The Progressive Education Fallacy

Abstract

Karl Popper's approach to the development of formal knowledge is as a series of conjectures and refutations. Section 1 considers some long-standing progressive education conjectures. Chapter 1 posits the Progressive Education Fallacy and, summarises the book. The Fallacy is based on the false premise that enquiry teaching methods are necessary in primary and secondary schools in developing countries to develop enquiry skills. The culturally-biased conjectures of C. E. Beeby about educational stages and progressive education remain an important influence on much academic and official literature on educational reform in non-Western cultures in developing countries, especially the equation of improvement in the quality of education with change to teaching styles. Strong theoretical and practical reasons exist for modifying formalism in an evolutionary fashion from within rather than trying to replace it with progressive styles. Methodological issues in the school effectiveness literature, on which much international analysis is based, include a serious lack of engagement with classroom processes and cultural context. Context is a vital prior condition influencing classroom behaviour that the cases of Papua New Guinea and China illustrate.