John Dewey

John Dewey was an American philosopher and educational reformer whose pragmatism treated experience, inquiry, democracy, and active learning as central to human life.

Pragmatism: A philosophical tradition that evaluates ideas through their practical consequences and role in inquiry. Dewey made pragmatism a broad account of experience, knowledge, and democratic life.
Progressive education: An educational movement emphasizing active learning, student interests, and learning through experience. Dewey became one of its most influential theorists and advocates.
Democracy and Education: John Dewey’s 1916 book arguing that democracy is both a form of social life and an educational ideal. It is his fullest account of how education sustains democratic communities.
Essentialism (education): An educational philosophy that emphasizes a common core of knowledge and disciplined instruction. Its fixed curricular priorities contrast with Dewey’s emphasis on inquiry arising from experience.
Experience: The ongoing interaction of organisms with their environments, including what they undergo and do. Dewey treated experience as the starting point for learning and thought.
Laboratory School: A University of Chicago school founded by Dewey and his collaborators in 1896 to test educational ideas. Its activities put Dewey’s theories of learning by doing into practice.
The Public and Its Problems: John Dewey’s 1927 book on how publics form and how democratic institutions can address shared consequences. It extends his educational concern with communication into a theory of democratic politics.
Perennialism: An educational philosophy centered on enduring ideas and classic works considered essential to intellectual development. Dewey challenged curricula organized chiefly around inherited bodies of knowledge.
Inquiry: A disciplined process of transforming an uncertain situation into one with more settled understanding. For Dewey, inquiry begins in doubt and tests ideas through action.
Learning by doing: An educational approach in which learners develop understanding through purposeful activity and reflection. Dewey connected meaningful learning with action followed by reflection on its consequences.

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