Reflection 17

Planning a unit and lesson takes time but the way that I would approach is the same way when creating a webquest. The first thing is looking for ideas as to what is the theme of the unit; in the webquest I used Cells. Once the theme is selected I begin to find out what is that I want the students to learn from the theme; in the webquest that I did I wanted them to learn not only what cells are but the impacts that they have on our everyday life. After the theme was chosen, the subjects that will be used in the unit would be selected. Then find out how long it would take to teach the unit. With the use of technology the internet is full of good resources; online field trips, activities, etc. that can be used when thinking about what to use in the unit.
The hardest part of planning a unit is picking a theme and what you want each student to learn, after that everything else is easy. The rest requires that the teacher has good planning skill and also a good prior knowledge activity, so that the teacher knows where each student is at. Homework should be used to reinforce what the student has learned; also transition from subject to subject should be smooth. The activities that are selected or created should be based on the skill that students have and also teamwork would be used. This is how I have approach when making a unit plan based on how the experience that I had when making a webquest.

Reflection 16

Jerome Bruner was very influenced by many writers including Lev Vygotsky, which eventually led to his intrapersonal focus on the lack of attention that was given to political and social context. As he continued his work he became an important part to the cognitive revolution, which led to his 1996 book called “The Culture of Education.” Now when looking at his work there were certain points that not only began to influence how Social Studies were taught in school but education all together. The way that education should be seen is as process. The process is based on four themes: role of structure in learning by making it central to learning, readiness for learning, analytical and intuitive thinking, and motives for learning. When looking at the first theme, Bruner want for education to be view as a structure instead of just mastering facts and techniques. Second theme focuses on how schools spend more time on what are important areas that should be taught so that it won’t be too difficult for students to learn, this is where the spiral curriculum comes in so that education should be used to revisit basic ideas and continue to build on them until the student has fully understands. In the third theme Bruner states that analytical and intuitive thinking are neglected because of the lack of conditioning. And the fourth theme is about getting the student to participate in the process so that he/she begins to think for him/herself and not so much in getting him/her to commit to education. Bruner believes that culture should be a part of education because it is through culture that the minds are shaped because it not only shapes the world but also us.

Reflection 15

History is not present in the elementary curriculum and personally it should be, but it should not be the center of the social studies curriculum. History along with all the other sections of social studies are important part of the curriculum, the main purpose of social studies is to provide students with enough knowledge to make good decisions. According to Mead, he views history, anthropology and other categories important to the curriculum. In a way all the subjects found in the social studies parameter are in one way or another connected to each other, humanities and history are almost the same except that humanities focuses on arts and the culture while history focuses on the development of a civilization.
The problem is not whether the elementary students will be able to understand or have conceptual abstract but if the teacher uses effective strategies to teach the subject that the students in will be able to learn history. The learning depends on the skills of the teacher, personally even if the students in elementary do not have history as a subject history should still be taught because it is everywhere. One finds history in geography, humanities, etc. it is all about how well the teacher can integrate history to her unit. But like I mentioned earlier I do not think that it should be at the center of the curriculum, the teachers should find a way to incorporate it to the lesson so that the students are able to make a connections.

Quiz 6

Reflection 14

Mr. Bennish was Colorado teacher that was having a class discussion about the speech that President Bush made when addressing the state of union. He compare some of the comments made by President Bush to those that Hitler said, one of the students recorded the discussion and presented to his parent. When the parent heard he was very upset so he contacted the school principal. The principal heard the recording and place the teacher on administrative leave until the school board completed an investigation. But from the whole situation the reason the student was upset was because the teacher had only given one point of view of the situation and he did not provided students a balance and fair discussion.
Now looking at the national social studies standards the teacher did not provide the student with a balance point of view but just stated what his opinion was. The reason for social studies is to provide students with reliable unbiased knowledge so that the students can make their own personal opinion about the situation. Social studies is to provide the students with various knowledge so that they can become an active citizen, the consequence to Mr. Bennish comments is that some of the students are not really given the opportunity to make their own decision about the discussion. The teacher could of approach this discussion some other way, but as the student that made the complaint said that the students were just going to take what the teacher said as if they were facts and not an opinion.

