What the report covers

The assignment applies Dewey's experiential view of curriculum to early childhood. It is not a reprint of a Reggio Emilia paper that also lists Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky.

Write Dewey's tests first, then one classroom activity, then the limits.

Experience, continuity, and interaction

In Experience and Education, Dewey asks whether an experience leads on to later, richer experience, and whether the surroundings actually interact with the child's aims. A pretty corner that no one uses fails the test. So does a drill that produces no further curiosity.

Democracy and Education ties this to a public life in which shared communication matters. In a preschool, that can mean planning a task that children have a reason to talk about, not a private worksheet only.

A classroom application

Take a cooking, garden, or block project. Name the prior experience it grows from, the problem the children actually meet, and what a teacher records in order to plan the next day. That is closer to Dewey than a morning of disconnected stations.

The adult's role is to arrange and to interpret, not to disappear, and not to script every move.

Limits

Dewey does not hand over a weekly timetable. Later writers have asked how his view travels across unequal schools, or how 'growth' is judged. A fair paper names those questions.

Sources

1. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. Macmillan.
2. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Macmillan.
3. Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. University of Chicago Press.

Last updated: November 13, 2026