Abstract/Notes: From the middle of the nineteenth century, the rigid relationships between teachers and students, and the expectation that learning could actually occur in the then-prevailing classroom atmosphere, were subjected to harsh criticism in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. English intellectual Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) launched a strong attack against the education methods of his time, laying an early foundation for an alternative to the formal, authoritarian style of teaching. His principle contribution was the initiation of a shift from the teaching system that placed the teacher at the center to one that sought to put the student there. Spencer’s Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, published in 1860, is a thoughtful, coherent explanation of why the image of the student as an “empty vessel” or a “tabula rasa” should be dismissed along with a curriculum that forced students to acquire knowledge that was of no possible use for them later in life:Spencer’s argument was that social conformity and the traditional teaching style were the foremost causes for an irrelevant curriculum that disregarded the children’s needs and intellectual curiosity. He disparaged as “barbarous” the monotonous teaching methods, suggesting that education should focus on developing the child’s innate potential.

Language: English

Published: Singapore, Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2023

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 978-981-19577-0-3 978-981-19577-1-0 978-981-19577-3-4

Language: English

Language: English

Published: Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang, 1995

ISBN: 978-3-631-48917-8 978-0-8204-2914-4 3-631-48917-X 0-8204-2914-7

Series: Heidelberger Studien zur Erziehungswissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) , 44

Language: English

Published: Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang, 1995

ISBN: 978-3-631-48917-8 978-0-8204-2914-4 3-631-48917-X 0-8204-2914-7

Series: Heidelberger Studien zur Erziehungswissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) , 44

Abstract/Notes: In this article we attempt to explain how Spanish schoolteachers built their knowledge around Progressive Education and just how they assimilated these new teaching practices, a process we conceptualise as “appropriating the New”. Our source consists of the 287 files presented by state schoolteachers from all of Spain as part of their candidacy in the competitive exams held in 1932 for the position of school headteacher. These files, which contain the professional history of each of these teachers, elaborated by him or herself, allow us to analyse the discourses and practices developed and used in their classrooms. Drawing on these teachers’ accounts we have designed a typology with five different levels of appropriation of the ideas and practices of Progressive Education. These five categories are: 1.- Recognising the New; 2.- Understanding the New; 3.- Bonding with the New; 4.- Applying the New; 5.- Internalising the New. These levels, which represent the gradual implication of this sample of schoolteachers with the ideas of Progressive Education, bear witness to how their identification with these concepts led to a transformation of their teaching practices. We will then use this typology to study the appropriation of one of the best-known progressive ideas, i.e. self-government, which under the Second Republic of Spain in the 1930s acquired a particular political relevance.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2021.1915346

ISSN: 0030-9230, 1477-674X

Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/00467600110064717

ISSN: 0046-760X, 1464-5130

Abstract/Notes: This chapter looks at the consolidation of progressive education in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century and aims to unpack the question of its annihilation by the Franco regime during the civil war and the early period of the dictatorship. It starts by showing the consolidation of an active and influential pedagogical vanguard that had clear influence on the education system during the Second Republic. It then traces signs of continuity in this educational movement after the establishment of the Franco regime by classifying this evidence into three categories: utilization, undercurrent adaptation, and resistance. This chapter concludes by looking at the complexity of education during the early Franco regime, highlighting the coexistence of a school culture forged before the civil war with ideas and practices identified with National Catholicism introduced by the dictatorship. By presenting this complexity, this chapter challenges a widely accepted vision concerning the total educational backlash that came in the wake of the establishment of the dictatorship.

Language: English

Published: New York, New York: Taylor & Francis, 2024

ISBN: 978-1-00-341435-3

Language: German

Published: Frankfurt am Main, Germany: P. Lang, 1994

ISBN: 978-3-631-47463-1

Series: Heidelberger Studien zur Erziehungswissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) , 43

Abstract/Notes: The complex history of Montessori’s Method spreading in the United States was signed by some misunderstandings connected with the reform of the american education system. The Method wasn’t understood in its specificity, but it appeared, in the same time, an alternative or an application of the tradition of Froebel’s Kindergarten. In those years the American pedagogical reflection tried to create an alternative to the continental tradition. For this reason the Progressive Education critized Montessori (i.e. Kilpatrick) for her spiritual and metaphysical premises but this movement couldn’t realize this project and it was inevitably connected with the tradition of European Activism.

Language: Italian

ISSN: 2039-4039

Abstract/Notes: Based on a database of over 500 resources, this paper explores the educational alternatives that exist today between the cracks of mainstream education and culture. It presents information about the growing numbers of schools and education centers that call themselves learner-centered, progressive, and/or holistic. Sources of data for this summary report also include over 3 years of informal interviews with and observations of people at alternative schools. The paper begins by examining terminology issues, discussing qualities for distinguishing educational alternatives, and describing eight types of schools (democratic and free schools, folk education, Quaker schools, homeschooling/unschooling/deschooling, Krishnamurti schools, Montessori schools, open schools, and Waldorf schools). It also presents frameworks for education (maps for understanding the territories of alternatives), and it discusses the three orientations of a competency based education: transaction (progressive), self-directed (learner-centered), and transformation (holistic). After looking at political issues around school choice which could impact the growth of the various philosophical alternatives, the paper concludes that in a society where issues of pluralism and diversity are valued as part of creating a more sustainable world and just democracy, the diversity of philosophical perspectives in education needs to be acknowledged. (Contains 41 references.) (SM)

Language: English

ISSN: 1094-3838, 2158-8414