About Broad Vocational Education Concept Of Dewey

Dewey is an attractive figure to those who study and major in education history. Dewey is a well-known educationist in the US and in the world in the 20th century. It is a basic research topic to study the pragmatism education theory of Dewey .In the great system of education theories set up by Dewey, the speculation and exploration about vocational education is a necessary and important part. Anyhow, due to the traditional ideas to put more attention to common education than vocational education, and less abstruse writing on vocational education by Dewey, the emphasis and study on vocational education cannot match with that to his whole education theory. It leads to the result that the study on his vocational education theory can't reflect its complete picture and basic features. In this paper, by collecting and understanding a great deal documents and materials, learning from the study achievements in the same field at home and abroad, the writer tries to draw an outline of Dewey's vocational education theory through undertaking a specialized, deep, complete and systematic study on it. On this basis, it shows in the paper that it's different between Dewey's understanding to the vocational education and our general understanding to it. Dewey has got a broad and wide vocational education concept. And the writer calls it "Broad Vocation Education Concept"(BVEC). This study tries to explore its thought base and main content, describe its main features, study its historical fate, summarize its real position in the history and further to connect it to the present vocational education reform. This paper first discusses the thought base of Dewey's BVEC in four aspects. Background comes first, which is the coming of the big industry era. Then the philosophy basis comes, which is the experimental naturalism. Logical start comes next, which is the broad understanding to vocation. And the last is the social ideal, which is democracy. Based on them, the writer interprets Dewey's BVEC in levels of theory and application respectively. In the level of theory, Dewey puts forward that all educations have the property of vocation, and vocational education was called by him the "vocational aspect of education". Vocational education puts its emphasis on training people's vocation abilities, upgrading their cultural quality, stimulating the growth of knowledge and morality. The ideal form of education should be the integration of vocational education and liberal education. Vocational education has great significance in advancing social and individual development and perfecting education itself. In the level of application, Dewey suggests the socialization in making the goal of vocational education, the synthesis in constructing vocational education curriculum system, and the variation in supplementing vocational education. This paper generalizes the main features of Dewey's BVEC into four points: civilization tendency in education receivers, which makes the education range wide; activitism in education process, which makes the education operation practical; great education concept, which makes its education ideals provident; instrumentalism in education function, which makes its education values applicable. By describing the thought and basic features of Dewey's BVEC, instead of the static study on it, this paper examines its fate and influences in the development of American education. Through the understanding and disputation between the broad vocational education concept represented by Dewey and narrow vocational education concept represented by Snedden and Prosser in the early stage of 20th century, comparing the achievements and failures in the practice of these two different concepts in the first half of 20th century , and self-examining and inspecting the choices in the issues of vocational education in the late half of the century, the writer has the idea that Dewey's BVEC represents the trend of vocational education reform in the world now. It has become one important theme to study and develop the main spir...