Dewey and the teaching experience

Javier Senz Obregon

1. Scope and context
Dewey is amongst those thinkers whose ideas were too revolutionary to be
meaningfully and systematically appropriated in their time; 1 many of the challenges
posed by his pedagogical discourse are still in the future, and the conditions for their
significant appropriation in schools and public policy have yet to been created.
Unlike his contemporaries of the international New School Movement 2 (Senz Obregn,
2003) and the child-centered reformists in the United States (Kliebard, 1986), Deweys
pedagogical discourse was not centred on the students learning and their psychology,
but on the educational interactions between students and teachers. In his ideal that
pedagogy should create educative experiences, he was thinking not only of students, but
also of teachers as intellectuals and creators of pedagogical theory; something that he
believes was hindered by the separation between teachers and those who plan and
theorize about education:
The principle of learning by experience, if it is a good principle for pupils, is a
good principle for teachers. If our ideas and theories ought to be arrived at
inductively, if they ought to grow up out of actual experience, why should not
the concrete experience of the classroom teacher develop more in the way of
educational ideas and principles than it does at present? I think one reason for
the gap between our modern theories and what is known and accepted in school
practices, is largely due to the fact that the intellectual responsibility of the
classroom teacher has not been sufficiently recognized or magnified. You know,
if you are engaged in carrying out plans and ideas of one person, you do not and
cannot, throw yourself into it with the same enthusiasm and wholeheartedness,
or same desire to learn and improve, than you do when you are carrying out
plans and ideas which you yourself have had some share in developing.
(Dewey, 1924: 185-6).
Founded on the pragmatist conception of integration between theory and practice,
Dewey criticized the tendencies in his time of forming teachers instrumentally in the use
of tools for teaching, that is, as efficient workers, and envisioned something radically
different: to use practice work as an instrument in making real and vital theoretical
instruction (Dewey, 1904b: 249). He believed a skill-based instruction of teachers was
based on the erroneous conception that prospective teachers have no significant
1

experiences with which to relate the theoretical dimension to their formation as future
teachers:
() beginning students have without any reference to immediate teaching a
very large capital of an exceedingly practical sort in their own experience. The
argument that theoretical instruction is merely abstract and in the air unless
students are set at once to test and illustrate it by practice of teaching of their
own, overlooks the continuity of the class-room mental activity with that of other
normal experience (Dewey, 1904b: 258) (Deweys emphasis).
I will examine some Deweyan concepts and prescriptions for practice, focusing on
examples of the latter that, to my mind, still constitute relevant and creative challenges
for contemporary teachers, concentrating on the teaching experience: on the
implications for teachers of Deweys concept of educational experience in terms of selfreflection and self-creation. My emphasis is on the teacher as subject of educational
experience.3 Opposing historical pedagogical discourse related especially but not
exclusively to Christian pedagogy, that teachers are to sacrifice themselves in order to
save children -- a salvation that has been conceived historically as religious, moral,
political, psychological or economical -- the thread running through this chapter is that
pedagogical practices are meaningful, ethical, democratic and effective only insofar as
the same hopes and ideals they have for students, are also conceived for teachers. What
could be called the sacred symmetry Dewey envisioned in teacher-student interactions
implies, to my mind, their inter-subjective transformation. I view pedagogical practices
then, as practices through which teachers are created and create themselves.
The trajectory of Dewey scholarship is quite remarkable. After strong interest in his
pedagogy around the world in the first four decades of the last century, between the
1950s and the 1970s the dominant tendency was to dismiss his thought as unrealistic or
no longer relevant, and to critique his political conceptions, both on the part of
conservatives and Marxists. But Dewey has returned with a vengeance, as can be
ascertained by the numerous publications since the 1990s, on his philosophy and
pedagogy.
Studies published before that last decade of the century focus on his educational theory
and his place within the progressive education movement in the United States. 4Since
then, there has arisen a very productive movement to reconstruct Deweys philosophical
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writings in order to recontextualize his concepts in the post-structural debate on

