SUBJECT: - NURSING EDUCATION

CLASS PRESENTATION
ON

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY

PRESENTED TO PRESENTED BY
Mrs. MANJU GUPTA RAJU RAM PARIHAR
Lecturer M.Sc. Nursing (Previous)
Govt. College Of Nursing, Jaipur Batch – 2010-11
JOHN DEWEY (1859 TO 1952)
(The Father of Modern Experiential Education)
 JOHN DEWEY'S BIOGRAPHY

 John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859, the third of four sons born to
Archibald Sprague Dewey and Lucina Artemesia Rich of Burlington, Vermont,
USA.
 He was graduated from the University of Vermont, in 1879.
 Dewey received his Ph.D. from the School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins
University.
 In 1884, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Michigan (1884–1894)
 In 1894, Dewey followed Tufts to the recently founded University of Chicago. It
was during his years at Chicago that Dewey’s early idealism gave way to an
empirically based theory of knowledge that was in concert with the then
developing American school of thought known as pragmatism.
 In 1904, Dewey’s resignation from his post at Chicago due to disagreements with
the administration and joins the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University
and spent the rest of his professional life at Columbia.
 Most popular publications are –
o "Democracy and Education" (1916)
o "Logic: The Theory of Inquiry" (1938)
o "Experience and Education" (1938).
 He had a profound impact on progressive education, and Rejected authoritarian
teaching methods.
 He lectured all over the world and prepared educational surveys for Turkey,
Mexico, and the Soviet Union.
 Dewey continued to work vigorously throughout his retirement until his death on
June 2, 1952, at the age of 92 year.
 Dewey continued to work vigorously throughout his retirement until his death on
June 2, 1952, at the age of 92 year.
 EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY

“I belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that
all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.”

INTRODUCTION

John Dewey believed that learning was active and schooling unnecessarily long
and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school to do things and live in a
community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity to
contribute to society. For example, Dewey believed that students should be involved
in real-life tasks and challenges:

 Math’s could be learnt via learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how
long it would take to get from one place to another.
 History could be learnt by experiencing how people lived, geography, what the
climate was like, and how plants and animals grew, were important subjects.

Dewey's education philosophy helped for the development and expansion of

"experiential education”.

DEWEY’S PHILOSHOPY “EEXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION”

Dewey is lauded as the greatest educational thinker of the 20th century. His
theory of experience continues to be much read and discussed not only within
education, but also in psychology and philosophy. Dewey's views continue to strongly
influence the design of innovative educational approaches, such as in outdoor
education, adult training, and experiential therapies.

Dewey became the champion, or philosophical father of experiential education

or as it was then referred to, “progressive education”. Dewey proposed that education
be designed on the basis of a theory of experience. We must understand the nature of
how humans have the experiences they do, in order to design effective education.

According to Dewey “Education is the process of living through the continuous

reconstruction of experiences. It is the development of all those capacities in the
individual which will enable him to control his environment and fulfill his
possibilities.”

Dewey said that an educator must take into account the unique differences
between each student. Each person is different genetically and in terms of past
experiences. Even when a standard curriculum is presented using established
pedagogical methods, each student will have a different quality of experience. Thus,
teaching and curriculum must be designed in ways that allow for such individual
differences.

Dewey polarizes two extremes in education -- traditional and progressive

education.

The paradigm war still goes on -- on the one hand, relatively structured,
disciplined, ordered, didactic tradition education vs. relatively unstructured, free,
student-directed progressive education.

Dewey criticizes traditional education for lacking in holistic understanding of

students and designing curricula overly focused on content rather than content and
process which is judged by its contribution to the well-being of individuals and
society.

On the other hand, progressive education is too reactionary and takes a free
approach. Freedom for the sake of freedom is a weak philosophy of education.
Dewey argues that we must move beyond this paradigm war, and to do that we need a
theory of experience.

Dewey's theory of experience rested on two central tenets - continuity and

interaction.
 Continuity is that each experience a person has will influence his/her future, for
better or for worse. Interaction refers to the situational influence on one's experience.
In other words, one's present experience is a function of the interaction between one's
past experiences and the present situation. For example, my experience of a lesson
will depend on how the teacher arranges and facilitates the lesson, as well my past
experience of similar lessons and teachers.

Dewey argues that educators must first understand the nature of human
experience. This is important for educators to understand that they can't control
students' past experiences but they can try to understand those past experiences so that
better educational situations can be presented to the students. Ultimately, all a teacher
has control over is the design of the present situation. The teacher with good insight
into the effects of past experiences which students bring with them better enables the
teacher to provide quality education which is relevant and meaningful for the students.

According to Dewey, education also a broader social purpose, this was to help
people become more effective members of democratic society. Dewey argued that the
one-way delivery style of authoritarian schooling does not provide a good model for
life in democratic society. Instead, students need educational experiences which
enable them to become valued, equal, and responsible members of society.

Therefore, the Educators are responsible for providing students with

experiences which enable the students to contribute to society For this, an educator
should set or organized the subject matter in a way that it takes accounts of students
past experiences, and then provides them with experiences which will help to open up,
rather than shut down. Then only students can contribute to society.

Throughout, there is a strong emphasis on the subjective quality of a student's

experience and the necessity for the teacher of understanding the students past
experiences in order to effectively design a sequence of liberating educational
experiences to allow the person to fulfill their potential as a member of society.
CONCLUSION

The john Dewey was given the emphasis on the learning that takes place by
facing the real life situations rather than a structured and traditional curriculum. He
believed that students should be given freedom but he was also critical of completely
"free, student-driven" education because students often don't know how to structure
their own learning experiences for maximum benefit. According to him the education
should be such that which fulfills the individual goal of the student and should also
contribute to society.

IMPACT ON MY LIFE

I am impressed by the philosophy of Dewey based on experimental education

because i also believe in active learning and experimental education and i will adopt it
to some extent in my life because i am also a future educator of India. So by adopting
this philosophy i can become a good educator and enables my student to fulfill his
individual need and also enable him to contribute to the society, which was the actual
goal of education according to John Dewey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. John Dewey: Philosophy of Education. “The Father of Modern Experiential

Education”
http://wilderdom.com/experiential/johndeweyphilosophyeducation.html.
2. 500 Word Summary of Dewey’s “Experience & Education”
http://www.wilderdom.com/experiential/SummaryJohnDeweyExperienceEducatio
n.html.
3. The Philosophy of John Dewey http://www.radicalacademy.com/phildewey.htm
4. John Dewey: Philosophy and Education (1858-1952)

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/projects/centcat/centcats/fac/facch08_01.html
5. The Educational Theory of John Dewey (1859-1952).

P
http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Dewey.html
6. John Dewey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey