Dewey, Democracy and Education, and the school curriculum

ABSTRACT

This paper will investigate Dewey’s Democracy and Education in relation to the curriculum. There are two overarching themes to the paper: the concept of the democratic curriculum and the academic/vocational divide. Dewey is seen as a pivotal thinker in relation to collaborative learning and the child as a vital voice in any learning that takes place in the classroom and beyond. The paper explores whether issues such as school governance and pupil voice facilitate Dewey’s notion of democratic education. Alongside this is the issue of the academic/vocational divide within English education. Acknowledgement will be made of Dewey’s theory of knowledge which emphasises the connection between concept and application and how this can influence the incorporation of the theoretical and the practical as part of children’s learning in a given curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Dewey
• curriculum
• democracy
• agency
• experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Michael Fielding offers Countesthorpe Community College, Leicestershire and Bishops Park College, Clacton-on-Sea as examples (2007, 551).

2 It will be interesting to see if this process remains as the GCSEs revert to a numerical grading system (9–1).