Quiz 5

Reflection 13

The balance approach is when both the whole language and phonics are used in a classroom to teach children to read. During the past centuries teachers have been using either whole language approach or phonics approach to get the children to read but there has been a great debate for years about which one is better. The only problem is that both approaches have been used in various setting but the child reading still has been low. This has cause for teachers to use both strategies to teach students but so far there has still been no real drastic change and according to the article is stated that the balance approach is the mixing of both approaches but how is this accomplished accurately that depends on the teachers.
The most important part of this situation is to try to get the students to actually enjoy reading and not see it as something boring. Personally I have never been a big fan of reading because all the experiences that I have had has been bad, teachers would make me read stories that are boring and that I would have no connections to them. In a way the teachers should not put so much focus as to which of the two approaches is better but instead focus on the style that each child has to learn. Some students might learn by the balanced approached, while other from the whole language/ phonics approach or it can be from an approach that no one has really discovered yet. The focus of the teacher should be the students and not the approach. In the article it even stated that there has been research performed from the two approaches and neither has given much of positive results, so there can still be a better approach out there that has not been found. The research recommended that teachers should try to do something different or to look beyond those approaches that have been used.

Reflection 12

The main focus of the phonics instructions vs. whole language is that in the United States and many other countries use mainly the whole language instruction. The teachers are teaching mostly whole language instruction meaning that the child just follows along with the teachers and memorizes the sound of the word as a whole, instead of breaking down the sound of each letter. One of the controversies is that teaching phonics is boring and very repetitive to the students but with whole language the students is compelled to enjoy reading more because of the story that they read. At the same time both instruction are repetitive but one thing is what a child will do when they approach a word that is unfamiliar.
Emergent literacy is the beginning steps to become ready for conversations. The early signs of this process are when the child begins to babble or coos showing that they are trying to begin the conversation process. Emergent literacy involves speaking, writing, listening and reading. A generation ago parents were told by teachers that they need for the child to show signs of reading readiness before they begin to read to them, but today the parents are told to read to them from the moment that they are born so that when they start school they are ready or ahead in school.
Now looking at emergent literacy vs. reading readiness conversation the difference is that one is the beginning process while the other is when the child is ready for conversations. Comparing that to the whole language what I think is that parents if they read to their child for birth they would be already exposed to words as a whole so when they begin school they are able to be phonics to actually be able to break down the sound of each letter. The important part is that the child needs the support of both parents and teachers to be literate.

Reflection 11

In the article of McGlothlins, he looks at the acquisition of the first language of a child compare to that of an adult. He has heard of a theory that god gave children magic to learn languages but as they get older the magic runs out, so he begins to see if it is true or not. He uses one of his children and begins to write down every word that he learns till a certain age. And as the time passes he begins to notice that a child compare to an adult that is trying to learn a language has a lot of advantages that an adult does not, so it makes it easier for a child to learn. The child has an environment without pressure, time limit, and grammar. The child environment provides many opportunities to learn the language and the language is water down to their understanding. When the child is not interested in learning a word he/she just does not worry about learning the word, he/she focuses on their primary interest. The child is constantly repeating the word whether it is correct or not but the parents are not forcing the child to correct the word, instead the parents adjust to their words.
The experiment was very interesting seeing how his son from a certain age begins to develop language, but was not very scientific. There was only one child involved and it was his point of view of “normal” child. I agree with him in the fact that the environment and strategies used are important for both adult and children to have to learn a language, but it also has to do with the way the brain process. After a certain age the child stops using the Broca’s area of his/her brain to learn language and some scientist say that that is a reason why it’s easier for a child to acquire a second language because he/she is using the same to learn multiple languages. But I did enjoy a different perspective of language acquisition between adults and children.

