The start of progressivism dates back to mid-1920s by John Dewey, and ever since
then, some school have adapt to this method of teaching in their classroom. This
philosophy is heavily focus on the progress of student. He was an American
philosopher and educator. In 1938 Dewey described progressive education as “a
product of discontent with traditional education” which imposes adult standards,
subject matter, and methodologies. He believe that traditional education as just
describe , was beyond the scope of young learners. Progressivism base their
courses on the needs, experience, interest, and skills of their students because they
think that this is how people learn best.Progressivists also believe that education
should focus on the whole child, rather than on the content or the teacher, they
mostly want to student to engage in real-world and problem-solving activities in a
democratic and cooperative learning environment. An effective progressive
teacher must also provides experience toward the student so that they can learn by
doing curriculum content is derived from student interest and questions. One of
the major things that progressivism do for the school is improve society. And that
is why student are suppose to engaging in real-world problem-solving tasks.
Dewey also believed that all aspects of study arithmetic, history, geography, etc
need to be linked to materials based on student every-day life-experiences.There
are also many key features that progressivism famous for. According to LL Lerner,
some of the key features of progressive curriculum include: the focus on student ,
peer, emphasis on growth , action centered, process and change centered, equality
centered and as well as community centered. For teacher to successfully apply this
is in their classroom it must be an open classroom where in this type of
environment student spend more time in direct contact with the community or
cultural surroundings beyond the confines of the classroom or school. As a
progressive type classroom some of the key work methods are: group work and
project method. This encourages student to learn not only important skill like team
work or cooperation. But also helped them build a foundation in social interaction.
Providing project work is centered around the scientific method which also can
helps student to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving as well as
decision making. This application of the scientific method allows progressivists to
verify experience through investigation. Different from perennialist and
essentialist who method as a mean of verifying the truth. The roles of a
progressive teacher is that in their teacher they must promote discovery and selfdirectly learning as well as engaging your student in active learning.