Experience, Thinking, and Performance: Pedagogies of John Dewey, Jerome Bruner and Confucius

• In Event: Thinking Pedagogies in China: Experiments, Constraints, and New Directions Prompted by Chinese Philosophy

Abstract

Aim. This paper aims to provide (1) theoretical foundations for “big ideas curriculum” based on a synthesis of John Dewey’s Experiential Curriculum, Jerome Bruner’s Idea-Based Curriculum, and Confucian thinking pedagogy; and (2) a practical framework for implementing a “big ideas curriculum” (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005; Harlen, 2010) in China.
Theoretical Frameworks: Dewey’s philosophy of experiential curriculum; Bruner’s philosophy of idea-based curriculum; Confucian philosophy of thinking and learning.
Methods: Philosophical study, comparative research, and experimental action research.
Data:. Classic works of John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, and Confucius; data from my experimental school projects.
Results. Dewey dialectically distinguished the “logical aspect” and “psychological aspect” of the school curriculum, and reconstructed their organic relationship. Curriculum as “a logical whole” means the system of facts. Curriculum as “a psychological whole” means the individual experience (Dewey, 1897). The former is mature cultural experience. The latter is immature personal experience. The former is the standard to judge the value of the latter and its ultimate goal. The latter is the foundation and culminating process of the former. The essence of school curriculum is the “psychological aspect” or method of subject matters, which treat all the subject matters as the resources for children to solve problems from their everyday life (Dewey, 1902).
Bruner built on Dewey’s legacy of educational democracy, extending Dewey’s experiential curriculum idea by focusing on the logical distinctness of subject matters..For Bruner, the goal of education is “disciplined understanding” based on the structure of the disciplines, their “basic and general ideas” that are central to subject matter (Bruner, 1960, 1961). Students can then learn to connect these big ideas to familiar everyday experiences, to see their experiences as instances of general ideas (Bruner, 1966). Bruner then offered an “extended idea of competence, ” holding that competence needs “a performance outlet” (Bruner, 1973). That means, finally, Bruner came back to Dewey.
To apply these ideas in the Chinese context it is useful to bring them into contact with Confucius’ thinking pedagogy. Confucius integrated learning with thinking, saying that “learning without thinking makes people blind, thinking without learning makes people depressed.” For Confucius, thinking is experiential, intuitive, and moral, based on emotion, empathy, and benevolence, aimed at making society just and harmonious. Confucius’ thinking pedagogy adds an important element to the Big Ideas curriculum in the Chinese context.
Conclusions. 1) The creative transformation of John Dewey’s experiential curriculum, Jerome Bruner’s idea-based curriculum and Confucius’ thinking pedagogy can lay the theoretical foundation for today’s movements of “big ideas curriculum” and “21st learning”; 2) John Dewey, Jerome Bruner and Confucius (Hall & Ames, 1999) provide a common ground for democratic education education; 3) a performance-centered, moral conception of learning in school disciplines and in everyday life can provide a new and effective vision of classroom practice.
Scholarly Significance. This paper provides a basis for further theory and research concerning culturally suitable big idea curriculum development and implementation in Chinese K-12 education and the K-12 educational reform worldwide.
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Author

• Hua Zhang, Qufu Normal University