ABSTRACT
As a set of values, beliefs and professional ideals, held mainly by primary school teachers (i.e. as an educational ideology), progressivism has been in decline for around three decades, since its high point of influence, in England, immediately following the publication of the Plowden Report (Central Advisory Council, 1967). Unrelenting attacks upon it from politicians and from others during this period prepared the ground for a series of political ‘root-and-branch’ changes to the educational system which have not only transformed the schoolteacher’s job but have pushed ideological issues well outside the public spotlight. Such issues no longer merit much attention. Debates about whether progressivist or traditionalist curricula provide effective solutions to the problems of teaching appear to have ‘run out of steam’. In particular, when progressivism itself is discussed, its favoured methodologies, once believed innovative, are as often as not used as foils for newer approaches. Compared with more ‘enlightened’ methods applied elsewhere (such as in countries of the western Pacific: Reynolds, 1996; Reynolds and Farrell, 1996), these have been condemned for preventing teachers from reaching the standards of excellence a modern society demands.
