Progressive and Traditional Models of Education

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Progressive and Traditional Models of Education

• John Dewey and Robert Hutchins

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• Wait! Lets look at the first paragraph.
• (Can you find any irony in it?)

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• Educational theorists are caught in binary and
  oppositional thinking about traditional and
  progressive education. (John Dewey)

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Traditional Educational Model

• The subject matter of education consists of
  bodies of information and the school is to
  transmit them to the new generation.
• Moral training consists of forming habits of
  action in conformity with the rules and standards
  of conduct developed in the past.
• The general pattern of relations of pupils to
  each other and to the teachers constitutes the
  school as a kind of institution sharply marked
  off from other social institutions.

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Traditional Aims

• Purpose of education is to prepare the young for
  future responsibilities and for success in life,
  by means of acquisition of the organized bodies
  of information and prepared forms of skill which
  make up the material of instruction.

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Progressive Model Dimensions

• Cultivation of expression and individuality (as
  opossed to imposition from above)
• Free activity (external discipline)
• Learning through experience (learning from texts
  and teachers)
• Acquisition of skills and techniques as means of
  attaining ends which make sense to the child (by
  drill)
• Make the most of real-life opportunities
  (preparation for a remote future)
• Acquaintance with a changing world (static aims
  and materials)

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Progressive Aims

• Progress (in education) is not in the succession
  of studies but in the development of new
  attitudes towards, and new interests in,
  experience. ... education must be conceived as a
  continuing reconstruction of experience the
  process and the goal of education are one and the
  same thing. To set up any end outside of
  education, as furnishing its goal and standard,
  is to deprive the educational process of much of
  its meaning, and tends to make us rely on false
  and external stimuli in dealing with the child.

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Progressive Aims Continued

• There is nothing to which growth is relative save
  more growth there is nothing to which education
  is subordinate save more education. The
  educational process has no end beyond itself - it
  is its own end.

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• The way that schooling is organized, the content
  of the curriculum, and the pedagogical methods
  are radically different in strict versions of the
  models.

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Progressive and Traditional Education
ModelsQuiz

• Thanks to Commonwealth Education Organization
  http//www.ceopa.org/

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• Identify whether each statement would likely
  belong to the Progressive Model or the
  Traditional Model.

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Teachers Role

• 1. Academic instructor, source of knowledge, and
  authority figure

• 2. Facilitator, counselor, and mentor

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Instruction

• 3. Direct instruction by teacher in homogeneous
  groups

• 4. Self-directed learning, discovery learning,
  and cooperative work in heterogeneous groups

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Students Role

• 5. learn what the teacher teaches
• 6. discover what they learn
• 7. focus on learning, feelings, and opinions

• 8. act as peer mediators, tutors and counselors
• 9. focus on intellectual, factual learning

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Curriculum

• 10. balance academic and social concerns
• 11. focus on academic areas with facts, ideas,
  and skills

• 12. concerned with students higher order
  thinking

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Reading

• 13. Whole-language

• 14. Phonics

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Mathematics

• 15. Interactive and discovery learning fuzzy
  math
• 16. Rejects memorization
• 17. prefers drill and skill

• 18. Direct Instruction of math concepts

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Social Studies

• 19. Focus on diversity, multiculturalism, and
  global citizenship

• 20. Focus on American heritage, national
  sovereignty, and cross-cultural studies

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Outcomes

• 21. Emphasis on academic skills in traditional
  core areas
• 22. Outcomes measured subjectively

• 23. Emphasis on the whole child approach that
  blends psychological, social and cultural
  well-being of the child
• 24. Outcomes measured objectively

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Slogans

• Learn by doing!
• Learn the cannon.

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• 14. Traditional
• 15. Progressive
• 16. Progressive
• 17. Traditional
• 18. Traditional
• 19. Progressive
• 20. Traditional
• 21. Traditional
• 22. Progressive
• Progressive
• 24. Traditional
• 25. Progressive
• 26. Traditional

• Traditional
• Progressive
• Traditional
• Progressive
• Traditional
• Progressive
• Progressive
• Progressive
• Traditional
• Progressive
• 11. Traditional
• 12. Progressive
• 13. Progressive