Reflection 10

Integration of Language Arts is not often found in the curriculum and practices of teachers for various reasons. One of the reasons is that the teachers are unfamiliar and second is that curriculum is not supporting integration. First, when the teacher is not prepared for integrated curriculum this would make it difficult for them to do, because they don’t feel comfortable with the method or delivery they have never give. Personally some teacher are not going to step out of their comfort zone because the result is not known, they are afraid to try something new so they rather not try it at all then to get bad results.
Another reason is the way that public school curriculum is organized: there is little time to actually plan integration. In the United States the curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep, so the teachers have a lot of content to cover and not enough time to cover it in. The teachers are been discourage when they see the curriculum and the constraint on time to teach, so how are they to learn to integrated language arts, if they spend most of their time planning the curricular content.
The way that I see this lack of integration is that some teachers have not been trained to integrate curriculum. So many of the issues with integration can be solved by training and helping teacher see that integration of curriculum can be more effective than to not integrate. Another thing is that there are some teachers that no matter how much training they receive they refuse to try something new, one thing that I have learned is that the hardest people to work with are the one that refuse to try something different. So the best way is to teach pre-service teacher integration so that at from the beginning the teacher can know and understand what curriculum integration is, and some of the benefits to using curriculum integration.

Quiz 4

Reflection 9

In the article “Models of Integration” the author described three models for integrating curriculum which are: interdisciplinary, problem-based and theme-based models. The first model of integrated curriculum is the interdisciplinary model. In this model the subjects are broken into four sections: core subjects, foreign language, electives, and physical education. The core section is given to a team of four teachers that have about 110 students which they rotate throughout the day. The teachers have two hours of planning, one for common planning and the other for learn on their own. They can use the block in any way that they want, the advantages is that teachers work together, limited number of students and it supports traditional curriculum. Some of the disadvantage is that the teacher can continue to do the same thing without paying attention to integrated curriculum. This type of model is seen in secondary education.
The second model is the problem-based, this is the one that has at the center a technological problem and all the subjects or disciplines are used to solve the problem. The advantage of this integration is that is able to identify relevant and motivating problems but the model is hard to keep in the frameworks of the state and/or national standards. The third model is the theme-based education, in this model the connections of the state and national standards are easier to integrate in the curriculum. The only problem is that there are some cases that are almost impossible to connect the theme with the specific discipline, and the teachers can lead the students into an irrelevant topic. The three models still serve as a common factor that is to connect or integrate curriculum, the important part is that the students are able to work together to apply the knowledge in order to solve real life problems.

Reflection 8

The learner relevancy is to design a curriculum that meets the needs of the students. Since curriculum is applicable to the learners, the students need to be engaged by various means. One way is to combine the general content with specific. Second is to center curriculum to the students’ values, discoveries, thinking processes, experiences and culture. Third is by creating a curriculum that makes or creates learning situations that shifts learning into knowledge. The last one is by using the knowledge and applications to connect it to diverse problems, situations and contexts.
The importance of integrating curriculum is to as the basic question of teaching-learning paradigm. The focus would be to ask what students need to know and what are they going to be able to do? The integration of both school and work curriculum is going to influence the skills, information, how students will learn and transfer the skills/knowledge to real word situations/applications.
The way that I would answer the question is that the knowledge and skills that are been taught in schools should be able to transfer over to the real world. Curriculum needs to be focused more on the skills that the students will need instead of a lot of information that has no connections the real world. Personally I believe that a person should be cultured so that no matter where they go they are able to make knowledgeable decisions and conversations with other people.

Quiz 3

Reflection 7

In the article by Kathy Lake called Integrated Curriculum, she cited that Benjamin presented four trends that are relevant to integrating curriculum. They are as follow: global interdependence and interconnectedness of complex systems, increasing the pace and complexity in the twenty-first century, to expand the body of knowledge, and to have people use their knowledge of various fields in order to solve the problems of interrelated factors. The one major reason for trends is to help teachers because every school year they have more things added to the curriculum and not enough time to teach, the teachers feel like they are been pushed to different ways so this is one of the reasons they are motivated in order to push for integrated curriculum. The schools need to be pushed away from isolating subjects and move toward a more constructive view on learning which main focus is to teach in-depth knowledge of various subjects. All these view are taken from Piaget, Bruner, Dewey and other who have the same point of view because they are concerned with having the students understand the concepts and the structures.
The four trends involves integrated curriculum because it focus on making meaningful concepts and connections between subjects instead of having students memorize isolated facts. In a way the students will be able to not only understand material in depth but also have a broader sense. Making education more meaningful to the students will increase the success of the students because they are able to see the importance and how it relates to real life, so many of the students do not like school because they do not see how that they are learning is going to benefit them in the future. Like Benjamin stated there needs to be connections between school and real life situation, education needs to be more complex in order to keep up with the twenty-first century, and new discoveries are happening as we speak so knowledge needs to expand.

