Education Philosophies of Dewey and James

A Harvard psychologist, William James proposed in the latter 1900s that human memory consists of three elements: an after-image, a primary memory, and a secondary memory (Ormrod 1995). Though Dewey and a majority of his ideas were largely ignored during the behaviorism-oriented decades of the early 20th century, the emergence of cognitivism during the 1960s created a renewed interest in memory and its connection to learning. Because of this focus, James' ideas on memory and their connection with learning were revived by others such as Atkinson and Schrifin.

According to Webb, Metha, and Jordan (1992), James was an experimentalist and a pragmatist. He integrated the ideas he held regarding pragmatism into psychology and philosophy. James' main emphasis was on a concept known as the centrality of experience. James believed this was the foundation of learning, arguing that there were no absolutes or universals - only an ever-altering universe. In James' view, the educational implications of experimentalism illustrated his belief that education should stress function or experience through problem-solving and the scientific method. In James' view