Republic of the Philippines

Pangasinan State University

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDIES
Urdaneta City, Pangasinan

UNIT II: PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION

LESSON 1: PIONEERS OF MODERN TEACHING
Report by: RAMOS, JANREY L., MAED ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION:

This lesson examines the development of educational philosophies and views by some of the most
prominent educational pioneers. Fundamental notions regarding schools, curriculum, and teaching
techniques were created by these forerunners, and they continue to impact teacher preservice
preparation and classroom practice today.

Early pioneers such as Johann Amos Comenius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
questioned the entrenched assumptions of infant depravity and passive learning that had long
dominated education. According to the child depravity theory, children are born with a tendency for
misbehavior, which can be healed by authoritative teachers. Children are naturally excellent, according
to the naturalistic approach, and nature provides the clues for their education.

Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori, Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and Paulo Freire,
among others, claimed that (1) education should follow the natural stages of human growth and
development, and (2) children learn by interacting with objects and circumstances in their daily lives.
Montessori's prepared setting and Froebel's kindergarten were both deliberate attempts to establish
learning environments that were centered on the development of children. Both Dewey and Piaget
emphasized the importance of children's interactions with their environments as the most effective sort
of learning. Herbert Spencer argued for a utilitarian education that would enable people to adapt to
their surroundings effectively.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

1. Reflect on the importance of the various educational ideologies presented in this lesson;
2. discuss the educational ideologies and beliefs by each educational pioneer; and
3. identify what contributions from the pioneers are useful to you in developing your philosophy
of education.

PRE-TEST:

Answer the following with True or False.

____1. Jan Komensky is also known as Comenius.

____2. Pansophism means to cultivate universal understanding.
____3. Comenius rejected the child depravity doctrine that children were inherently
bad and that teachers needed corporal punishment to discipline them.
____4. Rousseau is one of the Pioneers of Modern Teaching.
____5. Pestalozzi’s approach to teaching can be organized into “general” and “specific” methods.
____6. Johann Friedrich Herbart, a German professor of philosophy and psychology, devised an
educational method that systematized instruction and encouraged the moral development of
students.
____7. The German educator Friedrich Froebel is renowned for his pioneering work in developing a
school for early childhood education—the kindergarden, or children’s garden.
____8. Spencer is the key proponent of Social Darwinism.
____9. The scientific method is the most effective process we have to solve problems according to
John Dewey.
____10. Jane Addams developed an educational philosophy called socialized education.

PRE-ACTIVITY:

Directions: You will be divided into five groups. From the choices below, each group will choose
one educational philosophy to discuss in class. You will have ten minutes to conduct research.
1. Comenius - Pansophism
2. Rousseau - 5 Developmental Stages
3. Pestalozzi - The Object Lesson
4. Herbart - The 5 Herbartian Steps
5. Froebel - The Kindergarten

There are 11 educational pioneers who developed their concepts and theories. Those forerunners laid
the groundwork for today's school curricula and teaching methods. They referred to those pioneers as
educational mentors, people whose lives, beliefs, and actions serve as a model for others.

1. Jan Komensky (1592–1670)

Comenius, as he was known, was born in Nivnitz, a Moravian town. He lived amid the post-Reformation
religious wars in Europe between Catholics and Protestants, which were marked by hatred and violence.
In order to combat religious bigotry, he developed pansophism, a new educational philosophy aimed at
cultivating global understanding. He was a pioneering peace educator who believed that universally
shared knowledge might overcome ethnic and religious hatreds and lead to world peace.

Later educators such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Montessori, and Dewey adopted his emphasis on
employing the senses rather than passive memorization to learn. Respecting children’s natural needs
and interests, Comenius rejected the child depravity notion that children were fundamentally wicked
and that teachers needed corporal punishment to correct them. Comenius, on the other hand, desired
teachers to be caring individuals who created pleasant learning environments. He warned against
rushing or forcing children, believing that they learn best when they are ready to learn a skill or subject.
Lessons should be tailored to the children's developmental stages.

Comenius emphasized the following principles that apply to the preservice preparation of
teachers and to classroom practice:

(1) use objects or pictures to illustrate concepts;

(2) apply lessons to students’ practical lives;
(3) present lessons directly and simply;
(4) emphasize general principles before details;
(5) emphasize that all creatures and objects are part of a whole universe;
(6) present lessons in sequence, stressing one thing at a time;
(7) do not leave a specific subject until students understand it completely.

