[Phys-L] Piaget & Dewey: Down for the Count? - FORWARD from Kieran Egan
From: rrhake at EARTHLINK.NET (Richard Hake)
Date: Thu Oct 27 00:16:29 2005
In my post Piaget & Dewey: Down for the Count? [Hake (2005a)] I wrote
[bracketed by lines "HHHHHH. . . .":
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I argue that the criticism of Piaget by Catherine Scott in a recent
AERA-D post is problematic, and close with three questions:
(1) Does Kieran Egan (2004) ("Getting it Wrong from the Beginning:
Our progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and
Jean Piaget") or anyone else give any solid evidence for such
criticism?;
(2) Would anyone, care to comment on Kieran Egan's opinion that both
Dewey and Piaget were:
(a) "wrong from the start," and
(b) heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer?";
(3) If Dewey was and is WRONG, why is Dewey-like pedagogy so
seemingly successful in introductory physics education?
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Kieron Egan's provocative response to those questions is contained in
a recent post on AERA-L "Piaget & Dewey: Down for the Count? -
FORWARD from Kieran Egan," [Hake (2005b)] that can be accessed by
clicking on <http://tinyurl.com/bsvfs>.
REFERENCES
Egan, K. 2004. "Getting it Wrong from the Beginning: Our
progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean
Piaget." Yale University Press. For Egan's homepage presentation of
the introduction and reviews see
<http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/wrongindex.html>. Peter Temes in the
New York Times, Section 4A, Books, p.34, 10 Novemeber 2002 wrote:
"Egan's forceful rejection of the progressive legacy is more about
his sense of science than his politics. Spencer, Dewey and Piaget
presented themselves as modern researchers with exciting new
insights. Dr. Egan judges them without sympathy: he says their
science was bad, and their continuing influence worse."
Hake, R.R. 2005a. "Piaget & Dewey: Down for the Count?" online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=pod&O=D&P=7030>. Post
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