Michael Glassman

Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, Experience, and Inquiry in Educational Practice

John Dewey and L. S. Vygotsky share similar ideas concerning the relationship of activity and learning/development, especially the roles everyday activities and social environment play in the educational process. However, the two theorists are far apart in their conception of the relationship between process and goals in education. Dewey concentrates on means in education, believing that it is the ability of the individual to question through experience that is most important for the human community. Vygotsky, while recognizing the importance of (especially cultural) process in education, sees social and cultural goals as being integrated into social pedagogy. This paper compares Dewey and Vygotsky on three key points that relate directly to educational processes and goals. First, the two theorists are compared on the role of social history and the tools it produces. Dewey sees social history as creating a set of malleable tools that are of use in present circumstances. Vygotsky believes that tools developed through history have a far more lasting impact on the social community. Second, the two theorists are compared in their conceptualizations of experience/culture. Dewey sees experience as helping to form thinking, whereas Vygotsky, in his cultural historical theory, posits culture as the raw material of thinking. Third, the two theorists are compared on their perspectives on human inquiry. Dewey sees the child as a free agent who achieves goals through her own interest in the activity. Vygotsky suggests there should be greater control by a mentor who creates activity that will lead the child towards mastery. These differences are then explored in terms of how they might impact actual classroom strategies and curriculum.

The logic of wikis: The possibilities of the Web 2.0 classroom

The emergence of Web 2.0 and some of its ascendant tools such as blogs and wikis have the potential to dramatically change education, both in how we conceptualize and operationalize processes and strategies. We argue in this paper that it is a change that has been over a century in coming. The promise of the Web 2.0 is similar to ideas proposed by Pragmatists such as Charles Peirce and John Dewey. Peirce proposed the logic of abduction as critical for the types of unique/progressive thinking that leads to creative problem solving and/or discovery. While logic based in deduction offers outcomes with certainty, logic based in abduction offers potentially valuable insights. Dewey tried to implement progressive education in the classrooms. Dewey’s ideas, while influential, were often misunderstood, or considered too idealistic and/or unworkable in the traditional classrooms. Logics based in abduction required that different major premises and hypotheses for problem solving be held simultaneously and over time. This type of scenario is often times difficult if not impossible in education based on direct interactions. Hypertext, especially as capture through emerging tools of Web 2.0, may offer the technologies that enable the type of information based networks within the education process that promote abduction and the democratic classroom as Dewey envisioned.

Intelligence in the internet age: The emergence and evolution of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

This paper introduces the concept of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as an important component for understanding human problem solving in the 21st century. OSINT is in many ways the result of changing human-information relationships resulting from the emergence and growing dominance of the Internet and the World Wide Web in everyday life. This paper suggests that the Internet/Web changes the dynamic relationship between what Cattell and Horn have identified as the two general factors of human intelligence: crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence. The Internet/Web open up new possibilities for accessing information and transcending over-determined cultural intelligence in problem solving. This offers fluid intelligence, which often trails off in adulthood, a new vitality across the lifespan. But the diminishment of crystallized intelligence, and especially cultural intelligence, also presents a number of important problems in maintenance of cohesive, social cooperatives. The development of OSINT (using tools and ethos created by the Open Source movement of the last few decades) offers both a framework for reaching beyond the boundaries of traditional cultural intelligence and ways to create cooperative, open, problem solving communities. The Internet/Web will continue to create confusion and fear as we move deeper into this new age, but also presents extraordinary possibilities for augmenting human intellect if we can understand it and learn to harness its potential.

Experience and Responding

This article responds to the critiques by O’Brien and Prawat of my article, “Dewey and Vygotsky: Society, Experience, and Inquiry in Educational Practice.” The central point made by both authors concerns the relationship of process and product in Dewey’s educational philosophy. The authors argue that Dewey did not promote process over product in the classroom and that Dewey and Vygotsky are more similar in spirit and substance than my article suggests. However, when Dewey’s educational philosophy is viewed within the larger framework of instrumental pragmatism, there are clear reasons why Dewey would want to emphasize process (while not disregarding product) in day-to-day education. This article also responds to criticisms involving the relative emphasis Dewey and Vygotsky gave to issues of diversity and individual variance and to the development of ideas of the two theorists.

Beyond search and communication: Development and validation of the Internet Self-efficacy Scale (ISS)

Internet self-efficacy is a pivotal construct for understanding a wide range of online activities. Human activity has been developing in new directions along with the evolution of the Internet over the last few decades. A self-efficacy measure which might appropriately reflect these changes is still lacking in the literature. To address this research gap, the current study developed the Internet Self-efficacy Scale (ISS) and tested its validity and reliability. A sample of 349 undergraduate students completed an assessment battery including the ISS. A 17-item five-factor model was extracted from an EFA. Using a CFA, the 17-item five-factor model obtained from the EFA was cross-validated and the results revealed acceptable model fits where @g^2(df=107)=198.987, NFI=.918, CFI=.960, and RMESA=.067 (95% C.I.; 052, .081). Also, the ISS showed good convergent validity, evidenced by the significant relationships with Internet outcome expectancy and Internet anxiety.

