Abstract
This literature review examines the principles of progressivism and their implementation within the Independent Curriculum, with a particular focus on English learning. Progressivism emphasizes experiential learning, promoting active engagement, critical thinking, and a student-centered approach. These principles align well with the goals of the Independent Curriculum, which seeks to foster autonomy, creativity, and holistic development in students. The review delves into how experiential learning practices, such as hands-on activities, collaborative projects, and real-world problem-solving, are integrated into the English teaching and learning process. It highlights the benefits of these approaches in enhancing language skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities, preparing students for the complexities of the modern world. Additionally, the review addresses the challenges and opportunities of implementing progressivist strategies in diverse educational settings. Through an analysis of various studies and practical applications, this review underscores the potential of progressivism to transform traditional educational paradigms and improve student engagement and achievement within the Independent Curriculum framework, specifically in English language education.
Keywords: Progressivism, Independent Curriculum, English Learning
Introduction
In the dynamic landscape of education, theories, and methodologies continually evolve to meet learners' diverse needs and adapt to changing educational paradigms such as behaviorism, cognitivism, progressivism, and constructivism. Many educators, particularly teachers, apply theories in the classroom according to their respective roles. Each theory serves distinct functions and purposes, with some degree of correlation among them. Among these theories, constructivism is a commonly implemented approach in teaching and learning activities, emphasizing active student engagement and knowledge construction through hands-on experiences.
John Dewey first formulated progressivism as a philosophical viewpoint which, while positing, with its cousin pragmatism, that experience is the only source of determination of what is knowledge that is capital K. Knowledge is not synonymous with belief, says the classic formulation in its insistence schema that no beliefs are knowledge unless they have been systematically grounded with experiential evidence. Furthermore, pragmatists say useful beliefs are obtained only when they have proven useful in the practice of science, a point echoed in the maxim of eventually false assertions of Karl Popper and Daniel Dennett. (Matusov, 2022)
In a learning process, therefore, the first step does not involve the imposition of information or something to learn, but determining what is to be learned by the receptacle. The second step involves providing opportunities for the student to learn and demonstrate learning in the particular medium, which reveals its connectivity to a form of knowledge the student must learn. The third step involves the cooperating of the student's behavior by way of this experience from overt behavior, the isomorphism of these cognitive and affective states (cognitive perception, understanding, generalization, and evaluation; affective values, feelings, response tendencies) in the three species responses to the learning situation. (Sumardi et al., 2020)
Learning must result in a change in the behavior of the organism when it functions directly with its environment. The occurrence of this kind of learning is a consequence of the experience the individual has in the place of ongoing interaction with the environment. This kind of learning is therefore at once inductive, insofar as conclusions are derived from particular experiences, and empirical, in that these experiences must substantiate the conclusions drawn. (Tolman, 2023)
Dewey had attempted to identify universal truths about life and had found no universals, as life is not static or fixed. Education, therefore, can only be teaching the process of growth. Dewey introduced the concept of the conditioned or relative aim. He thought of a goal as being neither fixed nor absolute, but customized according to the experience and purpose in relation to the student. The teacher emphasizes the method and the process. The idea is that the aim of education is growth of the person, but only the individual knows the kind of growth required and the experience needed in order to reach growth. The concept of progressive education is a mixture of scientific discipline and life. (Nikolaidis, 2021)
Progressivism is not seen as a romantic ideal, nor as solely a theory, but as the essential meaning of liberation education, or the type of education necessary in order to provide equality in our schools. Paul Kroll defined a key concept that is the progressive and the learning process. Kroll said that both the child and learning are fundamentally active. Learning is as natural a growth process in the child as is the physical and psychological maturation process. Each experience of the child - whether it is symbolic, mental or physical, and experienced - is the child's own. The student, in this case, the child, as a learner is basically the judge of his own life, and further, that no boundary can be set on this growing. (Matusov, 2022)
Progressivism is an educational perspective that posits certain central premises about the learning process. The perspective appears in various forms, with divergent authors emphasizing different features of the view, but generally, the following points, associated with this perspective, can be derived.
