This link has been bookmarked by 96 people . It was first bookmarked on 24 Jun 2008, by susan carter morgan.
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01 Dec 14
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10 Dec 13
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There is pressure to raise standardized test scores, something that progressive education manages to do only sometimes and by accident — not only because that isn’t its purpose but also because such tests measure what matters least. (
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22 Sep 13
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13 Aug 13
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Jim Nehring at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell observed, “Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as traditional schooling “is largely the result of outdated policy changes that have calcified into conventions.”
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James H. Nehring, “Progressive vs. Traditional: Reframing an Old Debate,” Education Week, February 1, 2006, p. 32.
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02 Jul 13
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30 May 13
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including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships
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Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people.
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less focus on behaviors than on underlying motives, values, and reasons.
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progressive education tends to be organized around problems, projects, and questions — rather than around lists of facts, skills, and separate disciplines.
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issues
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students play a vital role in helping to design the curriculum, formulate the questions, seek out (and create) answers, think through possibilities, and evaluate how successful they — and their teachers — have been.
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One fourth-grade teacher’s curriculum, therefore, won’t be the same as that of the teacher next door, nor will her curriculum be the same this year as it was for the children she taught last year
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They may eliminate homework altogether if it’s clear that students view after-school assignments as something to be gotten over with as soon as possible.
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A school that is culturally progressive is not necessarily educationally progressive.
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a belief that meeting children’s needs should take precedence over preparing future employees; and a desire to nourish curiosity, creativity, compassion, skepticism, and other virtues.
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democratic classrooms, multiage instruction, looping, cooperative learning, and authentic assessment (including the abolition of grades).
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Traditional activities, such as completing worksheets and reading primarily from textbooks, seemed to have no positive effect.”
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For starters, they tell me, progressive education is not only less familiar but also much harder to do, and especially to do well.
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But progressive teachers also have to know a lot about pedagogy because no amount of content knowledge (say, expertise in science or English) can tell you how to facilitate learning. The belief that anyone who knows enough math can teach it is a corollary of the belief that learning is a process of passive absorption —a view that cognitive science has decisively debunked.
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29 May 13
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Attending to the whole child:
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Facts and skills do matter, but only in a context and for a purpose.
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The point is not merely to challenge students
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but to invite them to think deeply about issues that matter
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In progressive schools, students play a vital role in helping to design the curriculum, formulate the questions, seek out (and create) answers, think through possibilities, and evaluate how successful they — and their teachers — have been.
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Progressive educators take their cue from the children
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nor will her curriculum be the same this year as it was for the children she taught last year.
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Progressive schools, in short, follow their core values — bolstered by research and experience — wherever they lead
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“For thoughtful traditionalists, thinking is couched in terms of comprehending, integrating, and applying knowledge.” However, the student’s task in such classrooms is “comprehending how the teacher has integrated or applied the ideas… and [then] reconstruct[ing] the teacher’s thinking.”[3]
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A truly impressive collection of research has demonstrated that when students are able to spend more time thinking about ideas than memorizing facts and practicing skills — and when they are invited to help direct their own learning — they are not only more likely to enjoy what they’re doing but to do it better.
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Regardless of one’s values, in other words, this approach can be recommended purely on the basis of its effectiveness. And if your criteria are more ambitious — long-term retention of what’s been taught, the capacity to understand ideas and apply them to new kinds of problems, a desire to continue learning — the relative benefits of progressive education are even greater.[5] This conclusion is only strengthened by the lack of data to support the value of standardized tests, homework, conventional discipline (based on rewards or consequences), competition, and other traditional practices.[6]
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ucation
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Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as traditional schooling “is largely the result of outdated policy changes that have calcified into conventions.
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Attending to the whole child: Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people. Schooling isn’t seen as being about just academics, nor is intellectual growth limited to verbal and mathematical proficiencies.
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Community:
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Collaboration: Progressive schools are characterized by what I like to call a “working with” rather than a “doing to” model. In place of rewards for complying with the adults’ expectations, or punitive consequences for failing to do so, there’s more of an emphasis on collaborative problem-solving — and, for that matter, less focus on behaviors than on underlying motives, values, and reasons.
