| Classical | Progressive | Dewey | Technocratic | |
| Philosophy | Education as the bedrock of democracy, and the attainment of requisite functional and societally relevant literacies. Democracy is the ideal system of governance and democratic society can only be attained and be stable through an educated populace. “Educated” defined as the ability to participate, communicate, and hold to account between citizens, politicians, and experts. This is a progressive philosophical ethical argument, but it is also a utilitarian, but perhaps not quite technocratic, view on education and/or literacy in that there does not seem to be an intrinsic hierarchical value system of literacy, only a threshold or minimum.
Empiricism, scientific method is the most reliable way of knowing. |
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| Psychology | “The mind as unfolding organism, social theory of mind (organism/environment transaction).” (deCastell and Luke, 1983).
Strong, fundamental acknowledgement of the human (and brain) as a growing and developing organism, and learning (becoming societally literate) as a key aspect of the growth and development. |
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| Sociology | Capital “D” Democracy | |||
| Conception of Literacy | the ability to function adeptly in society and to contribute to moving society forward. Communication and criticism skills for deep meaningful participation in democracy (participation meant to the fullest multifaceted extent, not just voting once every four years as some would use the term). Pragmatic executive and socially useful knowledge and skills beyond memorization and recitation. | |||
| Attitude to Education | Literally the most important institution in Western society. Should be available to all. In this way, Dewey is both Progressive and Technocratic, as education has both social significance and instrumental value. | |||
| Curriculum | Civics. Content and competencies: “content” texts in accessible language embedded with/within material of unique and particular interest to each student and student-writing in their common tongue. Competencies are both individually useful and socially relevant. | |||
| Pedagogy | Instruction should be evidence based. Children (their brains) develop naturally and classroom activities should follow suit, with activities appropriate to abilities, provide opportunities, and foster continuing growth. | |||
| Evaluation | Important to assess both knowledge and skills/competencies. | |||
| Outcome | Socialization and successful integration into society as an adept participant.
Dewey completely informed and reformed the current educational system, though sometimes more in spirit than in practice. For example, instructional strategies or methods can follow the ebb and flow of fads without the evidence-based scientific rigour that Dewey would have demanded of methods being practiced or scrapped. |
Dewey was without doubt a progressive. That much is painfully obvious. But I don’t think he was necessarily anti-technocratic; his firm belief in democracy as the highest ideal and public education as the pillar of democracy leads one necessarily to the conclusion that Dewey operated in a technocratic paradigm of literacy as not only self-expression and social interaction but also as requisite set of functional skills and knowledge for the success and survival of each individual/citizen and the greater society. Each individual must meet a minimum level of competence to be a participant. Where Dewey really departs from technocratic educational philosophy is in the curriculum aspect, as in decontextualization of skills; Dewey was antithetical to this through his revolutionary insistence on socially relevant, personalized contextual curriculum with value in the injection of the individual.
I think that, in terms of educational knowledge or curriculum, to be an adept (as I keep using the term) member and participant in society, civics literacy is not enough. Our world has changed so much technologically since Dewey’s time, and the technological change has permeated and infiltrated so much of our lives, consciousness, and identities that digital literacy and arguably STEM in general deserve to share that top spot on the curricular podium. Few imagined, (unless you were a reader of Asimov, Sagan, Orwell, etc.) that unlimited access to an interconnected network would lead to a commoditization of attention and would be used as a tool for mass disinformation. As a science teacher, while my colleagues and I find ourselves in an educational landscape more and more favouring social and pragmatic competencies over content, my thinking is that scientific knowledge, and knowledge of the history of scientific discovery up to now have instrumental value; I like to think of it as “catching students up” on “stuff they should know,” as in, “what does humanity know about how the universe and everything in it work and how have we come to know?” This by extension leads students to imagine – and strive to build the skills (and support others in society to build the skills through social and political processes) for – “how will we figure the rest out?”