Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

John Dewey 69
York City and the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University, where he remained until
his retirement in 1929.
Though known to many in education as the “father of progressivism,” it was as a philosopher
and psychologist that Dewey first gained widespread recognition. At Chicago and Columbia, and
even following his retirement, however, he was deeply involved in a variety of social, educational,
and political undertakings, becoming in many ways as much a social activist as a philosopher.
While still in Chicago, alongside his innovative work with the Laboratory School at the University
of Chicago, he was also active in a number of social causes. Perhaps most notable among these
was his work with Jane Addams in conducting the affairs of Hull House. Hull House was a
settlement house for those, including immigrants, dislocated by the rapid social, industrial, and
technological changes of the era.
Following his move to New York, Dewey became a founder member and the first President of
the American Association of University Professors in 1915. In addition, he was a charter member
of the Teachers Union (TU) in New York City and later the New York Teachers Guild. Dewey
was also active in the “outlawry of war” movement after the World War I. He held office in a
number of civic organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and he helped found
the New School for Social Research. During the 1920s he lectured in countries around the world
including China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey. In 1937 he traveled to Mexico City while
serving as the chairman of the commission of inquiry into the charges brought against Leon
Trotsky.
To know of these varied practical involvements by Dewey aids in understanding a fundamental
feature of his thought in philosophy, psychology, and education, namely, the interplay of thought
and action, of experience and reflection, of science and philosophy, of education and psychology. It
also explains why Dewey’s thought has come to be seen today as contributing to a serious critique
of contemporary psychological theory in education. In educational terms these aspects of his
approach were exemplified in the Laboratory School at Chicago. The teachers in the Laboratory
School were charged with the continuous search for more effective ways of teaching. Here ideas
and theories from psychology and philosophy were put into action to assess their effectiveness
and reliability in improving schooling. Following observation and further reflection, refinements
could be made and educational reform placed on a more scientific footing. This interplay between
the scientific method and human cognition as Dewey perceived it is the central focus of his book,
How We Think. In this book he is concerned with coming to understand the complete act of
thought and he envisions the book as a sort of guide to understanding how we come to know. By
contrast with the educational psychology of his time, Dewey strongly believed that individuals
come to understand the world they encounter in a unique way. As Joe Kincheloe notes in
Rethinking Intelligence, Dewey realized that only in relation to “lived context can individuals
aspire to cognitive growth because higher thinking always references some lived context.” As a
basic philosophical stance, he believed that to remove context was to remove relevance. School,
therefore, must be of relevance to the child’s present day life, and school activities should connect
to the everyday needs and actions of the students. For school to disconnect prior experience
and daily life from the classroom, he believed, was to render school in many ways useless. His
characterization of how we think also reveals how Dewey placed great faith in the capacity of
human beings to think and reason.
Of all his practical involvements, however, Dewey’s interest in and association with the progressive
education movement is the one that most impacted his work as an educational theorist.
Although he was never an official spokesman for the movement, and on occasion felt compelled
to point out the errors of its ways—most notably in the publication of Experience and Education
in 1937—he was often associated in the public’s mind with many of the movement’s weaknesses
and excesses. Interestingly, in the judgment of historians he is generally held in high esteem.