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Social justice: A sense of community and responsibility for others isn’t confined to the classroom; indeed, students are helped to locate themselves in widening circles of care that extend beyond self, beyond friends, beyond their own ethnic group, and beyond their own country. Opportunities are offered not only to learn about, but also to put into action, a commitment to diversity and to improving the lives of others.
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Intrinsic motivation:
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“What’s the effect on students’ interest in learning, their desire to continue reading, thinking, and questioning?”
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Facts and skills do matter, but only in a context and for a purpose. That’s why progressive education tends to be organized around problems, projects, and questions — rather than around lists of facts, skills, and separate disciplines. The teaching is typically interdisciplinary, the assessment rarely focuses on rote memorization, and excellence isn’t confused with “rigor.” The point is not merely to challenge students — after all, harder is not necessarily better — but to invite them to think deeply about issues that matter and help them understand ideas from the inside out.
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Active learning:
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learning is a matter of constructing ideas rather than passively absorbing information or practicing skills.
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traditional schooling,
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he or she is expected to adjust to the school’s rules and curriculum.
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Progressive educators take their cue from the children — and are particularly attentive to differences among them. (Each student is unique, so a single set of policies, expectations, or assignments would be as counterproductive as it was disrespectful.) The curriculum isn’t just based on interest, but on these children’s interests.
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They may eliminate homework altogether if it’s clear that students view after-school assignments as something to be gotten over with as soon as possible. They will question things like honors classes and awards assemblies that clearly undermine a sense of community. Progressive schools, in short, follow their core values — bolstered by research and experience — wherever they lead.
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“For thoughtful traditionalists, thinking is couched in terms of comprehending, integrating, and applying knowledge.” However, the student’s task in such classrooms is “comprehending how the teacher has integrated or applied the ideas… and [then] reconstruct[ing] the teacher’s thinking.”[3]
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what distinguishes progressive education is that students must construct their own understanding of ideas.
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culturally progressive is not necessarily educationally progressive
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old-fashioned pour-in-the-facts approach
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A truly impressive collection of research has demonstrated that when students are able to spend more time thinking about ideas than memorizing facts and practicing skills — and when they are invited to help direct their own learning — they are not only more likely to enjoy what they’re doing but to do it better. Progressive education isn’t just more appealing; it’s also more productive.
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This conclusion is only strengthened by the lack of data to support the value of standardized tests, homework, conventional discipline (based on rewards or consequences), competition, and other traditional practices.[6]
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Traditional activities, such as completing worksheets and reading primarily from textbooks, seemed to have no positive effect.”
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If students aren’t learning effectively, it may be because of the persistence of traditional beliefs and practices in our nation’s
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schools.
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But progressive teachers also have to know a lot about pedagogy because no amount of content knowledge (say, expertise in science or English) can tell you how to facilitate learning.
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Progressive teachers also have to be comfortable with uncertainty, not only to abandon a predictable march toward the “right answer” but to let students play an active role in the quest for meaning that replaces it. That means a willingness to give up some control and let students take some ownership, which requires guts as well as talent.
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all about me, not about the kids. It was about teaching, not about learning.
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Thinking is messy, and deep thinking is really messy. This reality coexists uneasily with demands for order — in schools where the curriculum is supposed to be carefully coordinated across grade levels and planned well ahead of time, or in society at large.
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If a child is lucky enough to be in a classroom featuring, say, student-designed project-based investigations, the parent may wonder, “But is she really learning anything? Where are the worksheets?” And so the teachers feel pressure to make the instruction worse.
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whatever progress we can make is likely to benefit our students. And doing what’s best for them is the reason all of us got into this line of work in the first place.
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09 Dec 12
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03 Oct 12
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25 Sep 12
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Students in elementary and middle school did better in science when their teaching was “centered on projects in which they took a high degree of initiative. Traditional activities, such as completing worksheets and reading primarily from textbooks, seemed to have no positive effect.”
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08 Sep 12
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07 Aug 12
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07 Jul 12
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Attending to the whole child: Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people. Schooling isn’t seen as being about just academics, nor is intellectual growth limited to verbal and mathematical proficiencies.
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22 Jun 12
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30 May 12
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18 Mar 12
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07 Mar 12
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this tradition may well see it differently, or at least disagree about which features are the most important.
