‘Trendy, airy-fairy methods’: teachers’ resistance to progressive education
‘Trendy, airy-fairy methods’: teachers’ resistance to progressive education
Teachers rarely grasped the full complexities of the psychological theories that they encountered. However, the ways they used psychology and how it influenced their concepts of childhood were not solely reliant on a misunderstood and confused version of the arguments of key theorists. Rather than being an empty atheoretical vessel into which psychological knowledge was poured, the teaching profession had its own model of craft knowledge that both resisted and adapted the novel theories with which it was presented. This chapter focuses on teachers’ resistance to the child-centred educational methods that emerged from the findings of developmental psychologists. Teachers often felt they had to pay ‘lip-service’ to child-centred methods even if they were not convinced by them, intensifying the influence of simplistic and limiting concepts of childhood and youth. Even when they self-defined as ‘progressive’, they were liable to believe that this mindset tended to introduce too many changes too quickly, so teachers could not keep up with changing ‘trends’ in child-centred practice.
Keywords: Child-centred, Teachers, Childhood, Adolescence, Psychology
Manchester Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