education. 5There have also been a number of historical studies on his early pedagogical
experiments at the University of Chicago, and comparisons with other pedagogues, as
well as relating Deweys thinking to feminism, and applying his pedagogy to classroom
practice.6 Although few studies have concentrated on Deweys conception of the
teacher,7 in the last ten years, the trend has been to use Deweys prescriptions to tackle
specific problems of contemporary schools and public policy. 8
2. Central concepts of Deweys pedagogical discourse
Deweys idea that the purposes of pedagogy9 are fallible due to social and cultural
changes is even more relevant today, as is his tenet to do away with the separation
between means and ends. Pedagogy cannot be viewed as a preparation for later life or a
means for economic development. Present pedagogical experience is an intrinsic good;
its meaning and value cannot be derived from an imaginary and highly uncertain future.
The purposes of teaching and learning are to be found within pedagogical experience
and any external aim deprives it of its present meaning. Pedagogy has one central aim,
namely growth, or creating the conditions for educative experiences. Pedagogy is a
process of living and an experiment in the present; its aims are to be understood both as
consequences foreseen -- the possibilities and achievements on the part of pupils and
teachers -- and as hypothesis for pedagogical action .
Growth, a continuing reconstruction of experience, creates new conditions for the self,
knowledge, society and the world, with no final and definitive salvation to be attained.
The hopes provided by growth are more modest: to enable the living creature to live
as truly and positively at one stage as at another, and to guarantee further growth in
new directions (Dewey, 1916a: 51,100). For growth to take place, the discontinuities of
the selfs experience have to be overcome through its permanent reconstruction. Growth
enhances collective possibilities by creating conditions for an increase in shared
experience. Teachers and students are to be formed and form themselves in order to
contribute to the democratic reconstruction of social habits and institutions in terms of
greater equality of opportunities and common understanding, in a society characterized
by social mobility and free circulation of experiences and ideas. Students and teachers
are to take part in the transformation of the existing economic and political order,
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correcting unfair privilege and deprivation. To create a common basis for shared
experience, teachers are to contribute to the creation of a social spirit of cohesion and
common understanding among all peoples and races, exorcising prejudice, isolation and
hatred.
By examining Deweys conception of the self in terms of teachers subjectivity, we can
envision the challenges and possibilities for self-creation that his pedagogy entails: a
self-creation through intense and meaningful interactions with other teachers, students,
knowledge and the world. All dualisms associated with the self are to be dissolved
through pedagogy, for they lead to the fragmentation of self and experience: thought and
emotion, instinct/impulse, desire and thought, the inner and the outer, interest and
will/effort, thought and experience, theory and practice, value and meaning, knowledge
and activity, habit and thought, self and society, self and world, ends and means, the
moral and the social. Deweys view of the self and experience is a kinetic and organic
one, that of a well crafted film where all images are related, and movement is
permanent. The self is essentially a process, a process of growth, not a fixed thing
(Dewey,1899: 102). It is part of a unifying movement (or experience) in which all
elements cease to stand in opposition to each other by becoming qualities of a single
intense and meaningful

flow. And educational experience is

a transformative

transaction between past and future experience, that selects useful aspects of past
experience, and modifies the quality of subsequent experiences.
The self is a contingent and unstable product of historical practices; even instincts are
not fixed, for their meaning is acquired; it depends upon interaction with a matured
social medium (Dewey, 1922: 65). Its limits are also labile rather than naturally fixed.
The subject and the object of knowledge and the individual and society are not two
separate realms. The historical conception and production of a spectator self, distanced
from the world and others, is a contingent notion and experience produced by
pedagogical practices and by the social arrangements of authoritarian societies.
Furthermore, the self is not divided into discrete powers or faculties; it interacts as a
whole with others and the world, and when this interaction is successful, all its powers
--

body,

physical

action,

instinct/impulse,

imagination,

feeling/emotion,

character/disposition, habit, will/effort, interest/desire, -- act as unity, as a concentrated