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learning as a process, more journey than destination
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the University of Massachusetts at Lowell observed, “Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as
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the University of Massachusetts at Lowell observed, “Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as
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learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to a
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earning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as
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learn about, but also to put into action, a commitment to diversity and to improving the lives of others.
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26 Feb 12
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Attending to the whole child
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Community
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Collaboration:
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Social justice
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Intrinsic motivation
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Deep understanding
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Active learning:
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Taking kids seriously
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We may not be able to transform a whole school, or even a classroom, along all of these dimensions, at least not by the end of this year. But whatever progress we can make is likely to benefit our students. And doing what’s best for them is the reason all of us got into this line of work in the first place.
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20 Feb 12
Lynn Ochs"If progressive education doesn’t lend itself to a single fixed definition, that seems fitting in light of its reputation for resisting conformity and standardization. Any two educators who describe themselves as sympathetic to this tradition may well see it differently, or at least disagree about which features are the most important. "
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06 Feb 12
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“Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as traditional schooling “is largely the result of outdated policy changes that have calcified into conventions.”
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01 Dec 11
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08 Nov 11
Tim Congram@alfiekohn pretty much sums up my views of what I want in my classroom/school http://t.co/lMEPZapO #edchat
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Brett McPherson@alfiekohn pretty much sums up my views of what I want in my classroom/school http://t.co/lMEPZapO #edchat
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02 Nov 11
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26 Oct 11
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05 Oct 11
Milly SiegelAn article based around progressive education that defines it in its most basic yet descriptive qualities.
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If progressive education doesn’t lend itself to a single
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, that seems fitting in light of its reputation for resisting conformity and standardization. Any two educators who describe themselves as sympathetic to this tradition may well see it differently, or at least disagree about which features are the most important.
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Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries
-
Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people
-
Children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well as academic learning. Interdependence counts at least as much as independence,
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sense of community and responsibility for others isn’t confined to the classroom; indeed, students are helped to locate themselves in widening circles of care that extend beyond self, beyond friends, beyond their own ethnic group, and beyond their own country
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22 Aug 11
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03 Aug 11
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28 Mar 11
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19 Feb 11
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29 Jan 11
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23 Jan 11
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13 Jan 11
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13 Dec 10
soberleIf progressive education doesn’t lend itself to a single fixed definition, that seems fitting in light of its reputation for resisting conformity and standardization. Any two educators who describe themselves as sympathetic to this tradition may well see
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12 Dec 10
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11 Dec 10
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the student’s task in such classrooms is “comprehending how the teacher has integrated or applied the ideas… and [then] reconstruct[ing] the teacher’s thinking.”
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f your criteria are more ambitious — long-term retention of what’s been taught, the capacity to understand ideas and apply them to new kinds of problems, a desire to continue learning — the relative benefits of progressive education are even greater.[5]
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projects in which they took a high degree of initiative
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It took me years to realize [that my] classroom was all about me, not about the kids. It was about teaching, not about learning.”
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they may be impressed by the wrong things, reassured by signs of traditionalism — letter grades, spelling quizzes, heavy textbooks, a teacher in firm control of the classroom — and unnerved by their absence
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homework assigned only when it’s absolutely necessary to extend and enrich a lesson, or is it assigned on a regular basis (as in a traditional school)? If homework is given, are the assignments predicated on – and justified by -- a behaviorist model of “reinforcing” what they were taught – or do they truly deepen students’ understanding of, and engagement with, ideas? How much of a role do the students play in making decisions about homework?
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11 Sep 10
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10 Sep 10
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20 Jul 10
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07 Jul 10
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20 May 10
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11 Mar 10
Mike OomensThere are enough elements on which most of us can agree so that a common core of progressive education emerges, however hazily.
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28 Feb 10
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22 Feb 10
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16 Feb 10
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15 Feb 10
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09 Feb 10
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10 Dec 09
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03 Dec 09
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22 Sep 09
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15 Sep 09
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05 Aug 09
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13 Jul 09
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11 Jul 09
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As Jim Nehring at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell observed, “Progressive schools are the legacy of a long and proud tradition of thoughtful school practice stretching back for centuries” — including hands-on learning, multiage classrooms, and mentor-apprentice relationships — while what we generally refer to as traditional schooling “is largely the result of outdated policy changes that have calcified into conventions.”
