Dewey and Freire’s Philosophy of Education

The road less traveled in pedagogy: John Dewey and Paulo Freire on active, transformative education.

John Dewey’s (1859–1952) scientific orientation was biology, and he was influenced by the developments in evolutionary biology. His philosophical starting point was the fact that people exist within a biological environment. We create beliefs to adapt to our environment. Dewey created the term “instrumentalism” to describe the human activity of developing and using beliefs as tools or…