An Analysis of John Dewey's Notion of Occupations: Still Pedagogically Valuable?

John Dewey lived and worked in an environment where the manual training move-ment was ever present. For Dewey, his own unique version of manual training is la-beled “occupations. ” Nevertheless, over the years, what Dewey meant by occupations has been either misinterpreted or ignored for a plethora of reasons. Th is manual training climate that Dewey was a part of was dominant and Dewey could not and did not ignore it. He did, however, transform it. Later on, published sources used Dewey’s notion of occupations and in many cases misinterpreted what he meant by occupations as a method. Finally, what Dewey actually says about occupations is found in his Early Works and Middle Works. Th is analysis of Dewey’s concept of occupations, seeing its complexity, value, and thereby its distinction from ideas about vocational education, gives clarity to what Dewey believed about his concept but also shows its value for teaching and learning in schools today. Finally, a part of the confusion of Dewey’s notion of occupations may be found in the various ways Dewey employed the term. At the end of the nineteenth century, the manual training (MT) movement was a major concern for educators, industrialists, and politicians, and this included John Dewey. For Dewey. his unique version of MT, or “occupations,”was a method of learning by doing that was at the center of the curriculum and had equal weight with other studies. It was also a key component of a pedagogy that considered the psychology of the child,1 liberal studies, and the social dimension of learning; how-ever, it was not trade or vocational education.2 Nevertheless, over the years what Dewey meant by occupations has been ei-ther misinterpreted or ignored for a plethora of reasons and, at times, seen as syn-