John Dewey’s 4 Principles of Education

John Dewey is an American philosopher, psychologist and educator who brought forth the Experiential Learning Approach. He believed in the idea that young children have the trait of plasticity. In this video, we learn about the 4 core principles to the Experiential Learning Approach which are: Learning By Doing, Discussion, Interaction and Interdisciplinary education.

As the video unfolded, I found myself reflecting on my schooling to think of times when a teacher had used any one of these 4 methods in their teaching and how much of an impact it had had on my learning, so much so that I still remember those moments now.

In Biology class, I remember that to learn how a seed grows into a plant, our biology teacher in Class 6 had asked us to grow our own beans. In the process, we had to ask our family members for help in acquiring beans, acquiring containers to grow them in, cotton and tissue to put them in and a water spray bottle to keep the cotton and seeds damp. As we were Learning By Doing, we would also come to class and Discuss with our friends and teacher, what progress we had made. Once the plants had grown (or in some students’ cases, not grown), we had to come in class and Interact, share our understanding on why it grew or did not grow and what factors might have impacted the positive or negative outcome.

Lastly, our Biology teacher collaborated with our English teacher so that once we had completed the project, we would write an essay in English about our learnings, making it Interdisciplinary.

Clearly, Dewey’s approach is effective since I still remember this 16 years later. As Dewey said, education isn’t a part of life, education is life.