A Study Of Dewey’s Conceptions Of Textbook And Their Inspiration On China’s English Textbooks’ Compilation

As a leading authority in American modern education, Dewey not only has extensive and profound influence internationally but exerts great positive effects on the development of Chinese education. Dewey’s conceptions of textbook are an important part of Dewey’s pragmatic theory of education. A study of Dewey’s conceptions of textbook helps to recognize the problems in our English textbooks and to promote the research of the latter.This paper firstly focuses on the theoretical basis and main contents of Dewey’s conceptions of textbook. The theoretical basis consists of the empirical epistemology, democratic humanism theory and functional psychology. Then the paper elaborates the main contents of Dewey’s conceptions of textbook mainly from the aspects of textbooks’ interests, morality, sociality and scientificity. Based on this, complying with the policy of new curriculum reform—one outline with many textbooks, this paper suggests that the compilation of China’s English textbooks can be improved in the following four respects: increasing interestingness, strengthening edification of morality, cultivating students to be social and practicing scientific approaches.