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John Dewey

Liberty and the Pedagogy of Disposition

  • Book
  • © 2014

Overview

Authors:
  1. John Baldacchino

    1. University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom

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  • Revisits Dewey’s approach to politics and education within contemporary debates on education, learning and the School
  • Focuses on Dewey’s concept of disposition as a pedagogical concept
  • Explores the relationship between pedagogy, liberty and disposition
  • Repositions Dewey in contemporary political and educational contexts
  • Takes Dewey’s concept of experimentation into a discussion of unlearning and deschooling through the arts and aesthetics education
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Education (BRIEFSEDUCAT)

Part of the book sub series: SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education (BRIEFSKEY)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. What’s Deweyan?

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 1-12

  3. Liberty’s Practice

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 13-23

  4. Open Philosophy

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 25-36

  5. Knower Makers

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 37-46

  6. Growing Socially

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 47-59

  7. Education’s Art

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 61-70

  8. Schooled Quandaries

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 71-80

  9. Learning to Be

    • John Baldacchino
    Pages 81-92

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 93-97
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Keywords

About this book

This book presents John Dewey’s work as a claim to the human potentials found in experience, the imagination and the possibilities that emerge from our disposition towards liberty. It details Dewey’s work as a critical junction marked by the quandary of schooling and culture, and where learning is also positioned beyond the boundaries of educational institutions. The book first examines Dewey in his various contexts, influences and life experiences, including his relationship with Hegelian philosophy, Emersonian transcendentalism, Darwin’s method of scientific experimentation, and his deep bond with his first wife Alice Chipman and their work in the Laboratory School. It then revisits Dewey’s approach to politics and education within contemporary debates on education, learning and the School. This discussion takes stock of what does a diverse and plural society mean to us today, at a time that remains challenged by the politics of class, race, gender and sexuality. Dewey’s work has a profound bearing on our understanding of these challenges. Thus to read and talk Dewey is to engage with a conversation with Dewey the philosopher who poses an array of questions, ranging from the way we feel (aesthetics), behave (ethics), think (logic), live as a community (politics) and how we learn (education). In addition, the book also takes Dewey’s concept of experimentation into a discussion of unlearning and deschooling through the arts and aesthetics education. Offering a thought-provoking dialogue with Dewey’s philosophy, this book recognizes the contradictory nature of learning and extends it to the open horizons of experience. By way of discussing the various aspects of Dewey’s approach to organization, policy making and the relationship between education and business, it repositions Dewey in contemporary political and educational contexts, exploring the possibility for education to be free and yet rigorous enough to help us engage with forms ofknowledge by which we negotiate and understand the world.

Reviews

John Baldacchino has presented an original engagement on John Dewey’s much written about work in this short and economically written book. The freshness of the novel perspectives he creates on the political and educational writings of the great pragmatist philosopher provide challenging and, often, instructive, reading.

Kenneth Wain, Professor of Philosophy of Education, University of Malta

This short text provides a highly engaging and beautifully written reassessment of Dewey’s work, locating it in the wider intellectual and philosophical discussions about education, politics and life. Without being apologetic, John Baldacchino gives a sympathetic reading that shows the ways in which Dewey’s work still raises important questions for education today. A refreshing contribution to Dewey scholarship.

Gert Biesta, University of Luxembourg

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom

    John Baldacchino

About the author

John Baldacchino is Chair of Arts Education at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He served as Associate Dean and Professor at Falmouth University in England; as Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York; as Reader at Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, and as Lecturer at the University of Warwick in England. He is the author of papers, articles, chapters and books on the arts, philosophy and education. His books include Post-Marxist Marxism: Questioning the Answer (Ashgate 1996), Easels of Utopia: Art’s Fact Returned (Ashgate 1998), Avant-Nostalgia: An Excuse to Pause (2002); Education Beyond Education: Self and the Imaginary in Maxine Greene’s Philosophy (Peter Lang 2009); Makings of the Sea: Journey, Doubt and Nostalgia (Gorgias 2010); Art’s Way Out: Exit Pedagogy and the Cultural Condition (Sense 2012), John Dewey: Liberty and The Pedagogy of Disposition (Springer 2013) and Mediterranean Art and Education (Sense 2013). He just finished co-editing a book of essays on the work of Kenneth Wain (with Duncan Mercieca and Simone Galea). His Mediterranean aes- thetics project, of which Makings of the Sea was the first volume, is on course, with the second volume Composed Identities: Sound, Number and Desire planned for completion between 2014 and 2015. 

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