John Dewey:
John Dewey
"He, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophical school of Pragmatism. He's also known as the father of functional psychology..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey
credit: pragmatism.org
"Dewey's areas of work included philosophy, psychology, education, politics, and social thought. At an event in celebration of his 90th birthday, in 1949, Dewey described his life goal as the quest to obtain "a moderately clear and distinct idea of what the problems are that underlie the difficulties and evils which we experience in fact; that is to say, in practical life." This concern with the practical, socially responsible life is a key element of the philosophical concept of pragmatism, which Dewey explicated in many of his writings. Dewey is also considered to be a preeminent voice in American educational philosophy, with emphasis on what is generally called "progressive education."
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/dewey/dewey.html
credit: alexandertechnique.com
...................... F. Matthias Alexander teaching John Dewey
“After studying over a period of years Mr. Alexander's method in actual operation, I would stake myself upon the fact that he has applied to our ideas and beliefs about ourselves and about our acts exactly the same method of experimentation and of production of new sensory observations, as tests and means of developing thought, that have been the source of all progress in the physical sciences; and if, in any other plan, any such use has been made of the sensory appreciation of our attitudes and acts, if in it there has been developed a technique for creating new sensory observations of ourselves, and if complete reliance has been placed upon these findings, I have never heard of it. In some plans there has been a direct appeal to "consciousness" (which merely registers bad conditions); in some, this consciousness has been neglected entirely and dependence placed instead upon bodily exercises, rectifications of posture, etc. But Mr. Alexander has found a method for detecting precisely the correlations between these two members, physical-mental, of the same whole, and for creating a new sensory consciousness of new attitudes and habits. It is a discovery which makes whole all scientific discoveries, and renders them available, not for our undoing, but for human use in promoting our constructive growth and happiness.”
http://www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/dewey/
"Educated in his native Vermont and at Johns Hopkins University, John Dewey enjoyed a lengthy career as an educator, psychologist, and philosopher. He initiated the progressive laboratory school at the University of Chicago, where his reforms in methods of education could be put into practice. As a professor of philosophy, Dewey taught at Michigan, Chicago, and Columbia University. He was instrumental in founding the American Association of University Professors as a professional organization for post-secondary educators.
Drawn from an idealist background by the pragmatist influence of Peirce and James, Dewey became an outstanding exponent of philosophical naturalism. Human thought is understood as practical problem-solving, which proceeds by testing rival hypotheses against experience in order to achieve the "warranted assertability" that grounds coherent action. "
http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/dewe.htm
Progressive Education:
"The Progressive Education The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05.movement in American education. Confined to a period between the late 19th and mid-20th cent., the term “progressive education” is generally used to refer only to those educational programs that grew out of the American reform effort known as the progressive movement. The sources of the movement, however, partly lie in the pedagogy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Pestalozzi, and Friedrich Froebel. 1 Progressive education was a pluralistic phenomenon, embracing industrial training, agricultural education, and social education as well as the new techniques of instruction advanced by educational theorists. Postulates of the movement were that children learn best in those experiences in which they have a vital interest and that modes of behavior are most easily learned by actual performance. The progressives insisted, therefore, that education must be a continuous reconstruction of living experience based on activity directed by the child. The recognition of individual differences was also considered crucial. Progressive education opposed formalized authoritarian procedure and fostered reorganization of classroom practice and curriculum as well as new attitudes toward individual students."
http://bartleby.com/65/pr/progrsved.html Primary sources: http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/dewe.htm
+
bravenet.com