The guidelines followed by many educational boards recommend behavioristic practices for dealing with student discipline; however, Lawrence Kohlberg's idea of organizing schools as "just communities" suggests a more promising approach. It translates to the school context the core principle of Habermas's discourse ethics: "those…

This article details the demise of a small multicultural and democratic school in a large urban district. After a successful 25-year run, a public school built on principles of progressive and democratic education was dismantled and destroyed. The article attempts to expose the contradictions and untruths in the story of Mission Hill School's…

Two practices in education--community-based learning and deliberative democratic discourse--have been lauded as highly effective in instilling democratic values in students and preparing them to be active citizens. Both practices have the potential to facilitate the formation of publics in the Deweyan understanding--the building block of…

The American educational system, because it is based in behaviorist rather than progressivist philosophy, has not well-served the development of a citizenry capable of effective participation in the democratic decision-making process, the remedy being the progressivist methods described in the later chapters of Progressive Education for Democratic…

The article by Collins, Hess, and Lowery (2019) explores struggles teachers faced in order to pursue Deweyan educational practices. This response proposes that even more is needed for a critical educational practice, called "strong democracy." Such an approach requires addressing and countering the White supremacist legacy of U.S.…

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted and transformed public education and revealed deeply embedded inequities within educational systems. The unpredictable shift to virtual learning exposed these disparities, illuminating the need for innovative, student-centered educational approaches. This dissertation examines how Black educators who…

Teachers' implementation of and attitudes to school reforms and overriding pedagogical ideals have long been a topic of debate and research. In this article, we centre on teachers' descriptions of how progressive teaching was conducted as well as on the teachers' reasons for implementing such teaching in the 1940s. This study is based on written…

In this paper, we explore the degree to which the Buddhist mindfulness practice and the habits of democratic citizenship can be reconstructed in light of each other. We ask what mindfulness is, seeking to first understand it in its Buddhist context. Then we turn to the work of John Dewey in order to seek possibilities for mutual reconstruction.…

This article presents the case for a progressive education that embraces notions of democratic values in the classroom, and an education for democratic citizenship. Informed by John Dewey's and Martin Buber's philosophies of education, and Homi Bhabha's concept of 'third space' work, the article examines the problematic and contested issues of…

Around 1940, the Southern Association Study in Secondary Schools and Colleges and the Secondary School Study of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes implemented cooperative educational experimentation in the American South. This was a progressive education method for improving schools exemplified in the national Eight-Year…

Of enduring interest to philosophers of education is the intimate connection Dewey draws between "Democracy and Education" in this now century-old seminal work. At first glance the connection may appear quite simple, with the two terms commonly combined today as "democratic education". But there is significantly more to Dewey's…

This paper revisits "Democracy and Education" with the purpose of recuperating Dewey's understanding of the nature and importance of "discipline" and conforming education to the "interest of the child," two parts of Dewey's work (and therefore of progressive education) widely misunderstood by both Dewey's critics and…

In this commentary, Elana Michelson responds to Chad Hoggan and Tetyana Kloubert's critique of Michelson's "The Ethical Knower: Rethinking Our Pedagogy in the Age of Trump" (2019). Michelson concludes that Hoggan and Kloubert are right to call attention to the reemergence of fascist discourse and action across much of the globe and to…

We wondered how "democracy" was being used and communicated within the higher education discourse of "education for sustainability," or "for sustainable development" (ES/ESD). We used a philosophical hermeneutic approach to explore the sense or senses in which the concept of democracy is used within this literature…

In this essay, I explore the contemporary value of John Dewey's conception of democracy to addressing the challenges of neoliberal globalization. I begin by describing his vision of democracy as a way of life that requires habits of experimentalism, pluralism, and hope. I then suggest that contemporary forms of mobilization, resistance, and…