ABSTRACT
An extensive research and evaluation literature sustains the progressive paradigm. Does evidence support long-term progressive success in ‘developing’ country classrooms? If not, has progressive theory aligned with classroom reality or does progressivism usually remain axiomatic? This chapter classifies the literature about progressive reforms into six types of findings from positive to negative. Studies from 32 statistically representative countries show that progressive reforms were inappropriate and/or had major implementation difficulties. The evidence demonstrates a failure for progressivism to make the transition from theory to practice when exposed outside its own Anglo-American cultural domain to competition with formalism. Resistance to realignment with reality manifests in an axiomatic faith in the progressive paradigm as a universal panacea so that culturally biased and problematic assumptions about teaching styles in other cultures often are uncontested. Often, even research that is understanding of cultural context retains a progressive baseline for reform. Superficial ahistorical research and an absence of evaluation findings showing sustained progressive adoption embody the misinterpretation of anomalies in progressive implementation as new challenges and a state of denial that they are evidence of chronic failure.