Reflection 6

In Kathy Lake’s article about Integrated Curriculum she provided with many different definitions and other information about the integration of curriculum. One of the definitions is the one that is given by Mr. Shoemaker which is that he defines integrated curriculum as subjects been brought together to teach various aspects of the curriculum. His view curriculum integration as a way of teaching students based on the way that is reflected on the real world. According to Shoemaker in the real world there is no single subjects when one does something let’s say goes groceries shopping the person does not only use math to find the cost but also other subjects such as reading, so he wants for education to be taught that same way. He also says that using integrated curriculum brings together all the different subjects so that the students are able to make a meaningful association and at the same time it is interactive for them.
Another definition given in the article is that of Mr. Dressel’s that looks beyond the connections of subject areas, he sees it as a way of creating something new in order to understand the world. He defines it as learning experiences that is planned to unify the students with knowledge that they share but also with pushing them and motivating them to create new relationships. The main focus is to get the students to develop the connections between the knowledge that they know and the one that they are learning so that they are able to created new systems, models, and/or structures.
One thing to see is that both definitions although from different point views still has some characteristics such as they both see that connections of various subjects are important to integrating curriculum. The only difference is that Mr. Shoemaker sees it the way that they introduce their definition.

Quiz 2

Reflection 5

Kleibald over seven decades has identified four interest groups that have been trying to take control of schools through curriculum. The first group is the Humanist group that believes that humans are different than any other creature, so that is when they decided to study the needs and interests of humans. In the humanistic view of education there are five objectives which are: to promote positive self-direction and independence, develop the ability to take responsibility for what is learned, develop creativity, curiosity, and an interest in the arts. The humanistic education intended to have from one to three of approaches which are to teach a variety of skills, a humane approach to education, and basic human concerns.

Second are the Developmentalists which as their name states were more focused on the development of the child in both emotional and behavioral qualities. They believed in using the development of the students as the source of the curriculum but the critics saw that the curriculum was been shaped by one factors instead of looking at all the relevant factors.

Third are the Social efficiency educators which wanted to design a curriculum that would allow for each individual to function in a society. They saw education as a way to control society and to test them in order to predict the impact the education has on society. Their educational views came from the efficiency of factories that would produce workers to work in factories but the people that opposed this curriculum believe that the social efficiency educators were pushing for focusing more on testing and separating the students based on their scores.

Fourth is Social meliorist view education as a way to reform society and to change it to a better one. They believed in the power of the individual and how to improve the person intelligence through education. They also believed that the future of the person was not based on their background, gender, social status or any other factor but the people that opposed view the social meliorist goals as something that is hard to measure and that the results would take too long to show.

Reflection 4

Important Personalities In The History Of American Curriculum

Charles William Eliot

1834-1926

He transformed a provincial college into the preeminent American research university. His main focus was the role of education in every aspect of national life and to find the relation between education and economic growth. He was offered an opportunity to enter the world of active business but he was more interested in science because science answered the questions of practical men, conferred knowledge, and power for those who use it. His educational vision combined the important elements of Unitarian and Emersonian ideas about developing character, framed by a pragmatic understanding of the role of higher education. He wrote an article named “The New Education” that not only focused on curriculum but the ultimate utility of education. He believed that a college education would give a student the ability to make intelligent decisions and choices.

Col. Francis W. Parker
1837-1902

Referred as “father of progressive education”. His main goals were: to mo the child to the center of the education process and to interrelate the several subjects such as a way to enhance the meaning to the child. He was committed to organizing schools as a democratic community and he also wanted to establish principle of teaching that derived from the principles of the mind.

