ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to compare the psychologies of Thorndike and Dewey by focusing on their respective treatments of habit in human learning and behavior. The issue is of more than historic interest in that a focus on this aspect of their positions not only reveals much about the two and their contributions to current thought but also provides a point of perspective for a more general reappraisal of the foundations of the learning sciences today. Habits, for Thorndike, could be divided into the instinctive and the acquired. Within his psychology, both types of habits consisted of predispositions to respond in particular ways to particular stimuli. Habits were a primary concern for Dewey, as well. Most day-to-day conduct, he believed, is ruled by habit. When disrupted, however, conduct comes under the influence of impulse and intelligence. Dewey introduced the term inquiry for the process by which intelligence recovers a situation that has in some way become problematic. Dewey's call for the inclusion of “the social” in psychology, was a call for a totally new approach to research into human learning and interaction. The implications for future work in educational research of adopting Dewey's approach are discussed.
