Despite differences among progressive educators, they share the conviction that democracy means active participation by all citizens in the social, political, and economic decisions of their countries. The aim of this paper is to explore how Georgia is meeting goals and perspectives of progressive education by widely implementing civic education programs in schools and how its schools are developing a civic society. The paper highlights the 2010 inaugural national needs assessment, which studied conditions and attitudes towards civic education. The qualitative and quantitative results revealed the importance of civic education to diverse stakeholders. Civic education develops civic understanding founded on liberal and democratic values and helps students to comprehend their rights and responsibilities for their family, community, and state. Civic education developments in Georgia include adopting the diversity principle, empowering teachers to select and implement educational process, and using modern educational technologies and foreign pedagogical innovations.

This paper shows how the legacy of Jane Addams‘ socialized education can live on in today‘s progressive education, especially in the digital age. Discussion is drawn from a case study of an anti-underage drinking campaign conducted by urban youth of color in an afterschool program. The media ecology environment in the campaign––the integrated usage of new and traditional media––enriched the way the youth made sense of experience and communicated with the world. The campaign led youth to learn more about other important issues, culture, and community history. Another critical element of the campaign‘s success was the active participatory culture of local community organizations and businesses, which formed an extensive support network for the youth‘s engagement. This case suggests that the synergistic relationship between new media ecology and connected learning environments can make progressive education more promising in the digital age.

The need for progressive education is prevalent in one of the most underserved portions of the population: the adult developmentally disabled. Though John Dewey wrote little on the education of the disabled, his philosophy, and that of Mahatma Gandhi‘s, lend themselves to the further education of this unique segment of society. In this paper, I will be looking at developmentally disabled adults, specifically autistic individuals, living in group homes. It is the goal of developmentally developed group homes to advance the education of its residents so that they may eventually leave the home as competent, independent members of society. However, the education they are usually given is not tailored to their individual needs, reinforced through everyday activities, or provided in a manner respecting the individuals as people and not as objects.  I will be discussing Gandhi‘s concepts of Basic Education as it   can relate to the developmentally disabled and Kiyo Kitahara's use of Daily Life Therapy in the education of the autistic. I will examine the current system of learning in one specific group home and how Gandhi's and Kitahara's concepts of education can be used to improve the learning abilities of these individuals -- to allow them to move from institutionalized life to a fuller, more productive role in society.

The essence of progressive education today is a view of learning centered on participation. In adulthood, the quest to participate and the quest to learn may ultimately be regarded as one and the same. Research on the learning journeys of adults undertaking a basic computer  course are used to support these ideas. The participants in this study described pathways of learning directed toward useful activities rather than academic qualification or career progression. The notion of this journey as extending beyond competence to participation emerged from the analysis. Participation is a communicative process; framed by sets of assumptions on all sides. These assumptions are, in turn, influenced through participation. This paper considers the relevance of these ideas for the ubiquitous nature of everyday digital technologies and the challenges faced by people who lack the relevant competence to participate. An approach to pedagogy based on the ideals of progressive education is proposed––a shift of focus from the individual to the participant, and from competence to participation as the ultimate goal of learning.

The combination of pedagogy and political aims, a constant theme in the progressive school education literature, is reflected as well in the history of museum education. Museum educators, following the lead of John Dewey, advocated for experiential pedagogy, a natural course for museums since they emphasize learning from objects and experiences rather than through lecture and text. But progressive museum educators also embraced the  socio- political goals of progressive education. This was evident in the growing field of museum education during the progressive era, and, more recently in the history of the San Francisco Exploratorium and the Boston Children‘s Museum, institutions that had close ideological and personal connections with progressive educators in the 1960s and 1970s.

As the last Soviet republic to become an independent nation, Kazakhstan has worked diligently to transform and develop its educational system including systemic changes related to decentralization, financing changes, and the shift to a credit system. A professional health sciences education workshop delivered in Kazakhstan exemplifies progressive educational approaches. Attendees were educators from universities across Kazakhstan. The workshop was the product of collaboration between educators in the United States and Kazakhstan. Team-based learning was both a pedagogic method and topic of the workshop. Technology played a central role in the workshop, as it was integral to workshop development, collaboration, and evaluation. Furthermore, technology became a key content area of the workshop, as the educators presented advances in technology and specific tools to aid in the education of future medical professionals in Kazakhstan. In the months following the workshop, attendees embraced the challenge to take what they have learned back to their own universities by telling their stories. Using the collaborative learning approach and technological tools from the workshop, the attendees‘ spirit of sharing reflects the dynamic development of education in Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet era.

In this article, progressive education in New Zealand is examined across three eras. The

‗revered past‘ (1870s-1960s) focuses the influence of progressive ideas on the early childhood movement from the establishment of the first kindergarten in 1889 and on the schooling  sector from the 1930s to the 1960s. The ‗contested present‘ (1970s-2011) examines the attack on progressive education in schools in line with economic downturn from the 1970s onwards and contrasts this with the strengthening of the early childhood movement in the   1990s. The

‗uncertain future‘ (2012- ) looks at how current government policy is continuing to marginalise progressive ideals in favour of market-led educational decision-making but how educators are reclaiming the progressive space with the support of the wider community.

Historically, educators and philosophers have struggled with defining the role and the value  of formal curriculum and its impact on classroom praxis. As the current accountability movement dominates discussions in education, educators are pressured to implement increasingly standardized curricula. The authors of this work consider these tensions, situated first within contrasting theories on teaching and learning. They then explore the concept of phronesis through an interpretive biography of one teacher-artist, Frieda, whose praxis also demonstrates the aesthetic and artistic side of the teaching-learning process. This ninety-year- old teacher-artist‘s experiences with implementing her curriculums suggest that it is always possible to implement one‘s praxis, despite any potential societal or legislative impediments. Frieda's story shows how a teacher‘s praxis can incorporate Eisner‘s artistic approach to curriculum as well as many of Dewey‘s principles of child-centered pedagogy.

This article describes how an Early Childhood Teacher Education program in Hawaii builds upon a history of progressivism in the field of early education in the U.S. to encourage students to become critical thinkers and agents of change. Reflecting through the historical lenses of educators such as Jane Addams, Patty Smith Hill and Lucy Sprague Mitchell, two progressive teacher educators call on their students to become ―transformative intellectuals‖ (Giroux, 1988) and move from being agents of surveillance to agents of change (Foucault, 1972, 1995). Student data from blogs and action research projects illustrate how students challenged habituated practices in the field of early child education (ECE), which has been rapidly moving toward a narrow focus on academic readiness and the standardization of children and programs as a consequence of No Child Left Behind legislation and the Race to the Top competition for federal funds.