Charles Sanders Peirce
1839-1914

A philosopher, mathematician and physicist. Founder of pragmatic movement in American philosophy. His main interest was logic where he developed the logic of relations. He also made an important contribution to other field of modern logic. He was especially interested in methodological procedures as evidence in laboratory science.

William James

1842-1910

He was an American psychologist and philosopher who wrote influential books on science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism.

G. Stanley Hall

1844-1924

Was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His main focus was on childhood development and evolutionary theory. He was instrumental in the development of educational psychology and attempted to determine the effect of adolescence has on education. He believed that pre-adolescent children are savage and rationalizing that reasoning was a waste of time for children. He also believed that open discussion and critical opinion were not to be tolerated and that students needed to be indoctrinated in order to save them from individualism that was damaging the American culture.



Ella Flagg Young

1845-1918

The assistant superintendent of schools in Chicago and later became a faculty member at the University of Chicago. She argued that both students and teachers found their capacity for independent thought diminished by a system that made little provision for it. During her career she led the Chicago schools through a period of change were industrialization rapidly dominated the economy and diverse new populations arrived. The school that she created that all teachers and administrators discussed curriculum and logistical matters.

Booker T Washington
1856-

Washington’s views on education were that he wanted for black in the south to value the need for industrial education from a vantage of American and African experience. He wanted for school to be more than just a place where people learn to read and write in English. He emphasized the importance of the industrial curriculum in the Tuskegee’s curriculum. He wanted for southern blacks to become farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses, sewing women, etc. so he increased over the years the trade skill classes offered.

Thorstein Veblen
1857-1929

He believed that technological developments would eventually lead toward a socialistic organization of economic affairs. His main focus was to teach economist the effects of social and cultural change on economic changes. He was the co-founder of the American school of institutional economics.

John Dewey
1859-1952

His areas of work included philosophy, psychology, education, politics, and social thought. He is considered to be a preeminent voice in American educational philosophy which is called “progressive education”. He believed that schools should teach students how to be problem-solvers by helping students to learn how to think instead of learning about large amount of information.

Jane Addams

1860-1935

The founder of Hull-House, which was located in the center of a poor immigrant Chicago neighborhood. The main purpose of the hull-house was to deliver a variety of programs that will help individuals improve their quality of life and for participatory action research. She believed in self-expression, learning to play, and active engagement.

George Herbert Mead

1863-1931

He was a major figure in the history of American philosophy and one of the founders of pragmatism. Mead’s theory of the emergence of mind and self out of the social process of significant communication has become the foundation of the symbolic interactionist school of sociology and social psychology. His significant contributions to the philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history and process philosophy.

Marietta Johnson

1864-1938

She was a teacher that founded the School of Organic Education to put in practice John Dewey’s book Schools of Tomorrow. She did not believe in examinations, homework and that any child should be allowed to fail. Her educational philosophy played an important role in the components of learning. The idea that started the revolution was “Children should be active in all their learning; in fact learning is a consequence and accompaniment of activity. Not only do we learn to do by doing, but all learning is through experience.”

WEB Dubois

1868-1963

An American civil rights activist that attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of 20th Century racism. He did not share the same view as Booker T. Washington of integration between blacks and whites, he wanted for an increase political representation for blacks in order to guarantee civil rights and the formation of Black elite to work for the progress of the African American race. He thought that blacks should seek higher education and he believed that blacks should challenge and question whites on all grounds.

Emma Goldman

1869-1940

She was a known rebel, an anarchist, ardent proponent of birth control and free speech, a feminist, a lecturer and a writer.

William Heard Kilpatrick

1871-1965

He was a successor of John Dewey and the leading figure in the American progressive education movement. His theory of learning was emphasized on “purposeful activity” in order to engage students while they worked on a variety of projects.