movement within life itself.
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Knowledge is produced when self and world become united through experimental or
reflective thought, a contextual thought that problematizes the use of generalizations
abstracted from the initial conditions in which they are made. For Dewey, outside
context, outside the actual lived situation, meaning cannot be ascertained: in the reality
of a living spoken language, the utterance has no meaning except in the context of a
situation (Dewey, 1931: 4).
Like pedagogy, thought always stands to be corrected and can never be fully true; it is a
tentative moment of equilibrium that must seek its own demise by being tested as new
hypotheses in an endless circular movement. Pedagogical thought and experimentation
is a complex, dynamic act, and a point of synthesis of all the dimensions of the selves of
teachers and students; an action of mutual adaptation between self and world, between
teachers and students. Thought is produced under certain conditions that introduce
problems into the regular flow of experience: thinking occurs when things are uncertain
or doubtful or problematic. Where there is reflection there is suspense () all thinking
involves a risk. Certainty cannot be guaranteed in advance (Dewey, 1916a: 148). Real
thought unifies the subject and the object of experience through the absorption of the
self on the object or problem.
For Dewey through language we anticipate situations symbolically and imaginatively,
and are able to tap into the intellectual systematization of humanitys ideas and
concepts. Language is above all an instrument of communication: a means of sharing
ideas and feelings, and of creating a community of understanding and purpose. Through
communication a social self is formed, constituted by social agreements and
regularities. It is also the means for the sharing of experience that characterizes a
democratic society: the recognition of common interests and the creation of common
aims and aspirations.10

3. The teacher as subject of educational experience

Dewey conceives teachers simultaneously as artists, intellectuals and experimenters. His
discourse exercises a liberating effect on the teachers relation to knowledge and
teaching practices. For the first time in pedagogical discourse, the power exercised over

the teacher was questioned: that of experts (philosophers, theologians, pedagogues, and
later psychologists) and civil and religious authorities who since the seventeenth century
had tried to determine what and how the teacher taught and related to knowledge.
Dewey questioned the teachers situation in words that have an uncanny contemporary
ring: in the name of scientific administration and close supervision, the initiative and
freedom of the actual teacher are more and more curtailed (Dewey, 1925: 122) . In
pedagogy there should not be sharp distinctions between those who planned and those
who executed, for it did not allow the teacher to view the educational process as a
whole, rendering her work mechanical and alienating. Teachers were to be free to define
the ends, methods and subject matter of education; and they were to contribute to the
development of pedagogical theory.
It would be hard to find a more intellectually demanding and complex practice than that
conceived by Dewey. The teacher is to be a creator with an artists personal enthusiasm
and imagination, a similar intuitive and sympathetic understanding of pupils mental
movements and of the particularities of the educational situations of her practice, that
artists have of their materials (Dewey, 1924: 186). As an intellectual, she is to develop
knowledge about the growth of children and youth, the historical conceptions and
methods of pedagogy, contemporary society and its problems, and the structure and
content of academic subjects. But she is to be more than a bearer of knowledge: she has
to convert her knowledge into pedagogical hypothesis, and observe and reflect on the
pedagogical experiment.
At the center of these complex practices is Deweys idea of the use of experimental
method in teaching and learning practices. In its more general sense, method is the
personal way in which teachers and students act intelligently. There are, then, as many
methods as there are individuals. But in a more specialized sense, as the prototype of
intelligent human action, method is the experimental or reflective discipline of
thought to be enacted in schools. All Deweys prescriptions for teachers on the
organization of schools, on teaching practices, on the ordering of subject-matter, and on
the ways pupils are to be governed, have as their aim the production of experimental
thinking.

Teaching and learning are to begin with pupils concrete personal experience and grow
progressively detached from their particular viewpoint, in the direction of the abstract
and logically organized forms of learning. The starting point for experimental thought is
spontaneous, ordinary activity and experience of the pupil, within which a teachers
practices have to fall, cooperating with the flow of experience. Pedagogical
experimentation is a six-stage process. First, through teachers suggestions, ideas are
selected in order to deal with a perplexity experienced by students. Secondly, teachers
contribute to the intellectualization of the perplexity so that it becomes a genuine
problem. Thirdly, teachers and students design a hypothesis or plan of action, to guide
the observations and actions of the experiment. Fourthly, a supposition or conjectural
anticipation is formulated, regarding the possible consequences of the experiment.
Fifth, the hypothesis is tested by an overt or imaginative action. Finally, the effects of
pupils actions are observed, organized and reflected on. Through the constant repetition
of this procedure, the experimental mode of thinking would become a permanent habit.
In this experiment, academic subjects are integrated; they are used to shed light on the
experimental problem, rather than presented in the uniform manner of traditional plans
of studies. The teacher has to select subject matter that is useful for dealing with the
uncertainties and hypotheses that emerge from pupils experiences. The formal skills of
reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught during the process of carrying out these
experimental activities, and in subordination to them. The experiment also requires the
participation of pupils and teachers from different grades, in order to intensify the
continuity of their experience. The function of subject matter is also social, in terms of
the interpersonal and collective dimension of human experience that give rise to moral
problems. Teachers are to familiarize pupils with the weak places, the dark places, the
unsettled difficulties of our society (Dewey, 1916c: 195), and this knowledge is to be
articulated with the actions required for the resolution of social problems. Thus, history,
for example, is to be the study of the structure and functioning of the social mechanism
and its problems, for history deals with the past, but this past is the history of the
present () The true starting point of history is always some present situation with its
problems (Dewey, 1916a: 213-214).
Through their practices, teachers are also to create a continuity between school and life:
connect and generate conflict between their ordinary experience and that of pupils
7