2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

A Swiss-born French theorist who flourished during the Age of Reason in the eighteenth century, before
to the American and French Revolutions. In 1762, Rousseau published Emile, a novel about a boy's
education from childhood through adulthood, in which he expressed his educational philosophy.

Rousseau identified five stages of development in Emile: infancy, childhood, boyhood, adolescence, and
youth. Each stage established its own set of learning conditions and proceeded to the next.

Emile begins to form his initial perception of reality in Rousseau's first stage, infancy (birth to age five),
by utilizing his senses to explore the items in his environment.
Emile develops his own particular self-identity during childhood (years five to twelve) as he learns that
his activities have either painful or pleasure repercussions.

Emile studies natural science during his boyhood (ages twelve to fifteen) by studying the growth cycles
of plants and animals.

When he reaches the age of adolescence (between the ages of fifteen and eighteen). Emile is now ready
to study about society, government, economics, and business in general.

Rousseau used the following key ideas in formulating his philosophy of education:

(1) childhood is the natural foundation for future human development

(2) children’s natural interests and instincts will lead to a more thorough exploration of the
environment;
(3) human beings, in their life cycles, go through necessary stages of development;
(4) adult coercion has a negative impact on children’s development.

3. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827)

Concerned about the impact of the economic change on families and children, Pestalozzi set out to
create schools that would nourish children's growth in the same way that loving families would. In
today's quickly changing culture, his insights concerning the interaction between families and
schools are useful.

Despite the fact that Rousseau was his historical master, Pestalozzi significantly altered Rousseau's
method. While Rousseau despised schools, Pestalozzi believed that if they were properly arranged,
they could become successful learning centers. He also turned Rousseau's single-child lesson
method into a group setting.

Pestalolzzi designed a preservice teacher-education program in his Burgdorf and Yverdon schools,
where he functioned as a mentor to the future teachers he was preparing in his technique. He
established a style of simultaneous group instruction that allowed youngsters to learn in a loving
and relaxed environment.

Pestalozzi's teaching approaches can be divided into "general" and "specific" categories. Before
more specific training could begin, the general method required to establish a tolerant and
emotionally healthy home-like learning environment. This necessitated teachers who were
emotionally comfortable and could acquire the trust and affection of their students.

Once the general method was in place, Pestalozzi implemented his special method, the object
lesson, which, following Rousseau, stressed direct sensory learning. In this approach, children
studied the common objects in their environment— plants, rocks, artifacts, and other objects
encountered in daily experience. To determine the form of an object, they drew and traced it. They
also counted and then named objects. Thus they learned the form, number, and name or sound
related to objects.

To ensure that instruction followed nature, Pestalozzi developed the following strategies
in his preservice teacher-preparation program. Teachers should:

(1) begin with concrete objects before introducing abstract concepts;

(2) begin with the learner’s immediate environment before dealing with what is distant and
remote;
(3) begin with easy and simple exercises before introducing complex ones;
(4) And always proceed gradually and cumulatively.
4. Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841)

A German philosopher and psychologist established an educational program that systematized

instruction while also encouraging pupils' moral development. Herbart decided to restructure
Pestalozzi's method into a more precise sequence after witnessing it.

By structuring instruction into a well-defined series of stages that teachers may follow,
Herbart hoped to systematize education and schooling. The five Herbartian steps were:

(1) Preparation, in which teachers prepare students to receive the new concept or
material they are going to present.
(2) Presentation, in which teachers clearly identify and present the new concept.
(3) Association, in which the new concept is compared and contrasted with ideas the
student already knows.
(4) Generalization, in which a general principle is formed that combines the new and
previous learning.
(5) Application, in which the student’s knowledge of the new principle is tested by
appropriate examinations and exercises.

5. Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852)

The German educator most known for inventing the kindergarten, or children's garden, as a school
for early childhood education.

Froebel was a philosophical idealist who felt that every child's inner self held a spiritual core that
encouraged self-directed learning. As a result, he conceived the kindergarten as a "prepared
setting" in which children might use self-activity to externalize their inner spirituality.

Froebel's kindergarten, which opened in Blankenburg in 1837, was a permissive setting where
children may engage in games, play, sing, read stories, and make crafts.