-
Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people
-
Learning isn’t something that happens to individual children — separate selves at separate desks. Children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well as academic learning. Interdependence counts at least as much as independence
-
Progressive schools are characterized by what I like to call a “working with” rather than a “doing to” model.
-
A sense of community and responsibility for others isn’t confined to the classroom; indeed, students are helped to locate themselves in widening circles of care that extend beyond self, beyond friends, beyond their own ethnic group, and beyond their own coun
-
“What’s the effect on students’ interest in learning, their desire to continue reading, thinking, and questioning?”
-
Alfred North Whitehead declared long ago, “A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.” Facts and skills do matter, but only in a context and for a purpose. That’s why progressive education tends to be organized around problems, projects, and questions — rather than around lists of facts, skills, and separate disciplines
-
students play a vital role in helping to design the curriculum, formulate the questions, seek out (and create) answers, think through possibilities, and evaluate how successful they — and their teachers — have been
-
Each student is unique, so a single set of policies, expectations, or assignments would be as counterproductive as it was disrespectful.)
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they design it with them
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what distinguishes progressive education is that students must construct their own understanding of ideas.
-
A school that is culturally progressive is not necessarily educationally progressive. An institution can be steeped in lefty politics and multi-grain values; it can be committed to diversity, peace, and saving the planet — but remain strikingly traditional in its pedagogy
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A truly impressive collection of research has demonstrated that when students are able to spend more time thinking about ideas than memorizing facts and practicing skills — and when they are invited to help direct their own learning — they are not only more likely to enjoy what they’re doing but to do it better.
-
Regardless of one’s values, in other words, this approach can be recommended purely on the basis of its effectiveness. And if your criteria are more ambitious — long-term retention of what’s been taught, the capacity to understand ideas and apply them to new kinds of problems, a desire to continue learning — the relative benefits of progressive education are even greater.[5]
-
Students in elementary and middle school did better in science when their teaching was “centered on projects in which they took a high degree of initiative.
-
For starters, they tell me, progressive education is not only less familiar but also much harder to do, and especially to do well. It asks a lot more of the students and at first can seem a burden to those who have figured out how to play the game in traditional classrooms — often succeeding by conventional standards without doing much real thinking. It’s also much more demanding of teachers, who have to know their subject matter inside and out if they want their students to “make sense of biology or literature” as opposed to “simply memoriz[ing] the frog’s anatomy or the sentence’s structure.”[12] But progressive teachers also have to know a lot about pedagogy because no amount of content knowledge (say, expertise in science or English) can tell you how to facilitate learning. The belief that anyone who knows enough math can teach it is a corollary of the belief that learning is a process of passive absorption —a view that cognitive science has decisively debunked.
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10 Jul 09
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08 Jul 09
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30 Mar 09
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13 Dec 08
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04 Dec 08
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23 Nov 08
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04 Aug 08
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31 Jul 08
Demetri OrlandoSpring 08 article from Independent School magazine does a nice job of getting to the point of progressive education
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conventional practices, including homework, grades, and tests, prove difficult to justify for anyone who is serious about promoting long-term dispositions rather than just improving short-term skills.
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Some of the features that I’ve listed here will seem objectionable, or at least unsettling, to educators at more traditional schools
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A truly impressive collection of research has demonstrated that when students are able to spend more time thinking about ideas than memorizing facts and practicing skills — and when they are invited to help direct their own learning — they are not only more likely to enjoy what they’re doing but to do it better. Progressive education isn’t just more appealing; it’s also more productive.
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Is the education that the oldest students receive just as progressive as that offered to the youngest, or would a visitor conclude that those in the upper grades seem to attend a different school altogether?
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17 Jul 08
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Attending to the whole child: Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people. Schooling isn’t seen as being about just academics, nor is intellectual growth limited to verbal and mathematical proficiencies.
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24 Jun 08
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21 May 08
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18 May 08
Lynne Jones"Any two educators who describe themselves as sympathetic to this tradition may well see it differently, or at least disagree about which features are the most important. ..."
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17 May 08
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07 May 08
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