This edition brings Dewey's educational theory into sharp focus, framing his two classic works by frank assessments, past and present, of the practical applications of Dewey's ideas. In addition to a substantial introduction in which Philip W. Jackson explains why more of Dewey's ideas haven't been put into practice, this edition restores a "lost" chapter, dropped from the book by Dewey in 1915.

What do the arts have to teach us about how to live our lives? How can teachers use art's "lessons" to improve their teaching? This provocative book examines John Dewey's thinking about the arts and explores the practical implications of that thinking for educators. Philip W. Jackson draws on Art as Experience, the philosopher's only book on the subject, and less well-known observations scattered throughout Dewey's writings to consider the nature and power of art and its relation to education. For those unacquainted with Dewey's thought as well as for Dewey specialists, this book...

-Rarely have I come across a book that so quickly provoked me to re-examine my own classroom behavior. There is no place to hide in this careful scrutiny of the teacher as crucial player in the daily morality tale that becomes the story of school life.-
-- Vivian Gussin Paley, teacher, University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

This book takes the reader on an eye-opening journey through a variety of elementary and high school classrooms, highlighting the moral significance of all that transpires there. Drawing on the results of a two-and-a-half year study, the authors...

What happens behind the closed doors of the teachers' lounge? Does the lounge provide more than a place to rest and maybe drink a cup of coffee between classes? Behind Closed Doors examines the teachers' lounge as a site for the development of communal knowledge. While the book discusses an extensive qualitative study of teacher interactions in 26 teachers' lounges in Israeli schools, it reveals that the culture of teachers transcends national boundaries and is quite recognizable. Teachers in the lounge are regarded in this book as 'learners' whether they are actually involved in formal...

Since its first appearance, Life in Classrooms has established itself as a classic study of the educational process at its most fundamental level. The book's aim is to encourage researchers to examine more deeply the dynamics of classroom learning - the cornerstone of educational change.

In this text, readers are taken on a journey into the mind of John Dewey. By analyzing Dewey's attempts to revise the introduction to one of his most important books, Experience and Nature, Philip W. Jackson explores Dewey's efforts (both intellectually and emotionally) to explain the relationship between philosophy and human affairs. This story of Dewey's life-long struggle with a complex philosophical question (one that continues to challenge philosophers) is also the story of Jackson's own struggle to understand Dewey's quest. Written for anyone interested in philosophy or the writings of...

A Life in Classrooms examines the full range of Philip W. Jackson's groundbreaking scholarship and teaching. Its essays are authored by some of the outstanding educational thinkers of our time. They attest to the decisive impact Jackson's work continues to have on our understanding of education, and they exemplify, as does Jackson's own work, how such an understanding may draw nourishment from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

One day in 1938, John Dewey addressed a room of professional educators and urged them to take up the task of "finding out just what education is." Reading this lecture in the late 1940s, Philip W. Jackson took Dewey's charge to heart and spent the next sixty years contemplating his words. The stimulating result of a lifetime of thinking about educating, What Is Education? is a profound philosophical exploration of how we transmit knowledge in human society and how we think about accomplishing that vital task. Most contemporary approaches to education follow a strictly empirical track,...