outside schools; replicate in schools the experience of the community as a social and
productive organization; act on contemporary social forces; and transform the highly
formalized timetables and systems of classification and evaluation that create
discontinuities with ordinary life.

The design of educative experience

The primordial task of teachers is that of creating educative experiences, conceived as
experiences that increase the meaning of human life, lead to actions that are more
intense, effective and socially productive, and create subjects, practices and instiutions
that are freer, and more equitable. Educative experiences form subjects with the
necessary dispositions to continue educating themselves permanently, subjects then that
do not perceive themselves as fixed and completed. And the qualities of these subjects
are solidarity, creativity, curiosity, initiative, intense desires and purposes and an open
and unprejudiced mind. For Dewey, educative experiences have two prototypical
characteristics: their continuity and interactivity.

Deweys prescriptions for a practice that leads to educative experiences constitute a

radical transformation of the teachers position as subjects. Teachers are to act on
pupils actions indirectly, rather than directly on their character and dispositions. First,
they are to direct pupils attention to knowledge rather than to themselves, being wary
that their personality does not get in the way of pupils direct relation to knowledge, for
reliance on their personal strong points to motivate learning could lead pupils to
dependence and weakness. Secondly, teachers are to become aware of the
distinguishing peculiarities of their own mental habit, so that it does not become the
standard for judging the mental processes of pupils (Dewey, 1910: 48). Thirdly, teachers
should not appeal directly to pupils moral or aesthetic emotions; doing so would isolate
emotions from their proper function of valuing and reinforcing action and appealing
directly to emotions would turn them into something merely sentimental (Dewey,
1895: 227).
The teacher, then, is to design the objective conditions (the educational situation) that
would lead pupils to educative experiences. These conditions include educational
materials (subject matter, equipment, books, toys, games) the social structuring of the

situation in terms of teacher-pupil interactions and those of pupils amongst themselves.

For Dewey, the teacher does not have the right to withhold from pupils the
understanding she had gained from her own experience. Pedagogical interactions
cannot privilege the authoritative knowledge of the teacher and subject matter, nor the
students learning activities; what is needed then, is a constant transaction between
teacher, pupils and knowledge.

The teachers design of the educational situation has the aesthetic qualities of a dance:
balance, rhythm, harmonious interaction; both dancers -- teacher and pupil -- have to
follow, not so much each other, but the music, the flow of the reconstruction of
knowledge and experience. First, this means the maintenance of a delicate balance
between teachers actions and those of pupils, between too little showing and telling as
to fail to stimulate reflection and so much as to choke thought (Dewey, 1933: 334).
Second, the teacher has to connect the flow of her actions to those of pupils in order to
redirect them towards a continuous and focused course of action. Third, she is to
maintain the continuity of the class-room mental activity with that of other normal
experience, by drawing upon the ideas, interests and activities of pupils home and
community life, and by having pupils apply in daily life what they learn in school
(Dewey, 1899: 75). Fourth, the teacher is to observe the effects of the conditions she has
designed in terms of shifts in pupils experiences, and to adjust these conditions
accordingly. She is to observe the initial traits, habits, interests and needs of pupils, the
way they interact with the experimental situation, the effects of this interaction on their
initial experiences, and the direction in which their experience is heading. Examination
has to be unobtrusive, taking advantage of situations of free activity that best reveal
pupils natural tendencies, and focusing on their transformation, rather than on how
much they have learnt.