Boyd H. Bode

1873-1953

The leading spokesperson of Progressive education and a founder of American pragmatism. Many of his work were focused on educational issues and he began to teach seminars on educational theory. He published many works such as Democracy and Education, Fundamentals of Education, Conflicting Psychologies of Learning, Democracy as a Way of Life and Progressive Education at the Crossroads. His works are one of the surest and most pleasant roads to understand pragmatism and education.

William C Bagley

1874-1946

He was referred to as the founder of essentialist educational theory. At the beginning of his professional life he would dedicate to the improvement of teaching. His major book, the Educative Process was a comprehensive portrayal of an early science education. He offered several basic educational principles: the right of an immature student to the guidance of well-educated, caring, and cultured teachers demanded a democratic culture, a specific program of studies that required thoroughness, accuracy, persistence, and good workmanship on the part of the pupils.

Mary McCleod Bethune

1875-1955

She was an American educator and a civil rights leader that was best known for starting a school for black students in Florida.

Werrett Wallace Charters

1875-1952

A professor and director of the Bureau of Educational Research at Ohio State University, he contributed to the field of curriculum development and audiovisual technology. His contribution to the field of curriculum development came in the form of activity-analysis approach to curriculum construction. The activity analysis was considered a scientific approach to curriculum construction.

John Franklin Bobbitt

1876-

He began a Curriculum of Modern Education with an explication of his view of “The Good Life”, were he developed four consistent ideas: emphasis on the importance of general education, inability to predetermine future lives and roles of students, necessity for schools to develop individuals’ intellect rather than to train them for work, and a respect for many of the classic authors of “great books” from the Western tradition.

Jessie A. Charters

1880-???

She was one of the pioneers in the field of adult education, surmounting curricular, gender and economic barriers. She founded the Department of Adult Education at Ohio State University and her major interest was parental education. Her work was to bring education to parents, college-age women and alumni; she expanded the scope of continuing education to a diverse audience.


Harold Goddard Rugg

1883-1957

He published textbook for social sciences which were the most progressive textbooks used in schools at the time. His writing addressed problems that dealt with unemployment, immigration and consumerism, represented the expression of the progressive education. After Robey’s review public schools stopped using Rugg’s books and in some communities they were burnt.

George S. Counts

1889-1974

Wrote “The Principles of Education” that focused on the philosophical, psychological, and methodological overview of American Education. He shared the child-centered movement in progressive education. Counts wanted for teachers to lead society instead of following it. He believed that school was an agency involved in society’s politics, economics, art, religion, and ethics.





Hilda Taba

1902-1967

She was a curriculum theorist, curriculum reformer, and teacher educator. Her contribution to theoretical and pedagogical foundations that helped laid the foundation to diverse students in schools. Taba’s dissertation has three key ideas that are important for curriculum. First arguing that learning should be modeled instead of just observing, predicting and measuring. Second arguing that children need to learn how to solve problems and resolve conflicts. Third arguing that teachers need to provide students a conceptually sound curriculum that is organized and taught effectively. Taba created the Spiral of Curriculum Development which is a graphic organizer designed to illustrate concept development for elementary social studies.

Mortimer Adler

1902-2001

An American philosopher, educator and author. He was a Perennialist that believed that philosophy should become part of mainstream public school curriculum. He also believed that education should be the same for everyone and the education should be liberal, non-specialized education without electives or vocational classes. In his point of view education never ends, the earliest a person truly is “educated” only then he can devote himself to a life of learning. He wrote plans for public schools in the United States but his ideas had most impact at the college level.




Ralph W. Tyler

1902-1994

An American educator that worked in the field of assessment and evaluation. He developed the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Some of his contributions to education were agencies such as National Science Board, Research and Development Panel of the U.S. Office of Education, National Advisory Council on Disadvantaged Children, Social Science Research Foundation, and others.

John Goodlad

1920-

His book ‘The Nongraded Elementary School’, proposed that the educations systems has flaws and her gave some alternative methods to address those flaws. The book proposed two elements of the nongraded system, first was that curriculum is centered on continual and sequential learning and second organizing groups around various combinations (age, achievements, heterogeneous, etc.).

