Deweyan darwinism for the twenty-first century: Toward an educational method for critical democratic engagement in the era of the institute of education sciences

Educational Theory

Volumn 58, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 289-304

  Seltzer Kelly, Deborah ^a  

^a SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65249100686     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2008.00289.x     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, HR 3801, 107th Cong., 2nd Sess. (2002), http://www.ed.gov/policy/rschstat/leg/PL107-279.pdf.
2. From the description of the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, "About the Institute of Education Sciences," at http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ies/index.html.
3. Marianne Bloch, "A Discourse that Disciplines, Governs and Regulates: The National Research Council's Report on Scientific Research in Education," Qualititative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2004): 96.
4. Stephen Toulmin, The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts, vol. 1 of Human Understanding (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972), 50.
5. John Dewey, "The Supremacy of Method" (1929), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1929, vol. 4, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 201.
6. Ibid., 203.
7. Donald T. Campbell, "Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes," Psychological Review 67, no. 6 (1960): 380-400;
8. and Donald T. Campbell, "Evolutionary Epistemology," in Evolutionary Epistemology, Theory of Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge, eds. Gerard Radnitz and W.W. Barley III (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1987).
9. Jerome A. Popp, Naturalizing Philosophy of Education: John Dewey in the Postanalytic Period (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998);
10. and Jerome A. Popp, Evolution's First Philosopher: John Dewey and the Continuity of Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007). While in the latter work Popp is concerned with Dewey's Darwinist account of the development of a moral theory and its relationship to democracy, I consider here the much narrower area of the implications of Dewey's evolutionary epistemology for individual inquiry and thus for teaching method.
11. John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 12, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 235-236.
12. Thomas A. Schwandt, "Constructivist, Interpretivist Approaches to Human Inquiry," in Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1994), 118.
13. Norman K. Denzin, "The Art and Politics of Interpretation," in Handbook of Qualitative Research, eds. Denzin and Lincoln, 501.
14. Larry Hickman, "Science Education for a Life Curriculum," Studies in Philosophy and Education 13, no. 3/4 (1994): 380.
15. Stephen Toulmin, Return to Reason (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001).
16. William E. Doll, Jr., "Beyond Methods? Teaching as an Aesthetic and Spirit-ful Quest," in Passion and Pedagogy: Relation, Creation, and Transformation in Teaching, eds. Elijah Mirochnik and Debora C. Sherman (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 143.
17. Ibid., 132-133.
18. Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 106.
19. National Research Council, Scientific Research in Education, eds. Richard J. Shavelson and Lisa Towne (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2002).
20. Thomas S. Popkewitz, "Is the National Research Council Committee's Report on Scientific Research in Education Scientific? On Trusting the Manifesto," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2004): 62.
21. The journal Qualitative Inquiry devoted its first two issues in 2004 to this topic.
22. Patti Lather, "Scientific Research in Education: A Critical Perspective," Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 20, no. 1 (2004): 15.
23. ESRA 2002, 4 and 16.
24. A word search of the document reveals seven occurrences of "rigorous," four times in conjunction with "peer-reviewed" and twice with "large scale." The term "scientifically valid" appears thirty-four times, always in conjunction with provisions that this means capable of statistical assessment and suitable for broad dissemination.
25. ESRA 2002. A word search shows twenty-six references to NAEP.
26. John Dewey, "Science as Subject-Matter and as Method" (1910), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 6, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 71-72.
27. Ibid., 75-76.
28. F. James Rutherford and Andrew Ahlgren, Science for All Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), viii.
29. John Dewey, "The Need for a Philosophy of Education" (1934), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 9, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 194-204, among many others.
30. Like Popp, I view Dewey's 1909 essay on Darwinism as foundational, and I also believe that many of his other writings rest implicitly upon this theoretical base. However, as will become clear when I discuss Dewey's instrumentalism, I differ somewhat from Popp on the issue of the degree to which Darwinism was, for Dewey, a universally explanatory principle.
31. Lewis E. Hahn, "Introduction," in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 4, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), xii.
32. John Dewey, "The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy" (1909), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 4, 41.
33. John Dewey, Logic, 66. While evolutionary biology is concerned with change on the level of populations, for Dewey, as for later theorists, the process of inquiry by human beings could also be conceived in terms of individual adaptation to local and changing conditions. This perspective is seen again in the entries cited under "Evolution" in John Dewey, "Contributions to a Cyclopedia of Education" (1911), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 6, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 445.
34. Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, 76.
35. John Dewey, "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy" (1917), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 10, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 67.
36. John Dewey, "Progressive Education and the Science of Education" (1928), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 3, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 257.
37. Dewey, Logic, 66.
38. Dewey, "The Supremacy of Method," 182.
39. Gary Cziko, Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995), x.
40. Campbell, "Evolutionary Epistemology," 49.
41. Ibid., 85-86.
42. Ibid., 85 (emphasis in original).
43. Ibid., 88.
44. While I will not undertake a detailed analysis of this assertion, it seems germane to recall that, as Thomas Nickles has commented (personal communication, November 16, 2007), developments in quantum theory alone seem to pose a substantial challenge to this mode of validation.
45. David L. Hildebrand, Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists (Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003), 35-38.
46. John Dewey, "Valid Knowledge and the Subjectivity of Experience" (1910), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 6, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 84-85.
47. Dewey, "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy," 43.
48. Ibid., 39.
49. Dewey, "The Supremacy of Method," 182.
50. Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 97-98.
51. Dewey, "Valid Knowledge," 84-85.
52. Thomas D. Cook and Donald T. Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 30.
53. Hildebrand, Beyond Realism and Anti-Realism, 73.
54. Zeus Leonardo, "Interpretation and the Problem of Domination: Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics," Studies in Philosophy and Education 22, no. 5 (2003): 329-350.
55. Cook and Campbell, Quasi-Experimentation, 1.
56. I am indebted to Thomas Nickles for this perspective, also.
57. Dewey, "The Need for a Philosophy of Education," 196-198.
58. John Dewey, "The Child and the Curriculum" (1902), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 2, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976), 284.
59. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 9, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 152.
60. Ibid., 111.
61. Ibid., 290.
62. Dewey, HowWe Think, in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 6, ed. Boydston, 183.
63. See, for example, the analysis of Dewey's attention to intersubjectivity in "Pragmatism and the Contemporary Debate," in Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 71;
64. as well as discussion of Dewey's understanding of the interpretivist nature of hermeneutics in Denzin, "The Art and Politics of Interpretation," 501.
65. My use of the term "qualitative" here only partially aligns with Dewey's own use. While he used it to denote qualities unique to an individual situation, similarly to the modern research sense, he also sometimes used it to characterize aesthetic experiences such as pleasure and enjoyment.
66. Dewey, "Progressive Education," 266.
67. This stance is also clear in James A. McLellan and John Dewey, The Psychology of Number: And Its Applications to Methods of Teaching Arithmetic (New York: D. Appleton, 1908), 10-11.
68. ESRA 2002, 9.
69. Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th ann. ed. (New York: Continuum, 2001), 72-73.
70. Bloch, "A Discourse that Disciplines," 107.
71. Lather, "Scientific Research in Education," 16 and 17.
72. Thomas M. Alexander, "Educating the Human Heart: Pluralism, Traditions and the Humanities," in The New Scholarship on Dewey, ed. James Garrison (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 75.
73. John Dewey, "Creative Democracy - The Task Before Us" (1939), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 14, ed. Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 230.
74. Dewey, "The Influence of Darwinism," 13.
75. McLellan and Dewey, The Psychology of Number, 10.
76. Doll, "BeyondMethods?" 144.