Dewey, Democracy, and Nation-State Education

• In Event: 42.024 - Postnationalism and Cosmopolitanism: Implications for Leadership and Curriculum-Making

Abstract

Dewey (1938) closes his text Experience and Education with the words “what we want and need is education pure and simple”. Many would certainly agree, but what is education for today in a transnational context of policy reforms? Though recognizing the vast importance of the contribution of an autobiographical perspective (Connelly & Clandinin 1988, Pinar et al. 1995), this paper addresses the concept of “experience” at a more generalized level, as what we can get in common and what educational values we can believe in, nationally and transnationally. Drawing on Dewey’s (1916, 1929, 1934) philosophical and educational concept of experience as a basic concept for the meaning of education and democracy, and on cosmopolitanism (Appiah 2006, Hansen 2012) as a basic concept for contextualizing human interconnectedness, this paper aims to make a conceptual and theoretical contribution for analyses of educational reforms. In the paper Dewey’s claim above is problematized in relation to the Swedish official report Gathering for School (2016:38) which emphasizes the strengthening of the quality of teaching and educational leadership. An outcome of the study will be the exploring and analyzing of the concept of context as a multidimensional concept.

Author

• Ninni Wahlstrom, Linnaeus University