Paulo Freire

1921-1997

He was a Brazilian educationalist that made a significant impact on progressive practice. He drew a number of strands of thinking about educational practice and liberation. The five aspects of his work are: language and mystical concerns, argue in an either/ or way, everyday situation to become pedagogical, liberatory practice, and model of literacy.

Reflection 3

Progressives
Name Information

George Herbert Mead - Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist. He was one of the founders of pragmatism, social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general. Mead argued that humans are first object to others and secondly objects to ourselves.

John Dewey - Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and an educational reformer. His ideas have influenced education and social reform. He referred to his philosophy as instrumentalism.

Colonel Francis Parker - Parker was the pioneer of the progressive school movement in the United States. Was called the father of progressive education. He worked to create a curriculum that was focused on the child as a whole and to have a strong language background.

Thorstein Veblen - Veblen was a Norwegian-American sociologist and economist. He was a leading intellectual of the progressive era. His main attack was on the profit of production and the wasteful role of consumption for status.

William H. Kilpatrick - Kilpatrick was the leading figure in the American progressive education movement. He shared his desired with Dewey to have school curriculum to reflect on students’ interest. His theory of learning emphasized “purposeful activity” to engage students while they worked on a variety of projects.




George S. Counts - Counts was a progressive educator, sociologist, and political activist that challenged teachers and educators to use school as a mean for critiquing and transforming the social order. He saw sociology as an opportunity to examine and reshape schools by considering the impact of social forces, political, and social interest on educational practice.

Jane Addams - Addams was a vital part of the progressive movement and believed in self-expression, learning to play, and active engagement. One of her major concerns was child labor, so she began to devote most of her effort against child labor and to promote peace and international cooperation.

Ella Flagg Young - Young was a great aid to the progressive movement. She was the assistant superintendent of schools in Chicago and then became a faculty member at the University of Chicago.

Harold G Rugg - Rugg was a librarian, historian, naturalist, world traveler, mentor, gardener, and Vermont collector extraordinaire. He published “Man and his changing world” which was a social science textbook and it was one of the most progressive textbooks used n schools at the time. Rugg’s series of social studied textbooks advocated liberalism and Keynesianism. His writings represented the expression of progressive education in the field of textbooks.

Marietta Johnson - Johnson founded The School of Organic Education in 1907 and it became known as the most child-centered progressive school in the nation.

John I Goodlad - Goodlad proposed that schools should be “non-graded”. He identified key flaws in the graded education systems and proposed an alternative system of organization to fix some of the flaws. He also argued that the rigid graded education system is not designed to accommodate the realities of child development.

Paulo Freire - Freire was a Brazilian educationalist that made a significant mark on progressive practice. He made a number of theoretical innovations that made an impact on educational practice.



Not Progressives
Name Information

Auguste Comte - Comte was a French philosopher that developed the doctrine of positivism which is a philosophical and political movement. His main work was to develop a successive philosophy of mathematics, a philosophy of physics, philosophy of chemistry and biology.

Emma Goldman - Goldman was an early figure for the free speech movement and birth control. She supported anarchism, women’s rights movement and gay/lesbian rights.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Peirce was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist. Most of his contributions are to logic, mathematics, philosophy and semiotics. He considered himself a logician.

Ralph W. Tyler - Tyler was an American educator who worked in the field of assessment and evaluation. He contributed to educational agencies such as the National Science Board, Research and Development Panel of the U. S. Office of Education, and others.

Mortimer Adler - Adler was an American professor, philosopher, and educational theorist. He believed that education should be basically the same for everyone and the education serves three purposed: to teach people their leisure time well, to teach people to earn their living ethically, and to teach people to be responsible citizens in a democracy.

William James - James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism.

Booker T. Washington - Washington was an American political leader, educator, orator and author. He played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black communities and liberal whites. His efforts were to raise funds to establish and operate thousands of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of blacks throughout the south.

W.E.B. DuBois - DuBois was an American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author and editor. He attempted every possible solution to the problem of the twentieth-century racism. His opposed the ideas of social integration between whites and blacks, and campaigned for increased political representation for blacks in order to guarantee civil rights.