Government and self-government through experimentation and interdependence

For the government of pupils, Dewey places his faith in the interactions and mental
discipline demanded by the experimental method. Discipline becomes, like learning, an
indirect effect of experimental practices, of the democratic regulation of conduct
inherent in shared experiences, based on the constant mutual adaptation of teachers

and pupils actions. These regulations are to be like those of games: clearly defined,
constitutive of the activity itself rather than externally imposed, and voluntarily
accepted by all, so that only unjust decisions are questioned but not the rules
themselves. Only by being allowed relative freedom of action can teachers and pupils
perceive the limits imposed by the freedom of others. But it is not freedom of feelings,
impulses, or actions that is to be sought, but mental freedom: the productive,
progressive, and democratic freedom intrinsic to experimental thinking. To be free is to
have the power to frame purposes () to evaluate desires by the consequences which
will result from acting upon them; power to select and order means to carry chosen ends
into operation (Dewey, 1938a: 64).

Deweys pedagogy seeks to integrate pluralism and commonality by a recognition that

common purposes and experiences are arrived at through different paths. The
commonality required by shared experience, is to be connected with individual and
social differences. In order to achieve this, pupils of different social groups are to be
mixed in schools as a necessary condition of a democratic education and society;
pupils intellectual progress is to be judged in terms of their unique self, as a living,
struggling, failing and succeeding individual, rather than by comparison to others; and
the teacher is to recognize that each pupil has her own method of thinking, and is to
encourage this diversity.
For Dewey, moral knowledge and valuing are the same as any other forms of
knowledge and valuation. Through action, teachers and pupils are to put moral ideas to
the test in terms of the formation of a moral -- that is a democratic -- community and
self. The end of moral formation is the permanent expansion and intensification of
democratic interactions and institutions, an on-going experiment directed to increase the
experience shared by individuals and social groups, and intensificiation of meaningful,
flexible, creative, educative, equitable and free experiences.
In order to become democratic, school experiences are to be characterized by free and
equitable communication (Dewey, 1916a: 84); and the symmetry in the knowledge and
power of individuals that this implies can only be the result of an education that
provides equal opportunities for all. Moral and democratic practices require democratic
conditions. Subjects can only be as moral as the social context in which they interact
10

with others. Moral actions also require an emotional responsiveness to others, a

prompt and almost instinctive sensitiveness to conditions, to the ends and interests of
others (Dewey, 1909: 288).
For Dewey, direct moral instruction is problematic, for ideas about morality do not in
themselves lead to moral conduct. Furthermore, the teaching of specific authoritative
moral principles and norms goes against the constitution of a democratic society, for it
reinforces the authoritarian control of those who hold power. Through moral
experimental actions, teachers and students attain self-control and self-understanding by
perceiving the self in action as part of a social group. This self-control through
experimental actions is to replace the external forms of control that had characterized
historical pedagogical practices. It constituted a discipline through which the self is
liberated from aimless impulses and desires, and from parasitic dependence and
submission to the will of others.
4. Dewey and the contemporary teaching experience.
It can be said that pragmatism is a way of thinking that is especially powerful in times
of rapid change, as was the period in the United States in which Dewey wrote (Senz
Obregn, 2004: 12). It can be argued that Deweys pragmatist pedagogy, as a whole, is
especially relevant to these heady times we live in. It provides the conceptual and
practical means to overcome some of the central fragmentations that weaken
educational experience in contemporary schools, teaching and learning practices and
teachers experience. It also liberates teachers from the instrumental role they are still
relegated to in many quarters, creating a powerful image of teachers as autonomous
intellectuals, artists and subjects of pedagogical knowledge. In these times of late
modernity, of relativity (or crisis, as some would argue) of truth, ethics and the self
together with the institutional reconfiguration of the modern school, we need to rethink
the teacher as subject of experience, multiplying her relations with an ever widening
field of knowledge and experience.
As the anthropologist Margaret Mead (1970) argued a half a century ago, the rapid
social changes in western and westernized societies were already creating -- and
evidently still are -- something never seen in the past; what she termed prefigurative
11

