Study On John Dewey's Philosophy Of Education

John Dewey(1859-1952),a master of American pragmatism,is rich in the theories of philosophy of education.His philosophy emphasizes the real world and practice,especially the survival and destiny of people in real life.In the context of contemporary industrial and information age,China' s educational field faces a series of problems,such as the alienation between cognition and action,the lack of introspective thinking and creative ability,the generation of inertia in personality,etc.Dewey's philosophy of education has some referential significance on the solution of the problems that our country is faced with at present.Based on the social development of Dewey' s era and theoretical origin,this paper analyzes the "theoretical basis" of Dewey's thought and then expounds the "theoretical content" of his educational philosophy and further summarizes the 'theoretical characteristics".Finally,it evaluates his educational philosophy from the historical perspective.First of all,from the historical background of Dewey's educational philosophy and the theoretical origin,the author summarizes and analyzes the characteristics of Dewey' s era and the philosophical basis of his educational philosophy.Then,his philosophy thought of education is sorted out.Firstly,by analyzing his epistemology of empiricism,the methodology of experimentalism,the psychology of functionalism and the social view of democracy,the educational concept of eradicating the seperation of traditional education from real life is clarified.Then,the content of Dewey' s educational theory is explored.Based on the concept of "experience",Dewey tried to restore the continuity of real world and encouraged students to learn from life and experience,thus putting forward the educational essence of growth.When students respond to uncertain problem situations voluntarily,their cognition and actions can be unified by relying on the experimental method of inquiry and students' psychological characteristics as well as through the reflective thinking and problem-oriented teaching theory.This continuous educational process embodies the educational characteristics of the unity of purpose and means.Thirdly,in order to overcome the setbacks of traditional education,Dewey' s theoretical content of education is explained and the characteristics of his thought are summarized,that is,the emphasis on practicality of education,adherence to the methodology of exploratoryism and great importance attached to action theory of practice.In the last part of the paper,Dewey' s thought is evaluated from the historical perspective by comprehensively understanding his philosophy thought of education.Dewey's philosophy of education attaching much importance to the generativity and practicality of the educational process,which provides a new theoretical paradigm for the later study on educational philosophy.However,because of his urgent desire to restore the continuity of the living world and construct a free and equal democratic society,his educational goals and teaching process are full of idealism.In addition,he rejects dialectics as a method,so there exists the limitation of the lack of dialectic in his discussion of educational theory.Through the analysis of Dewey' s philosophy of education,it can be seen that it has some positive significance.However,his determination for dispelling the traditional dualistic philosophy's pursuit for certainty makes him still not go beyond the one-sided and exaggerated uncertainty and the denial of the existence of objective laws.Therefore,we must adhere to the Marxist historical materialism to explore the issues of philosophy of education so as to promote the great development of educational theory research.