As I continue the readings for Cog Tools, I’m still enjoying my dance with Dewey’s Democracy and Education. While I’m not getting through it as fast as I’d like, it’s giving me much to reflect on and continues to take some time to really sink in and flesh out in my own head. Today, I had a breakthrough when I found myself actually synthesizing an idea across all three strands (Cog Tools, Design, and Research) while reading Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, a required reading for Design. It actually referenced Dewey and had this to say about him:
[Dewey] advocated for students to be actively engaged in authentic interdisciplinary projects connected to the real world.
All the sudden I realized that his theory is the fundamental backbone of the MALT program where the action research methodology requires putting knowledge into immediate action in a current real world situation. Seeing this immediately has changed the way I reflect on my readings of Dewey. Before, it was almost part criticism where I would read a section of Dewey and then try to see where my beliefs and his matched up and where they fell short. It was a constant evaluation process. Now, while that experience still exists, I’m absorbing (and–coincidentally–putting into action) what his thoughts were on this continuous educational experience as if it will help me longterm within the action research methodology.
Being able to connect the dots across the entire program back to an education philosophy is incredibly powerful and makes me wonder how many graduate level programs have a philosophy so deeply rooted that it can pop up in the literature at any point. That it can pull together the entire program into one consistent narrative rather than being just a collection of some relatively complementary courses. There is power in how tightly interwoven MALT is and John Dewey’s philosophy underpins it nicely.
It’s also worth noting that slightly removing myself from Dewey directly and stumbling on to a reference of him was critical. Sometimes it takes having a slight distant from the familiar dialect and cadence to force yourself to step back. It makes me wonder how can you make this purposeful action happen in other learning environments such as an undergraduate program? How can Chemistry be interlinked with English Comp and Calculus in a way that allows them to harmonize in a way that actually reinforces the three, seemingly, opposing disciplines? Can it be done by tacking a real world project across all three in way that shows how connected they actually are?
First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. – John Dewey
[su_note note_color=”#e7e7e4″]Note: This is the second post in a series of weekly reflections for the CogTools strand. All related posts can be viewed under the CogTools tag.[/su_note]