foundation)


• David Hanson




• moral traits of person


• indirect teaching (environment teaches)


• teacher's role   




• and Nell Noddings




• communal self: school as community of order, with children as members


• notion of "home": kids educated with school pushing centrality
  of home




• criteria of standards for measuring growth




• "the widening of the area of shared concerns..."


• "when others are not doing what we would like them to do..."




• Presence of Emerson in Dewey is not specific, but felt.


• Ch. 5 "growing is growth; developing is development"


• Emerson says perfection has no fixed ends, but is a process; it is inseparable
  from democracy.


• Emerson's notion of circles: "our lives are an apprenticeship to truth"


• the circle goes beyond the self. continuity.


• Emerson also anti-foundationalist.-- "finding is founding" (establishing)
  -- a continual  and recurring occurrence.


• Who is Kabel? whoever he is, he looks at Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey...


• Emerson's "gleam of light" (cited by Dewey in Construction...)(1934)


• the moment of discontinuity, impulse,


• moral ≠ good character or patriotic character.


• loss, uncertainty, bottomlessness. Destabilizing the familiar and being
  okay with it.


• Emerson's transcendence

Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Brandeis University --"Having
to say something is a very different matter from having something to say" (from
How We Think)

• aim of each educative process is to add a capacity for growth. (ability
  to cope with future) (not draining the pond, not building an island, but
  teaching to swim/float is the goal)


• teacher training vs. teacher preparation


• 3 evils:




• children live in present, but education prepares for future


• [missed it]


• education postpones "serious work" it'd be cool if education
  was in the present and dealt with "serious work"




• seeing teacher education as an end rather than a means is dangerous (this
  is the same with any education, right?)


•  Dewey's concept of Ed as reconstruction or reorganization of knowledge: "the
  direct transformation of qualitative life"


• Def of Education: "that reconstruction or reorganization of experience
  that ..."


• Experience as Active and Passive phenomena: "A child sees a flame
  and reaches for it...gets burned"


• thinking occurs when things are uncertain or doubtful




• sensing the problem


• [missed]


• act of experimental ideas




• Ideas are calls for action


• aims, means, acting with an aim is acting intelligently


• teacher candidates do not bring an inquiring disposition to their own education
  (why not? because most students don't, because they aren't taught themselves)
  Teachers and pre-service teachers feel that they need to be "master
  of the craft" (expertise)


• animating and vitalizing educational principles: don't learn "what
  works" but "what motivates"


• Dewey argues against individual lesson plans (specific trees), but prefers
  lesson sequences (general forest)


• teachers need to be able to size up situations


• use what they know about individual student's learning styles to adjust
  lessons


• operate experimentally, interactively


• we need to create moments of uncertainty in order to promote thinking

Jerry Sturich, Boston College, Ethical Leadership, Building
an Ethical School -- "Democracy in Education Revisited"

• works with school administrators


• why do you do what you do, and how do you explain it? and if you can't
  say it with some strength of passion, then you don't belong in a leadership
  position.


• culture of individual agency (want to get the job done)


• democracy is individuals that join together as a group to find their potential
  as individuals. (individual in society)