Action Research and Its History as an Adult Education Movement for Social Change.

This article is an attempt to tell the story of action research as it has developed over the last half century. Action research has become an important part of a number of research programs, especially in the field of education. Action research is a powerful idea centering on humans’ ability to break free from deleterious social habits through autonomous, democratic participation. Action research was originally conceived as an adult education program influenced by the work of Eduard Lindeman, Kurt Lewin, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget. A second branch of action research, participatory action research, emerged about 5 years later guided by the sociological work of William Foote Whyte. Participatory action research focused less on democratic processes and egalitarian decision making and more on understanding organizational problems through the eyes of the participants. Chris Argyris and Eric Trist both extended action research in new directions by merging new ideas.

Participatory Action Research and Its Meanings:Vivencia, Praxis, Conscientization

This article traces the development of the “second” and arguably more well-known “genre” of participatory action research (PAR). The article argues that the origins of PAR are highly distributed and cannot really be traced back to the ideas of a single person or even a single group of researchers. Instead, the development of PAR is tied to social movements of the 20th century, in particular land reform, anticolonialism, and need for a new research methodology, occurring simultaneously across multiple continents. The origins of PAR have little to do with the action research that developed in the United States. For that reason the PAR referent can sometimes be confusing or even misleading. We suggest that the second PAR also be recognized through its mirror concepts of vivencia, praxis, and conscientization—PAR/VPC. We discuss the core underpinnings of PAR/VPC and its evolution with strong ties to the sociopolitical context of developing societies and their fight for liberation. We also suggest our reflections of future of PAR/VPC with integration of feminist perspectives and inclusion of youth in the education movement.

Moral Action as Social Capital, Moral Thought as Cultural Capital.

This paper explores the idea that moral thought/reasoning and moral actions are actually two separate phenomena that have little relationship to each other. The idea that moral thinking does or can control moral action creates a difficult dualism between our knowledge about morality and our everyday actions. These differences run parallel to the distinction between social capital and cultural capital—where social capital is based on cooperation and trust and leads to purposeful solutions to real time social problems and cultural capital serves as a shorthand sign that certain individuals should be recognized as accepted members of an ongoing community. Social capital and cultural capital, like moral action and moral thought, are related and sometimes even dependent on each other, but they are different phenomena sometimes working towards different purposes. We suggest that moral action is actually a form and an originating source of social capital and moral thought is an important form of cultural capital in many social groups. The differences between moral action and moral thought can lead to social tensions—including which is more valuable and how each should be approached in terms of education. John Dewey suggested that morality is tied to active engagement in the solving of a community’s problems and should be integrated into the everyday activities of the classroom. Those who view morality through more of a cultural capital lens often times see morality as a stable set of social values—an important resource that needs to be transmitted between generations.

Five Classrooms: Different forms of 'democracies' and their relationship to cultural pluralism(s)

This paper explores the issue of democracy and the role of the democratic classroom in the development of society in general, and the way in which educators understand and deal with diversity in particular. The first part of the paper explores different meanings of democracy and how they can be manifested in the classroom. We argue that the idea of a ‘democratic classroom’ is far too broad a category; democracy is defined in action and can have realist or pragmatic characteristics, elitist or pluralist roots. The realist form of social education was championed by political scientist Charles Merriam, while a social educative process more dependent on pragmatic problem solving was pursued by educational philosopher John Dewey and those who followed in his theoretical wake. The history of democracy in the United States, and the battles of how to import different meanings of democracy into the classroom over the course of the 20th century is explored, suggesting that the educational establishment has a tendency to adopt more realist/elitist forms of civic education. We present five ‘democratic’ classrooms with different characteristics to illustrate the different characteristics social education can exhibit. In the second part of the paper we discuss the relationship between different types of democratic classrooms and issues of race/ethnicity/culture.

Development of a student engagement approach to alcohol prevention: the Pragmatics Project.

Significant involvement of students in the development and implementation of college alcohol prevention strategies is largely untested, despite recommendations by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and others. Objective: The purpose of the Pragmatics Project was to test a student engagement model for developing and implementing alcohol intervention strategies. Participants: The Pragmatics Project involved 89 undergraduate students on a large Midwestern university campus in the design and implementation of projects focused on reducing harm associated with high-risk drinking and off-campus parties. Results: The engagement model used an innovative course piloted in the Human Development and Family Science department. The course successfully involved both students and the community in addressing local alcohol issues. Conclusions: The course design described would fit well into a Master of Public Health, Community Psychology, Health Psychology, or interdisciplinary curricula as well as the service learning model, and it is applicable in addressing other health risk behaviors.