John Dewey Philosophy of Education

John Dewey Philosophy of Education

• Famous American educator

• One of the key founders of “Functionalism”

• Stimulus– Response phenomenon is not an automatic behavior, the goal of the person

performing it has the main role in it; the stimulus and the response determine each other

• It is the function, or the goal, of the whole action that elicits response

• Dewey developed the field of ‘School Psychology’ and recommended ways for meeting

student’s needs • Teachers are strongly influenced by their psychological assumptions about children and the educational process Teachers need to understand two issues Children and adults are different  teaching/education should be in accordance with

children’s developmental readiness

ii. Children are similar to adults in the sense that they perform better when they have some control over what they are to accomplish; the curriculum should be designed accordingly Applied psychology flourished following the emergence of functionalism

i. James Mckeen Cattell began studying ways to measure intelligence

ii. Psychology entered the world of business; Frederick Taylor developed ‘scientific management’

iii. Other functionalists: James Rowland Angell, Harvey A.Carr