societies: a type of society where the necessary learning to live in the present and the
future had little to do with what adults learned in the past. It seems evident that children
and youth are forming themselves, individually and collectively, for a radically different
world from that of their parents and teachers. They are forming themselves for a much
faster world, constitutive of new subjective forms, and forms of thought and language,
that are eroding the monist and universalist sacredness of abstract thought: a world more
open to ambivalence and uncertainty in which their ways of experiencing and choosing
life-courses are not as tied as those of previous generations to effort, will or a
fundamentally rational calculus. This contemporary experience is based more on
practical and contextualized ways of thinking, and open to multiple non-discursive
languages: oral, dramaturgical, audiovisual and corporeal. 11
Deweys radical conception of the teachers intellectual, pedagogical and political
autonomy was founded on a vision that pedagogical practices are to be intrinsic goods,
ends in themselves, and in permanent reconstruction. This conception may be put in
action in a contemporary scenario that is dominated, in terms of public policy, by
conservative forces deeply distrustful of teachers and seeking to regulate with everincreasing intensity their classroom practices; managerial and privatization rationalities
are applied, the results of pupils standardized evaluations are used as the central
standard of the quality of education.
The crisis of authority of contemporary teachers can be viewed not only in relation
with the States and other agents regulation of teachers practices, but also in relation to
the practices of self-creation of children and youth. And this asymmetry between the
vital and reconstructive power of students that bears a plural and uncertain future, and
of a subject that, in many cases, defends the stabilities of modernity, can only be
resolved through the constitution of a shared experience that connects these differences
meaningfully. This shared experience is one in which teachers experiences become
reconstructive and vital, and students everyday experiences are also reconstructed in
schools through the steadier, more systematic, abstract and concentrated practices of
knowledge which are characteristic of academic disciplines.

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Drawing from the strategic systematization I have undertaken of Deweys pedagogical

discourse in the previous two sections, one can infer other specific dimensions in which
it can be used in the present battles over teachers subjectivity and teaching experience.
First, regarding the types of knowledge that would strengthen teachers autonomy and
make more meaningful and powerful their teaching experience. Against the historical
and contemporary tendency to infantilize teachers, especially prevalent in strongly
Catholic countries (such as my own), Deweys pedagogy envisions teachers as
politically committed, powerful and courageous living and social beings. A power
conceived as a constant capacity to reconstruct themselves, students and society,
founded on their own knowledge and experience, which derives from the continuity of
their school experiences with a plurality of diverse experiences, their own lives and out
of-school experiences, those of students, human experience formalized in academic
knowledge and in pedagogy, and social and political life. Of special potency, to my
mind, is Deweys image of the teacher which simultaneously reflects on the pedagogical
experiment and on her self in the action of teaching; a practice that would effectively
dissolve the separation between actions on the self and actions on others and the world,
that has characterized pedagogical discourse for some four centuries.12
A second dimension is the integration in teaching and learning of all the powers of the
self, as the central practice, both of knowledge and of government in schools. We have
seen, in the past two decades, the emergence of educational policies of multilateral
agencies and national governments, directed exclusively to the government of pupils in
schools: policies to teach them how to live and design productive life-projects, to
regulate their sexuality and teach them to take care of their own health, as well as to
teach them to control directly their negative emotions, such as anger.13 From a
Deweyan perspective, one can critique these policies on three counts. On the first, in
their component of direct moral-social instruction that aims to adapt students to
hegemonic conceptions of how to live. On the second count, for making a direct appeal
to students emotions rather than connecting emotions to practices of knowledge,
thereby fragmenting the self. Finally, because they separate that which Dewey believed
should be effects (or qualities) on a single flow of experimentation and experience:
reflective thought, morality and self-government or government of others.

