Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

经验与教育 = Experience and education

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

The Rise of the Creative Class

Organizational learning II: Theory, method and practice

Abstract Information is a source of power in the planning process. This article begins by assessing five perspectives of the planner's use of information: those of the technician, the incremental pragmatist, the liberal advocate, the structuralist, and the “progressive.” Then several types of misinformation (inevitable or unnecessary, ad hoc or systematic) are distinguished in a reformulation of bounded rationality in planning, and practical responses by planning staff are identified. The role and ethics of planners acting as sources of misinformation are considered. In practice planners work in the face of power manifest as the social and political (mis)-man-agement of citizens' knowledge, consent, trust, and attention. Seeking to enable planners to anticipate and counteract sources of misinformation threatening public serving, democratic planning processes, the article clarifies a practical and politically sensitive form of “progressive” planning practice.

Planning in the Face of Power.

A study of strategies used by urban planners in city governments of the United States to grapple with the political side of their profession. Hoch focuses on the attitudes of planners toward the compromises they make to accommodate political conflict, budgetary constraints and bureaucratic red tape. The book covers the ways planners utilize research, formulate plans, regulate development, organize political coalitions, cope with racial discrimination, and negotiate with members of business groups, community organizations and government agencies. Throughout, Hoch identifies the pitfalls of common approaches taken by planners and gives examples of helpful alternatives. The analysis features responses from interviews the author conducted with 32 professional planners who share insights and observations about their experiences and describe their reactions to problems encountered on the job, from enforcing building codes to selling a town council on a renovation project.

What Planners Do: Power, Politics, and Persuasion

Mainstream American planning theorists have adopted a concept of planning that is amazingly similar to the concept of human action proposed by the philosopher John Dewey. Like Dewey, they have built a bridge to close the gap between being right and doing good, using a scaffolding that combines identification of problems, formulation of plans, and democratic participation. Unfortunately, these mainstream theorists overlook the limits of this pragmatic connection, overestimating the efficacy of instrumental problem solving and underestimating the effects of an uneven distribution of power.

Doing Good and Being Right The Pragmatic Connection in Planning Theory

Blending detailed historical perspective with contemporary survey research, Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton argue that the answers to one of the most pressing problems of our time come from the poor themselves. Their examination of the Skid Row single room occupancy hotel (SRO) reveals how communities formed by low-income single-person households have for decades offered the security, personal autonomy, and privacy for the "old" homeless that the "new" homeless lack. And they show how public urban renewal efforts, which destroyed the bulk of these hotels with the intent to rid the inner city of the Skid Row homeless, actually laid the foundation for today's urban homeless crisis. Focusing on Chicago from 1870 to the present, but including case studies in other cities, Hoch and Slayton analyze how these SRO hotels operated in the past and claim that the term "flop house" really described a wide range of shelter types available to the poor according to their economic conditions. Based on their research, the authors conclude that policies for solving the homeless problem should focus mainly not on the homeless people, but on the institutional actors who benefit directly and indirectly from their predicament. This means changing public policies that encourage the destruction of affordable housing, especially SRO hotels, and implementing preservation, rehabilitation, and new construction policies instead. Author note: Charles Hoch is Associate Professor in the School of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Robert A. Slayton is Assistant Professor of History at Chapman College and author of Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy.

New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel

In this article I take up the topic of plan evaluation. I compare two approaches. One approach uses Rational analysis, the other pragmatic reasoning. I argue that planners should place less emphasi...

Evaluating Plans Pragmatically

Communicative action (CA) theory need not displace the critical insights of social scientists, geographers, and other urban scholars about the processes of social, economic, and political change that shape urban settlements. CA analysts believe we settle differences in research findings and interpretations by studying the consequences these differences produce instead of claiming philosophical trump. In the first part of this article, I summarize and critique the argument that CA theory is unrealistic explaining of how CA analysts care more about relevant consequences than causal certainty. In the second part of the article, taking some conceptual advice from social theorist Jurgen Habermas, I show how CA analysis can combine structural and intentional concepts to revise and integrate the apparent antagonism between comprehensiveness and compromise for planning practice. I conclude that a pragmatic CA provides a useful and critical theory for planning practice that remains open to future challenge and debate.

Charles Hoch

Papers

What Planners Do: Power, Politics, and Persuasion

Doing Good and Being Right The Pragmatic Connection in Planning Theory

New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel

Evaluating Plans Pragmatically

Pragmatic Communicative Action Theory