Theoretical foundation
Dewey
Vygotsky
Piaget
Bruner

Contributions
of later work
Papert
CTGV
Gardner

Characteristics

Criticisms

Theoretical foundation-Dewey

John Dewey: Educational Reform as Social Activism

John Dewey was born in 1859. He has more pervasive and continuing influence on educational practice. He can be thought of as the grandfather of constructivism, but he also advocated a merging of "absolutism" and "experimentalism".

He believed that:
. Curriculum should arise from students' interests. Dewey deplored standardization. He felt curriculum should be flexible and tailored to the needs of each student, a "pedocentric" strategy rather that the "scholiocentric" one of the time. He advocated letting each child's experiences determine individual learning activities.

. Curriculum topics should be integrated, rather than isolated from each other. Dewey felt that isolating topics from one another prevented learners from grasping the whole of knowledge and caused skills and facts to be viewed as unrelated bits of information.

. Education is growth, rather than an end in itself. He looked on education as a way of helping individuals understand their culture and develop their relationship to and unique roles in society.

. Education occurs through its connection with life, rather than through participation in curriculum. Dewey felt that social consciousness was the ultimate aim of all education. To be useful, all learning had to be in the context of social experience.

. Learning should be hands-on and experience-based, rather than abstract. Dewey objected to commonly used teaching methods that used a "one-way channel of communication-from teacher to student through direct drill and memorization". He believed that meaningful learning resulted from students working cooperatively on tasks that were directly related to their interests.