John Dewey and Human Development

John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher-psychologist of international acclaim. Although he did not greatly influence early American psychology, Dewey's relevance to contemporary psychology is manifold. He identified the problem of social psychology as the relationship between human nature and changing social circumstances, proposed means and a rationale to broaden the empiricism of psychology to encompass domains outside of the traditional laboratory setting, suggested that functional rather than structural characteristics differentiate childish from adult reasoning, and proposed a theory of noninevitable child development in which social values and practices play essential roles. Dewey proposed that by elucidating mechanisms for realizing desired values psychology can be an empirically based instrument for promoting human development and social progress in a democratic society.