13

A third dimension is the necessary tension, conflict and dialogue between pluralism and
commonality. The debate of communal pluralism versus liberal minimal commonality,
has continued to rage amongst philosophers of education for some time now. I believe
Deweys conceptions and prescriptions can help bridge the divide, for like others, it is a
duality he believes is artificial and leads to a fragmented experience. His prescriptions
for a plural and common educative experience are at the same time imaginative,
realistic and politically powerful: we live in a pluralistic world, so pluralism is
immanent to our individual and social experience. That is why teaching practices are to
be radically democratic, in the sense of creating the maximum possible shared
experience. This idea of shared experience underscores, to my mind, that what is shared
is different, and also that plurality can, paradoxically, only be intensified (and protected)
by way of reaching common agreements, based on different arguments.
Fourth and last are the mutual and necessary reconstructions, both in schools and
society, for the configuration of a radical democracy. Once more, bridging the dualist
opposition between those who view schooling as the primordial saving force of
society and those who believe little or nothing will change unless we transform society
and the State, Deweys conceptions and prescriptions show a powerful way out. Against
the first group, he argues that the configuration of a radical democratic experience in
schools is only possible in a radical democratic society; against the second, he would
argue that ethical and political transformative practices do not have a sacred scenario,
as some would hold (the State, political parties, trade unions), but have to constitute a
way of life, whose struggles take place in all institutions and in ordinary life.
Furthermore, he prescribes a permanent interaction and continuity between democratic
political actors and schools; one in which teachers and students actively contribute to
the political transformation of society, and political movements are engaged in the
educative experiences of schools.
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1 For an account of this in Latin America, see: Senz Obregn, 2004. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine the
many studies of Deweys appropriations in the United States and many other countries that support my general claim of
these partial appropriations; that on the one hand, tended to over-methodologize his ideas; and on the other, tended to
exclude his more radical conceptions of the self, knowledge, the teacher as intellectual, and schools as political sites. I refer
the reader to the following studies: Biesta and Miedema, 1996; Bykdvenci, 1995; Caicedo, 1995; Dussel and Caruso,
1998; Goodenow, 1990; Kliebard, 1987; Olkers, 1995; Olkers and Rhyn (eds), 2000; Popkewitz (ed.), 2005.
2 Such as Claparde, Decroly, Ferrire, Montessori, amongst others.
3 My narrative of Deweyan pedagogical discourse is based on his following writings: Dewey, 1895; 1897a, 1897b, 1899,
1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904a, 1904b, 1909, 1910, 1913, 1916a, 1916b, 1922, 1924, 1925, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932,
1934, 1936, 1937, 1938a, 1939b and Dewey and Dewey, 1915.
4 See, for example, Bernstein, 1987; Brubacher, 1956; Hook, 1974; Holmes, 1980; Kliebard, 1987; Peters (ed.) 1977;
White, 1972; Zilversmit, 1976.
5 See: Biesta, 1994,1994/95; Boisvert, 1994/95; Cunningham, 1994, 1994/95; Detlefsen, 1998; Fesmire, 1994/95; Garrison
1994/95; Holder, 1994/95; Jackson, 1994/95; Leach, 1994/95; Lehmann-Rommel, 2000; Marshall, J.D. (1994/95; Miedema,
1994/95; Shusterman, 1994/95; Tiles, 1994/95; Garrison, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999.
6 See:; Condliffe-Lagermann, 1996; Cruikshank, 1998; Fishman and McCarthy, 1998; Reese, 2001; Ryan, 1995; Seigfried,
1998.)
7 See: Biesta, 1994; Garrison 1997; Garrison et, al, 2014; Rosenow, 1993, Senz Obregn, 2008, Simpson et al. 2004.
8 See: Cunningham, 2014; Hansen, 2006; Harbour, 2014; Pring, 2007; Simpson et al., 2004.
9 Drawing from Zuluagas (1987) ground-breaking conceptualizations, I conceive pedagogy as a complex practice that
includes a conceptual dimension (on teachers, teaching, curriculum, childhood, knowledge, morality, discipline schools, the
ends of education, amongst other concepts); a prescriptive dimension (on how to teach, how to learn, how to govern pupils,
etc.); and a practical dimension.
10 See: Dewey, 1916a: 4, 32. For Dewey, language was not restricted to oral and written speech, it included gestures,
pictures, monuments, visual images.
11 On this, see: Martin-Barbero, 2004 and Reguillo, 2000.

12 On the separation between the inner and the outer in pedagogical discourse since the seventeenth century, see
Senz Obregn, 2013.
13 Some policy documents of this trend, are: Delors et al., 1996; Mangrulkar et al., 2001; Sinclair, 2004.