On Dewey's Process Of Thinking And Its Effect On Early Childhood Education

The thought about process is a critical part in John Dewey's educational philosophy. Mainly through three levels concerned with source of Dewey's philosophy, the process-oriented concept of experience and the thoughts about process in education, the study is engaged in concluding and interpreting Dewey's concept of process with three aspects, such as where the thought stems from, what content it contains and what it refers to in the field of education. The last part of the thesis tries to analyze and judge the current conditions with the perspective of John Dewey's ideas about process.Firstly, what is the root of John Dewey's philosophy? Starting from the situation of dualism revealed both in realistic and theoretical world, John Dewey, with the approaches of genetics and experience, tries to transcend the artificial issues of dualism and replace them with concepts more dynamic and continuous.Secondly, the core concept of John Dewey's philosophy is experience which best manifests the nature of process. Experience is the process of give and take, which is an existence covering a certain time period, and thus the dualistic and separated elements, such as subject and object, human being and environment, emotion and intelligence, and so on, are linked with each other organically because of the reconstructed concept of experience as a process.Moreover, what are John Dewey's thoughts about process in the education situations? This part concluded his ideas widely seen in such topics as the purpose of education, the development of children, the nature of individuals and the essence of thoughts. These subjects are, just like the concept of experience, revised through the implicit thoughts of process and thus are transformed from their formerly isolated form into dynamic and process-oriented existence.Finally, John Dewey's achievements about his thoughts of process in education can be an inspiration for us to rethink our current educational practice. Under the guide of Dewey, three problems in educational practice are conspicuous: the way we arrange the time, the fragmented experience, and the stationary image of order. Confronted with such problems, the paper tries further to point out how to understand these phenomena and in what way should we think about the possible measures to solve the problems mentioned above.