Dewey, Existential Uncertainty and Non-affirmative Democratic Education

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, I show how John Dewey’s understanding of the educational meaning of existential uncertainty lies at the heart of his idea of democratic education. Specifically, I argue that Dewey’s theory of democratic education is grounded in a concept of transformative learning that necessarily involves experiences of existential uncertainty, and, in a concept of teaching that necessarily involves supporting learners’ opportunities to have educative experiences of existential uncertainty. In doing so, I aim to bring this democratic aspect of Dewey’s notion of teaching into sharper relief by showing how it offers a productive extension of the tradition of non-affirmative educational theory. In section one, “Uncertainty and the beginning of learning”, I discuss the notion of existential uncertainty and its relation to what Dewey called “the indeterminate situation” as a realm of learning that we find ourselves in prior to searching for and finding a problem, and thus logically prior to solving it. In section two, “Existential uncertainty, teaching and democratic education”, I discuss Dewey’s notion of teaching within the context of his broader theory of democratic education, highlighting it as a form of teaching that is non-affirmative, by contrasting it to “traditional, transmissive” and, what I call, “reductive-progressive” forms of teaching. In the final section, “Listening and Relationality”, I build on and move beyond Dewey to formulate a notion of the teacher as a listener. I argue that this understanding of the teacher is vitally relevant for the theory and practice of democratic education as non-affirmative education, and yet is in danger of being lost in the current measurement culture in education.