Froebel's kindergarten also included "occupations," which were items that children could mold and
utilize in design and construction activities. Clay, sand, cardboard, and sticks, for example, might be
molded into castles, cities, and mountains.

6. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)

He was an English social theorist whose theories gained a lot of traction and influence in America in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Spencer, a leading proponent of Social Darwinism (the application of Darwin's biological theory to
society), believed that each generation's "fittest" individuals would survive due to their skill,
intelligence, and adaptability. Competition, a natural ethical force, propelled the best of humanity
to the top of the social ladder.

Spencer introduced a logic that is still utilized in modern curriculum development: he classified
human activities based on how far they improved human survival, wealth, and progress. Science
was given a high emphasis because it was related to the efficient performance of daily tasks.

Spencer included five types of activities in the curriculum

(1) self-preservation activities, which are basic to all other activities;
(2) occupational or professional activities, which make a person economically self-
supporting;
(3) child-rearing activities;
(4) social and political participation activities; and
(5) leisure and recreation activities.
7. John Dewey (1859–1952)

In the first part of the twentieth century, he created his groundbreaking Experimentalist philosophy
of education against the backdrop of social, political, scientific, and technical upheavals in the
United States.

The scientific method, according to Dewey, is the most effective approach for solving issues.
Children learn how to think reflectively and direct their experiences in ways that lead to personal
and social progress by using the scientific method to solve problems.

The following steps are extremely important in Dewey’s application of the scientific method
to teaching and learning:

(1) The learner, involved in a “genuine experience,” encounters a problem that truly interests
him or her.
(2) Within this experience, the learner locates and defines the problem.
(3) The learner acquires the information needed to solve the problem by reading, research,
discussion, and other means.
(4) The learner constructs possible, tentative solutions that may solve the problem.
(5) The learner chooses a possible solution and tests it to see if it solves the problem. In this way,
the learner constructs and validates his or her own knowledge.

There are three levels of learning activities and processes in Dewey's curriculum.

The first level, "creating and doing," involves children in tasks that allow them to investigate their
surroundings and put their ideas into action. Through collaborative group projects, these first exercises
enhance sensory and motor abilities while also encouraging socializing. Through history and geography
projects, the second level broadens students' understanding of space and time. The third level,
"science", introduces pupils to a variety of areas such as biology, chemistry, and social studies, which
they can utilize as problem-solving resources.

8. Jane Addams (1860–1935)

Hull-House's founder and a pioneering leader in social work, the peace movement, and women's rights
—developed a philosophy of education known as socialized education. Her educational perspective was
founded on her attempts to improve the living and working conditions of immigrants in Chicago, as well
as motivate women to fight for social and educational reforms. She was a forerunner in the fields of
multicultural education, international education, and women's education.

Hull-House was founded in 1889 on Chicago's near west side in a culturally diverse but destitute
community of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe by Jane Addams. Addams and her
coworkers, a group of young middle-class women, both educated and were educated by the
immigrants. Hull-Home was a settlement house where immigrants learnt how to find work, pay rent,
get medical care, and educate their children.

9. Maria Montessori (1870–1952)

An internationally popular technique of early childhood teaching was created by an Italian educator.
Maria Montessori founded the Casa dei Bambini, a children's school for disadvantaged children in
Rome's slums, in 1908. Montessori created a "specially prepared environment" in this school, complete
with procedures, materials, and activities based on her observations of children. She further refined her
hypothesis by researching Itard's and Sequin's theories, two early pioneers in special education.

Practical, sensory, formal skills, and studies were among the three types of activities and experiences
included in Montessori's curriculum. Setting the table, serving a meal, washing dishes, tying and
buttoning garments, and practicing fundamental manners and social etiquette were among the skills
taught to children. Sensory and motor coordination were established through repetition. The alphabet
was taught to children by tracing movable sandpaper letters. They learned to write before moving on to
reading. To learn counting and measuring, they utilized colored rods of various sizes and cups.

10. Jean Piaget (1896–1980)

The Swiss psychologist made significant breakthroughs in the cognitive, moral, and language
development of children. Piaget employed clinical observation rather than philosophical speculation to
learn how children construct and act on their thoughts.

