John Dewey's philosophy of education did not arise in a vacuum. Much as Dewey himself would have recognized, his experiences shaped his philosophy. The experiences described include Dewey's time as a boy in Burlington, Vermont; his graduate education at Johns Hopkins University, and his first academic post at the University of Michigan; concluding…

The needs of society have changed significantly over the years, and so we must ensure that how we educate evolves to meet those needs.

In a 1992 interview, Matthew Lipman affirmed that P4C was "a Deweyan way to go beyond Dewey" thereby explicitly acknowledging the Deweyan inspiration of his project but also asserting his own original contribution to the creation and development of a new educational approach. This achievement was the outcome of his effort to overcome…

In "Democracy and Education," John Dewey argued that teachers should have control over their own work. He was, though, not only concerned about workplace democracy for teachers. He also argued against the philosophical underpinnings of educational policies that reproduced social hierarchies in the workplace. The main arguments of Dewey's…

At the heart of this essay is a series of narratives about classrooms and teaching in both undergraduate and graduate spaces. Classrooms represent geographies of Black Feminisms for the author because, above all else, a critical/ intersectional/ anti-racist pedagogy in classrooms is the practice of a Black Feminist imaginative. Black folx and…

This study examines the purpose and practice of "adjustment rooms" established in special education classes in Los Angeles public schools in the early twentieth century. The establishment and practices associated with adjustment rooms are a local example of broader international trends related to the classification and streaming of…

Systemic gender inequality and sexual discrimination continues across a wide spectrum of social, political, and economic fields. Using three key feminist curriculum and pedagogy principles (decentering norms, centering difference, distributing leadership) we employ feminist pedagogy by facilitating curriculum development and implementation that is…

This article brings the Italian activist and thinker Antonio Gramsci's theory of organic intellectualism and the Canadian historian Ian McKay's theory of liberal state-formation to bear on the "Indian Question" -- or how best to yoke Indigenous children and young people to the modern Canadian state. From the mid-nineteenth to the…

"Questioning the Language of Improvement and Reform in Education" challenges the language used in education by linking the language of both the public and professional domains with the changing intentions of the governance of education. Exploring various issues, which embody the many manifestations of the manner in which strident,…

In this essay, John S. O'Connor and Avi D. Lessing discuss the increasingly reductive and routinized nature of contemporary schools and the costs such an approach holds for students and teachers alike. The current approach is especially troublesome in light of the rich history of progressive voices, such as Paul Diederich, who have cautioned…

The United States (US) has since its inception considered the education of its citizens as critical for preserving democracy. The recent attractiveness of autocratic leaders, not only in the US but across the world, raises questions about the dominant educational model now in place. We argue that the authoritarian and business-oriented structure…

A schoolteacher from Lombardy, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), founded the Institute of Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC) in 1880. It was one of the 185 female religious institutes established in Italy in the nineteenth century. In the newly unified Italy, Cabrini found opportunities to formulate progressive Catholic…

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) was one of the great educationalists of the last century, helping to create a system of public (or municipal) schools in his home city of Reggio Emilia in Northern Italy that is, arguably, the most successful example of radical or progressive education that has ever been. The article gives an introduction to Malaguzzi…

This article aims to reveal the kind of discourse which now shapes policy and practice, and the negative effect that this discourse has on how teachers have to see their role, marginalising them in major educational decisions and curriculum development.

This article offers a critical interpretation of the current trends in instructional models for English language learners in California. We review key instructional models and analyze them from traditional (teacher-centered), progressive (student-centered), and critical orientations (society- and power-centered). These instructional models share…