Loving Learning: How Progressive Education Can Save America's Schools

Loving Learning: How Progressive Education Can Save America's Schools PDF Author: Tom Little
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393246175
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Noted educator Tom Little and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Katherine Ellison reveal the home-grown solution to turning American students into life-long learners. The longtime head of Park Day School, Tom Little embarked on a tour of 43 progressive schools across the country. In this book, his life’s work, he interweaves his teaching experience, the knowledge he gleaned from his trip, and the history of Progressive Education. As Little and Katherine Ellison reveal, these educators and schools invigorate learning and promote inquisitiveness by allowing the curriculum to grow organically out of children's questions—whether they lead to studying the senses, working on a farm, or re-creating a desert ecosystem in the classroom. We see curious students draw on information across disciplines to think in imaginative yet practical ways, like in a "Mini-Maker Faire" or designing and building a chair from scratch. Becoming good citizens was another of Little's goals. He believed in the need for students to learn how to become advocates for themselves, from setting rules on the playground to engaging in issues of social justice in the wider community. Using the philosophy of Progressive Education, schools can prepare students to shape a vibrant future in the arts and sciences for themselves and the nation.

I Learn from Children

I Learn from Children PDF Author: Caroline Pratt
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802192157
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
The memoir of an innovative American educator and the remarkable school she built—“a lucid presentation of what progressive education can accomplish” (The New York Times). Over a century ago, American educator Caroline Pratt created an innovative school that fosters creativity and independent thought by asking the provocative question: “Was it unreasonable to try to fit the school to the child, rather than . . . the child to the school?” A strong-willed small-town schoolteacher who ran a one-room schoolhouse by the time she was seventeen, Pratt came to viscerally reject the teaching methods of her day, which often featured a long-winded teacher at the front of the room and rows of miserable children sitting on benches nailed to the floor. In this “persuasive presentation of progressive education,” Pratt recounts how she founded what is now the dynamic City and Country School in New York City, invented the “unit blocks” that have become a staple in classrooms around the globe, and played an important role in reimagining preschool and primary-school education in ways that are essential for the tumultuously creative time we live in today (Kirkus Reviews).

Race and the Origins of Progressive Education, 1880–1929

Race and the Origins of Progressive Education, 1880–1929 PDF Author: Thomas D. Fallace
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807773778
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
This penetrating historical study traces the rise and fall of the theory of recapitulation and its enduring influence on American education. Inherently ethnocentric and racist, the theory of recapitulation was pervasive in the social sciences at the turn of the 20th century when early progressive educators uncritically adopted its basic tenets. The theory pointed to the West as the developmental endpoint of history and depicted people of color as ontologically less developed than their white counterparts. Building on cutting-edge scholarship, this is the first major study to trace the racial worldviews of key progressive thinkers, such as Colonel Francis W. Parker, John Dewey, Charles Judd, William Bagley, and many others. Chapter Summaries: “Roots” traces the intellectual context from which the new, child-centered education emerged.“Recapitulation” explains how racially segregated schools were justified and a differentiated curriculum was rationalized.“Reform” explores some of the most successful early progressive educational reforms, as well as the contents of children’s literature and popular textbooks.“Racism” documents the constancy of the idea of racial hierarchy among progressive educators, such as Edward Thorndike, G. Stanley Hall, and William Bagley.“Relativity” documents how scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter Woodson, Horace Kallen, and Randolph Bourne outlined a new inclusive ideology of cultural pluralism, but overlooked the cultural relativism of anthropologist Franz Boas.“Refashioning,” examines the enduring effects of recapitulation on education, such as child-centered teaching and the deficit approach to students of color. “For American scholars, 'progressive education' is something of a talisman: we all give it ritual worship, but we rarely question its origins or premises. By contrast, race has become perhaps the dominant theme in contemporary educational studies. In this bold and brilliant study, Thomas Fallace uses our present-day racial lens to critique our historic dogmas about progressive education. We might not like what we see, but we should not look away.” —Jonathan Zimmerman, New York University “This is an important and provocative book. Fallace provides a thoughtful analysis of how race influenced the foundational ideas of progressive educators in America. He has made an important contribution to the history of curriculum and educational reform.” —William B. Stanley, Professor , Curriculum and Instruction, Monmouth University

