The Dewey-Soka Heritage for Social-Self Actualization and Engaged Resistance in the Neoliberal Imposition

• In Event: The Dewey-Soka Heritage and the Future of Education

Abstract

In this conceptual study, three ethno-racially diverse teacher-scholars engage the Dewey-Soka heritage as a response to neoliberal impositions on assessment, which disenfranchise learners and undermine democratic principles of public education. Specifically, using bilingual-bicultural (Japanese/English) critical discourse analytic methods (Rogers, 2004), the authors draw on the extant primary and secondary literature—in particular the primary Japanese literature unavailable in English—on the Dewey-Soka heritage (e.g., Ikeda, 1991-2011; Makiguchi, 1981-1988; Toda, 1929/2012; Garrison et. al., 2014) and the extant Anglophone literature by and on Dewey (Dewey, 1938; Herrick, 1996; Kucey & Parsons, 2012) in and integrated and co-specifying fashion to problematize: 1.) contemporary policies and practices of assessment of learning instead of assessment for learning, and 2.) the increasing privatization of public schooling and its raison d’être.
Although both (1) and (2) above will be addressed, because of time constraints, a focus will be placed on (1), assessment. Assessment is an inherent and integral part of teaching and learning. In fact, assessments often imply the aim of education and guide instruction. One problem in current U.S. education is equating assessment with standardized testing that only measures decontextualized knowledge and enforces a punitive model of accountability. According to the Dewey-Soka heritage of education, assessments should be broader than mere testing or a quantitative measurement of knowledge and skills; rather, they should be comprehensive and inform teaching and learning (see also, Gordon & Rajagoplan, 2016). The Dewey-Soka heritage challenges the current standardization and accountability movement and provides specific practices for rethinking the role of assessment from “assessment of learning” to “assessment for learning” (Gordon & Rajagoplan, 2016; Kucey & Parsons, 2012) that leads to growth and empowerment.
The high-stakes standardized testing and accountability measures prevalent today come with three major issues. First is that the instruction geared toward teaching to standardized tests is not meaningful to students nor does it develop abilities that are often called “deeper learning” (Gordon & Rajagoplan, 2016). Second, these tests are used to sort and select students by comparing to the norm. Third, they ignore important aspects of human development that are critical elements of education but are not academic or quantifiably measurable.
The Dewey-Soka heritage casts assessment as assessment for learning. During 1920s and 1930s, Japan faced the height of “examination hell” (Ishioka, 2014; Yamamoto, 1982), and Josei Toda responded to this circumstance by analyzing the cause of the problem of one-size-fits-all, memorization-based exam preparation and by proposing an alternative model of assessment that measures long-term growth of students’ abilities in the seven areas critical to their growth as learners (Toda, 1929/2012, 2018; see Panelist 6 & Panelist 5, 2018). The Dewey-Soka approach to assessment provide both the teacher and students continuous formative feedback (Herrick, 1996) and for teachers to structure the best environment for further learning (Dewey, 1938; Toda, 1929/2012, 2018).

Authors

• Nozomi Inukai, DePaul University

• Alexandra I Cruz, DePaul University

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University