David Ng
David Ng
Jul 24, 2017 · 1 min read

I’m just not sure what you mean by “explicit” teaching. Dewey felt that the role of the teacher is to create conditions to deliberately guide students to certain experiences. That involves careful planning and intentionality on the part of the teacher, which feels pretty explicit to me. What Dewey objected to was the notion that we could transfer organized, distilled subject-matter straight from the teacher to the student.

When I was a middle school math teacher, I had lesson plans and end goals in mind (what Dewey would describe as ends-in-view). For the most part, I was teaching in traditional school districts aligned with state standards. But, because I agreed with Dewey, I didn’t try to transfer subject-matter straight from my mind into my students’, I created conditions to guide my students through a series of experiences which enabled them to construct their own understanding of the subject-matter and become more learnerate. That was all explicitly planned on my part, starting from where they were individually and ending with where I thought they needed to be at the end of the year.

    David Ng

    Written by

    David Ng

    Founder and Chief Learning Officer of Vertical Learning Labs