First, Do No Harm

First, Do No Harm PDF Author: Steve Nelson
Publisher: People & Society
ISBN: 9781942146483
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk develops a comprehensive argument for the importance of progressive education in light of the world's increasingly severe challenges. Current educational practices, particularly in the United States, instill conformity and compliance at a time when authority must be challenged, skepticism must thrive and our students must be imaginative, creative, empathic and passionately alive. Steve Nelson traces the origins of progressive education and cites the rich history and inarguable science behind progressive practices. He argues that a traditional or conventional approach to education has dominated as a matter of political expediency, not good practice, and he provides an unsparing critique of current policy and practice, particularly the excesses of contemporary education reform. Using anecdotes from his many years as an educational leader, he makes the case in an engaging, colorful and accessible style. In the final chapter, Nelson offers a Bill of Educational Rights, hoping teachers, parents and all citizens will demand a more joyful, constructive and loving education for the children in their care.

The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries

The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries PDF Author: Gerard Guthrie
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400718519
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This book provides a provocative but carefully argued addition to the theory and practice of education in developing countries. The book provides an ethical and empirical justification for support of formalistic teaching in primary and secondary schools in developing countries. It also refutes the application of progressive education principles to curriculum and pre- and in-service teacher education in such contexts. The central focus of this book is the formalistic teaching prevalent in the classrooms of many developing countries. Formalistic (‘teacher-centred’, ‘traditional’, ‘didactic’, ‘pedagogic’) teaching is appropriate in the many countries with revelatory epistemologies, unpopular and old-fashioned though these methods may seem in some western, especially Anglophone, ones. Formalism has been the object of many failed progressive curriculum and teacher education reforms in developing countries for some 50 years.

The Schools Our Children Deserve

The Schools Our Children Deserve PDF Author: Alfie Kohn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618083459
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.

The Promise and Failure of Progressive Education

The Promise and Failure of Progressive Education PDF Author: Norman Dale Norris
Publisher: R&L Education
ISBN: 9781578861156
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The progressive ideology and methods are clearly the prominent choice in our schools today. In generic, layman's terms, Norman Dale Norris discusses how the progressive movement came about and how the ideas are practiced today, some of which are less than desirable. Norris is sympathetic and supportive of the progressive ideology and offers suggestions for success.

Free School Teaching

Free School Teaching PDF Author: Kristan Accles Morrison
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791479870
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Chronicles the author’s personal and professional journey within the American educational system.

Critical Curriculum Leadership

Critical Curriculum Leadership PDF Author: Rose M. Ylimaki
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136853774
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Although traditional curriculum and instructional leadership frameworks have dominated educational administration training for almost thirty years, it has become increasingly clear that even the most recent frameworks have failed today’s leaders who struggle with the politics of curriculum decisions on a daily basis. Critical Curriculum Leadership is an examination of curriculum leadership in the wake of U.S. testing mandates and school reforms, all of which seem to support a particular set of conservative ideologies. Drawing from her own longitudinal ethnographic study and from existing literature and research in the field, Ylimaki explores the formation of curriculum leadership in relation to broader cultural and political shifts. She shows how traditional leadership frameworks have come up short, and makes the case for an alternative leadership theory at the intersection of educational leadership and curriculum studies. She provides analytical tools that inspire progressive education and offers critical theories, strategies, research examples, problem-posing cases, and research ideas essential for curriculum leadership in the present conservative era. Critical Curriculum Leadership will appeal to the many educational leadership scholars and practitioners who are interested in developing effective and socially just curricula in their schools and districts as well as curriculum scholars who are interested in leadership issues.

A Progressive Education?

A Progressive Education? PDF Author: Laura Tisdall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781526174567
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Progressive Education? argues that the period after WWII witnessed a fundamental transformation in concepts of childhood and adolescence in England and Wales.