This article offers a critical review of the literature on how race played into the historical development of pedagogical progressivism in the late-19th and early-20th-century United States. While many historians have focused on the overt/covert racism inherent in much of progressive pedagogy as espoused by White educators, others have highlighted…

Child-centered pedagogy is at the ideological core of progressive education. The simple idea that the child rather than the teacher or textbook should be the major focus of the classroom is, perhaps, the single most enduring educational idea of the era. In this historical study, the author argues that child-centered education emerged directly from…

In the historiography on curriculum reform during the progressive era, one interpretive lens has dominated the study of 20th-century reform for more than 40 years: the idea of the "social efficiency" doctrine. In this historiographical essay, the authors briefly trace the rise of social efficiency as an idea in curriculum history, identify the…

Background/Context: Determining John Dewey's exact influence on civic and social education during the early 20th century has been one of the most vexing issues facing curriculum historians. Generally speaking, interpretations of Dewey's work and influence have been plagued by four recurring methodological limitations: First, historians tend to…

This article offers a critical review of the historical literature on the National Education Association's (NEA) 1916 Committee on Social Studies (CSS) report, the document generally believed to have launched the social studies movement in American secondary schools. The review begins with a critical analysis of the four most pervasive…