Re: Problem Based Learning

Timothy Koschmann (tkoschmann who-is-at acm.org)
Fri, 28 May 1999 10:31:24 -0500

>Tim and others,
>
>On Thu, 27 May 1999, Timothy Koschmann wrote:
>
>> As Lee Shulman reported last month
>> at AERA, Dewey was an outspoken opponent of apprenticeship learning, a
>> position that might be surprising to present-day educational researchers
>> given the interest in forms of Legitimate Peripheral Participation and our
>> view of Dewey as the 'learning-by-doing' guy.
>
>I would be interested in knowing the context of Dewey's opposition. There
>is too much that is left unsaid here. Did Dewey indeed distrust the idea
>of learning by successive levels of participation from peripheral to
>central involvement, or might his opposition have been directed against
>the practice by some less-than-democratic craft unions of the time who
>tended to use apprenticeship as a means of discrimination and
>organizational control?
>
>Does anyone know if Lee Shulman's AERA paper is accessible online?

I don't know, but I'm guessing probably not. The paper was presented in a
session entitled, "John Dewey: The Chicago Years". The session involved
summaries of six papers (of which Lee's was one) that appeared in a special
issue of _Elementary School Journal_. The whole session was audiotaped,
but I'm not sure how you get your hands on those tapes after the conference
is over. Probably your best bet would be to find that issue (I think it
might be May 1999) of the journal.
---Tim