Understanding Life in School

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Understanding Life so as to Understand Life in School

   • John Quay

   Pages 1-21

3. Investigating Life in School

   • John Quay

   Pages 22-38

4. Life in School: Occupations and Outdoor Education

   • John Quay

   Pages 39-99

5. Life in School: Occupations and Academic Classrooms

   • John Quay

   Pages 100-143

6. Life in School Is Occupational

   • John Quay

   Pages 144-165

7. Back Matter

   Pages 166-173

   PDF

Attending school is an experience that most people share but this leads us to accept rather than question the experience. Using the philosophies of Heidegger and Dewey, John Quay explores life in schools and juxtaposes the environment of a school camp with that of an academic classroom.

• education
• school
• life
• outdoor education
• being
• Dewey
• occupation
• time
• Heidegger
• planning
• organization
• environment
• occupations
• philosophy
• learning and instruction

“In Understanding Life in School: From Academic Classroom to Outdoor Education, John Quay endeavours to restore and promote Dewey’s concept of occupational education. … Quay does succeed in demonstrating the benefits of designing curriculum around occupational experiences—particularly where serenity and beauty are valued over speed and deadlines. Under these conditions, the outdoor curriculum featured in Understanding Life in School becomes a cooperative venture.” (Jefferson Kinsman, Educational Philosophy and Theory, March, 2018)

“Understanding Life In School offers a wealth of interesting narrative information about how these particular teens view their experiences in and out of school. It also makes avaliant effort at convincing us that we should educate children, not future adults.” (Susan Engel, Teachers College Record, 2016)

"This book is a "must read" for educators. It is so because it is animated by a principle which claims that it is more important to help students become well-rounded beings than to transmit to them tidbits of knowledge. Study its manifestation with care, then act upon it."

Philip W. Jackson - David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Education and Psychology at the University of Chicago, USA

"This book is a worthy companion to Philip W. Jackson's Life in Classrooms. It addresses the complexities of life in schools, providing a rich account of how students interpret and negotiate these complexities. In an analysis that is both philosophically astute and highly accessible, John Quay shows how education for these students is about much more than knowing it is about being and becoming."

Fazal Rizvi - Professor in Global Studies in Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

• Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

  John Quay

John Quay is a senior lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has recently published Education, Experience and Existence: Engaging Dewey, Peirce and Heidegger (2013) and John Dewey and Education Outdoors (2013, with Jayson Seaman). His research interests include educational philosophy, outdoor education, physical education and environmental education.

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