Objectives:

When you finish studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Identify the major theorists from the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries who developed pioneering curricular or methodological innovations in education.
2. Identify, describe, and analyze the contributions to education made by Comenius, Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Spencer, Dewey, Addams, Montessori, and Piaget.
3. Analyze the degree to which new ideas from these major theorists were incorporated into the mainstream of educational theory and practice.
4. Determine the effect of the major theorists' pioneering ideas on contemporary American education and schooling.
5. Describe changing conceptions over time for answers to the following questions: What is knowledge? What is the purpose of schools? What is education? How should teaching and learning be carried out?
6. Compare your own ideas about education and the way children learn to the ideas of the major theorists.

Focus and Refocus Questions:

When you finish studying this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions from your textbook:

Focus Questions

• Who qualifies as an educational pioneer?
• How did the pioneers develop their own philosophies of education?
• How did they redefine knowledge, education, schooling, teaching, and learning?
• How did they challenge and change traditional concepts of the child and the curriculum?
• What ideas or practices of the pioneers' contributions are present in today's teaching and learning?
• What contributions from the pioneers are useful to you in developing your own philosophy of education?

Refocus Questions

• Take a moment after reading about Comenius to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Comenius?
• Take a moment after reading about John Locke to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Locke?
• Take a moment after reading about Jean-Jacques Rousseau to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Rousseau?
• Take a moment after reading about Johann Pestalozzi to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Pestalozzi?
• Take a moment after reading about Friedrich Froebel to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Froebel?
• Take a moment after reading about Herbert Spencer to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Spencer?
• Take a moment after reading about John Dewey to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Dewey?
• Take a moment after reading about Jane Addams to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Addams?
• Take a moment after reading about Maria Montessori to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Montessori?
• Take a moment after reading about Jean Piaget to think back to the questions listed at the beginning of the chapter. How would you relate each of those questions to Piaget?