The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries: In Favour of Formalism - Hardcover

Guthrie, Gerard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9400718500 ISBN 13: 9789400718500

Publisher: Springer, 2011

Synopsis

This book provides a provocative but carefully argued addition to the theory and practice of education in developing countries. The book provides an ethical and empirical justification for support of formalistic teaching in primary and secondary schools in developing countries. It also refutes the application of progressive education principles to curriculum and pre- and in-service teacher education in such contexts. The central focus of this book is the formalistic teaching prevalent in the classrooms of many developing countries. Formalistic (‘teacher-centred’, ‘traditional’, ‘didactic’, ‘pedagogic’) teaching is appropriate in the many countries with revelatory epistemologies, unpopular and old-fashioned though these methods may seem in some western, especially Anglophone, ones. Formalism has been the object of many failed progressive curriculum and teacher education reforms in developing countries for some 50 years.

About this title

About the Author

 Dr Gerard Guthrie is an educationalist with 40 years experience. His career has had two main parts. As an academic, he has been a staff member of four universities in Australia and Papua New Guinea, including as Foundation Professsor of Education at the University of Goroka. As an Australian governmental aid official, he held management positions involving training, corporate management, aid delivery in China and Africa, and rural development. He has also worked as a consultant for AusAID and the World Bank in Asia, Africa and the South Pacific. Dr Guthrie has a wide background in development and practice and in social science research, which he has applied primarily to education in developing countries, particularly teaching and teacher education.

From the Back Cover

This highly controversial book challenges half a century of conventional educational wisdom. The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries: In Favour of Formalism argues that progressive teacher education and curriculum reforms in developing countries are wrong in principle and widespread failures in practice. The book is essential reading for academics, aid and educational professionals, and for overseas students of education.

In a methodologically elegant contribution to the theory, methodology and practice of education in developing countries, 12 chapters address the merits of formalism and the risks associated with what Gerard Guthrie identifies as the Progressive Education Fallacy. The Fallacy, that developing the enquiring mind needs enquiry teaching methods in schools, has lead to many inappropriate attempts at educational transfer. Progressive assumptions about the classroom have rarely been debated or tested experimentally in non-Western, especially non-Anglophone, cultures. School effectiveness research too has failed to examine adequately classroom processes and their cultural contexts.

A formal analysis of ideas inherent in the Fallacy uses C.E. Beeby’s stages model as an influential example of the progressive position. Progressive claims are refuted using the case of failed curriculum reforms in Papua New Guinea and an analysis of the unlikelihood of the adoption of progressive teaching in Confucian-tradition China. Widespread evidence from Africa and Asia also shows that progressive education reforms have failed in countries with pedagogic paradigms founded in revelatory epistemologies. Old-fashioned though formalism may be in some Western countries, classroom change in the developing world does not necessarily require progressive methods, but can focus on upgrading formalism.

"Gerard Guthrie makes a significant , if challenging and controversial, contribution to the international literature oneducation and development"
Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, UK

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9400718500
• ISBN 13: 9789400718500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 291