Piaget identified four qualitatively separate but connected eras of cognitive growth based on his stage-
learning theory of development:

Children learn by actively investigating their immediate environment throughout the sensorimotor
stage, which lasts from birth to two years. Children use their lips, eyes, and hands to begin their early
environmental investigations. They learn to coordinate their senses and develop simple conceptions of
place, time, and causality at the visual, auditory, tactile, and motor levels, displaying a mostly nonverbal
intelligence. These fundamental conceptions, on the other hand, are limited to the immediate
circumstances of children.

Preoperational thinking occurs between the ages of two and seven years, when intuition and speech
combine to produce operational thinking that includes notions of place, time, and cause-and-effect
interactions that go beyond the immediate circumstance. Children are increasingly arranging and
naming objects to reconstruct their concepts. As they restructure the mental structures and networks
developed in the first stage into a more sophisticated, higher-order vision of reality, they utilize signs
and symbols to describe their ideas and experiences.

The concrete-operational stage lasts from seven to eleven years, and it is during this time that
youngsters begin to reason mathematically and logically. They learn to recognize and apply general
features like size, length, and weight in more sophisticated mental operations. They reassemble the
notions reached in earlier phases into more abstract and complicated ones, as they did before. Children
at the concrete-operational stage, which corresponds to elementary school years, practice their
thinking skills by dealing with clock and calendar time, map and geographical space, and experimental
cause and effect.

Individuals grapple with logical premises and build abstract hypotheses during the formal-operational
stage, which lasts from eleven to early adulthood. They can now comprehend and interpret spatial
relationships, historical time, and a variety of cause-and-effect linkages. They build possible courses of
action through multivariate thinking. Adolescents may now apply the scientific method to describe
reality and master complicated mathematical, linguistic, and mechanical processes because they
understand cause-and-effect linkages.

11. Paulo Freire (1921–1997)

While working in a literacy campaign among the destitute illiterate rural and urban poor of Brazil, he
established his liberation pedagogy theory.

Conscientizaçao, a Portuguese word that means "to be conscious and critically aware of the social,
political, and economic situations and contradictions that affect one's existence," is an important goal of
Freire's philosophy.

Real learning, according to Freire, occurs when teachers and students engage in an open and continuing
discussion. He criticizes training that leads to false consciousness in pupils' impressions of reality rather
than critical consciousness. Teacher discourse, for example, indicates that teachers can convey
information to pupils by telling them what is true: students memorize what the teacher says and
deposit it in their minds passively for later recollection. The teacher-talking–student-listening method is
referred to by Freire as educational "banking," in which each piece of information is deposited and later
paid, generally for an examination.

The banking model is exemplified by the standardized examinations utilized in the contemporary
standards movement, like as in No Child Left Behind. The assessments, which are based on officially
transmitted knowledge, divide pupils into groups, often isolating marginalized kids and thereby
replicating systemic inequalities.

LESSON SUMMARY:

The pioneers profiled in this chapter made significant contributions to education and teaching methods
in their own nations and around the world.

Comenius and Rousseau created an educational system based on children's natural growth and
goodness, rejecting the idea of depravity in children.

Pestalozzi pioneered simultaneous group instruction methods that included objects from the children's
immediate environment. Herbart's goal was to standardize teaching methods. Froebel's theory was used
to establish the kindergarten. Both Pestalozzi and Froebel liberated early childhood education by
encouraging instructors to be sensitive to children's interests and needs.

Spencer's sociology of education was a pioneering endeavor to connect school and society, as well as to
identify social and economic activities as the foundation of the curriculum. Dewey's seminal work at the
University of Chicago Laboratory School launched a revolution in education. Montessori's organized
setting is quite popular in early childhood education.

Multicultural education, the study of technology's impact on society, and the women's rights and
education movement were all affected by Addams' socialized education philosophy.

The developmental psychology of Piaget shed light on children's cognitive operations, causing changes
in curriculum and teaching methods.

Education and schooling, according to Freire's liberation theology, must be transformed into forces for
human liberty.

POST-TEST:

Direction: Discuss briefly.

1. How would you define an educational mentor?

2. Who were the mentors that contributed to your ideas about education, schools, and
teaching? Which of the pioneers in the chapter most appeals to you as an historical mentor?

REFERENCE:

Ornstein, A. C., Levine, D. U. (2007). Foundations of Education (10th ed.). Houghton Mifflin
Company.