While progressive education has been practiced in formal learning settings for over a century, there is a relatively limited amount of contemporary scholarship on such schools. Acknowledging the nebulous nature of this genre, my study was undertaken to identify the philosophies and practices of a contemporary progressive school. From the…

My essay aims to develop my authorial map-account of Martin Duberman's various educational paradigms manifest in his experimental seminars at Princeton University, Hunter College, and Lehman College CUNY, 1966-1971 (and beyond) that I abstracted from his claims about his innovative educational teaching. I tried to develop a terrain of educational…

The Progressive Movement in the United States was a complex, multifaceted, and organic reform movement, comprised of diverse reformers who instituted unique social and educational initiatives to improve society. This historical study focused on the establishment and success of the Children's School Farm of New York, an early twentieth-century…

Contemporary academic scholarship has devoted a tremendous amount of effort to documenting the prevalent standardized, formal schooling environment. Too little has been written about the persistence of small, independent progressive schools that have never stopped putting their students' individual needs and interests first. Peachtown Elementary…

This article explores the history of school gardens in educational projects linked to four scholars at Teachers College (Bigelow, Dewey, Kilpatrick and Carney) during the early twentieth century. It concludes that gardening activities were designed primarily for urban children who lacked experience in farming. The role of gardening in experimental…

Even in this "Age of Data," independent progressive schools have shown a remarkable persistence in offering an alternative educational model. As Traditional Public Schools (TPS) become even more committed to a testing model of achievement, there are schools that continue to operate on identified progressive educational principles. This…

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…

In addition to being one of the authors of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), David Coleman has become the Standards' "most visible advocate" (Smith, Appleman, & Wilhelm, 2014, p. 10) and one of their "most prominent and articulate promoters" (Rabinowitz & Bancroft, 2014, p. 4). In a talk titled "Bringing the…

In "The Transformation of the School", Lawrence Cremin warned against formulating any capsule definition of progressive education: "None exists, and none ever will; for throughout its history progressive education meant different things to different people, and these differences were only compounded by the remarkable diversity of…

This article delves into the various religious influences on Dr. Felix Adler's spiritual development and the resulting theological and philosophical foundations for the Ethical Culture Society that he created in addition to the Society's schools. The discussion focuses on Dr. Adler's personal struggles with traditional Judaism in the face of…

This article explores whether and how activists who identify with the Occupy movement think of their secondary schooling as influential upon their activism. Testimonies of six activists from two small focus groups reveal a range from those who claimed no such influence to those who saw a significant connection. The diversity among the six was…

Irving Babbitt and E.D. Hirsch defended the humanistic curriculum at both the beginning and end of the twentieth century, respectively. Both claimed that a set of specific knowledge needed to be passed from one generation to the next. Both found this knowledge primarily, though certainly not exclusively, through the classical Western tradition.…

Connecticut College for Women and its Progressive Era sister colleges (Douglass, Simmons, Skidmore, and William Smith) are distinctive for the prominent vocational and service elements each college had in its original mission and curriculum. Historians however have often left Connecticut College for Women out of the story of American women's…

Background/Context: Educational researchers and policymakers have often lamented the failure of teachers to implement what they consider to be technically sound assessment procedures. In recent years, the belief that teachers are unwilling or unable to implement appropriate assessment procedures has contributed to the rapid expansion of high…

Historians of education have probed into the involvement of Social Reconstructionists' with issues of racial justice and have argued explicitly that Social Reconstructionists, while "interested" in racial problems during the Depression, actually did little to carefully study the role of race or race relations in America. The authors…