The present article on John Dewey aims at pursuing thetraces of the reception of Dewey's work in France. Itis intended as a survey of the writers who have takennote of Dewey and his ideas, and is meant to functionas a sort of additive inventory, with no claim tocomprehensiveness. Some of the articles mentioned wereunfortunately unavailable for direct examination andare thus listed merely for purposes of information.

This article proposes to break with the idealized approach of alternation. Far from political injunctions, organizational, strategic, managerial and bureaucratic after all, we propose a different reading of the alternating student in terms of pedagogy. By locating our thinking in a conception of pedagogy as expressed in teachers claiming the principles and values of the New Education, we invite you to exceed the formatted design of alternating considering it as a reflection on the relationship between education and culture.

This article addresses somemethodological questions that are at stake inassessing the influence of the ideas of John Dewey onthe renewal of European education in the twentiethcentury, using examples from the history of Dutcheducation. It is argued that in this kind of researchthe focus should not be on the process of influence assuch, but rather on the activity of reception. This,in turn, requires a contextual reconstruction of theinteraction between Deweyan ideas and practices andexisting ones. The case studies presented in thisarticle exemplify (...) the more general methodologicalobservations. They not only provide an insight in therole of Deweyan ideas and practices in the developmentof Dutch education but also make clear for whatreasons, mostly unrelated to the significance ofDewey's work, these ideas and practices did not haveany lasting influence on the development of Dutcheducation, both on the level of early childhoodeducation and primary and secondary schools. (shrink)

The present article on John Dewey aims at pursuing the traces of the reception of Dewey’s work in France. It is intended as a survey of the writers who have taken note of Dewey and his ideas, and is meant to function as a sort of additive inventory, with no claim to comprehensiveness. Some of the articles mentioned were unfortunately unavailable for direct examination and are thus listed merely for purposes of information.Although the educational and philosophical writings of John Dewey (...) are actually indivisible, Dewey’s oeuvre has not been read in France and Europe generally as of a piece, but has largely been registered in terms of those parts which have relevance to education and teaching. Indicative of this is the fact that it took until 1975 forDemocracy and Education -the book which, in Dewey’s own view, most clearly presented his linking of pedagogy and philosophy — to be published in France. Gérard Delledalle, the translator ofDemocracy and Education, is the only person so far in France to have dealt systematically with the whole of Dewey’s writings. He has translated other works by Dewey and has written several books on him, dealing expressly with Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism as the foundation of his theory of education.It is actually inadequate to restrict the reception of Dewey’s work to France alone. Rather, one should speak of francophone Europe, for the first translations of Dewey’s educational writings into French were made by Adolphe Ferrière, Ovide Decroly and édouard Claparède — a Swiss, a Belgian, and a Frenchman. It was thanks to them that Dewey’s thoughts on education began to make an impact on the francophone movement for school reform in the early twentieth century.Discussion of his theory of education is typified in France as well by a division into proponents of a concept of ‘learning by doing’ indebted to Dewey and representatives of authoritarian forms of education, which reject Dewey. Although French thought has not yet concerned itself closely with pragmatism, Dewey’s opponents believed that they could denounce him and his theories simply by levelling the charge of “pragmatism.” This dualistic mode of thinking which appears to be deeply rooted in France has proved to be an obstacle to the reception of Dewey and has led to neglect and rejection of his theories. (shrink)