Women Educators in the Progressive Era

In 1896, John Dewey established the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago - an experimental school designed to test his ideas in the reality of classroom practice. Through a collective portrait of four of the school's teachers Women Educators in the Progressive Era examines the struggles and satisfactions of teaching at this innovative school, and situates the school community in the context of Progressive Era experimental impulses in Chicago and the nation. This book reassesses the implications of Dewey's ideas for current efforts to improve schools, as it explores how the Laboratory School teachers participated in inquiry designed to advance educational thought and practice.

This book will provide a collective biographical study of four Progressive era teachers, and will also add new understandings to the lives of their more famous friends and colleagues, such as John and Alice Dewey, George Herbert and Helen Castle Mead, Jane Addams, and Ella Flagg Young. It is also an exploration of the teachers' work in other innovative institutions, such as the Woods Hole Laboratories, Chautauqua, and Hull House While many educators know of John Dewey's innovations, little focus has been brought to the women who made his school work and helped develop the systems that have been so influential to this day Durst draws upon neverbefore analyzed archival material, letters of correspondence, and notes from John Dewey and the leading female educators at his facilities, to show a new vantage point; that of four teachers whose daily work brought the school's founding ideas to life

Autorentext
Anne Durst is Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, USA.

Inhalt

Introduction: The Laboratory School and Pragmatism
Female Professionalism and the Laboratory School Teachers
Decision-making at the Laboratory School
Teachers as Content Area Experts
Laboratory School Teachers and Social Change
Democratic Community
Implications for Today's Teachers and Schools