Progressive Pedagogy
As Bank Street College of Education seeks to keep pace with the demand for digital access, it does so with the intention of remaining aligned with its progressive values of advocacy, voice, and social justice. In preparing educators at Bank Street College who work in various settings, the authors have a prevailing commitment to creating innovative communities where students are inspired to learn about constructivist theory and apply this knowledge to their craft. Social constructivist theory (Vygotsky, 1978) posits that new learning grows out of prior knowledge and interactions with others. As students interact with classmates and instructors, they expand their understanding of both the new and the familiar.
Setting the stage for a robust and generative learning community, the authors turn to the founder of Bank Street, Lucy Sprague Mitchell (n.d.). Over a century ago, she wrote that education is the opportunity to build a better society. In the Bank Street credo, Mitchell wrote that in educating children, teachers, and ourselves, educators wanted to see “lively intellectual curiosities that turn the world into an exciting laboratory and keep one ever a learner,” and “flexibility when confronted with change and ability to relinquish patterns that no longer fit the present” (bankstreet.edu). The authors believe that learners need to actively engage in interactions with teachers and peers in order to learn.
Nager and Shapiro (2007) wrote that Bank Street programs emphasize the development of teachers, integrating “processes of thinking, feeling, doing, and reflecting” (p. 7). This conceptualization is known as developmental-interaction, a pedagogical approach rooted in developmental psychology and progressive education. Shapiro and Nager (2000) explained:
[D]evelopmental-interaction…was named for its salient concepts: the changing patterns of growth, understanding, and response that characterize children and adults as they develop; and the dual meaning of interaction as, first, the interconnected spheres of thought and emotion, and, equally, the importance of engagement with the environment of children, adults, and the material world.
This coherent philosophy focuses on human development, interaction with the world of people and materials, building democratic community, and humanist values. It has an explicit purpose: to educate teachers and children within an educational frame which brings together concepts from dynamic and developmental psychologists, and progressive educational theorists and practitioners. (p. 5)
The developmental-interaction approach sees cognitive development as inseparable from the growth of personal and interpersonal processes (Nager & Shapiro, 2007). In the last few decades, understanding of learning has evolved, moving educators from a transmission approach to teaching toward learner-centered environments (Meier, 2015). In an online environment, we must not abandon this shift in our understanding of how students learn.