David I. Waddington

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Concordia University

Critics like Leonard Waks argue that video games are, at best, a dubious substitute for the rich classroom experiences that John Dewey wished to create and that, at worst, they are profoundly miseducative. Using the example of Fate of the World, a climate change simulation game, David Waddington addresses these concerns through a careful demonstrat...

Critical thinking (CT) is purposeful, self-regulatory judgment that results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanations of the considerations on which that judgment is based. This article summarizes the available empirical evidence on the impact of instruction on the development and enhancement of critical thinki...

This article considers the question of whether policies that propose to forbid public officials, most notably teachers, from wearing religious clothing in the classroom can be justified by political principles of secularism – specifically, the principle of state neutrality and the principle of state autonomy from religious influence. Two prominent...

In this essay, David Waddington and Noah Weeth Feinstein explore how Dewey's conception of science can help us rethink the way science is done in schools. The authors begin by contrasting a view of science that is implicitly accepted by many scientists and science educators - science as a search for truth - with Dewey's instrumentalist, technologic...

In this chapter, I argue that the status of Dewey scholarship in schools of education is likely to decline. To advance this hypothesis, I begin with an account of the factors behind Dewey’s ascent in North American schools of education. I then proceed to review some existing critiques of Dewey, and I explain how they do not capture the key problem...

This study examined the effects of Spaceteam ESL, a digital shouting game, on the development of oral reading fluency (ORF) among 71 English as a second language (ESL) students in three primary and secondary schools in Mombasa, Kenya. Following a mixed-methods approach for data collection and analysis, we pre-tested and post-tested the participants...

Quelles sont les limites raisonnables encadrant l’enseignement de sujets controversés ? L’article suivant vise la réponse à cette question et propose, pour ce faire, de dégager certains principes juridiquement fondés qui guideront la pratique professionnelle du corps enseignant. L’analyse de la jurisprudence pertinente du Canada et des États-Unis,...

Several well-known scholars, including Clarence Karier, Walter Feinberg, and Eamonn Callan, have offered arguments suggesting that John Dewey was more politically conservative than is generally thought. Karier and Feinberg base their respective cases on Dewey’s involvement with Polish community during World War I, while Callan relies heavily on som...

This essay explores the possibility that a particular type of video game—real-time strategy games—could have worrisome educational impacts. In order to make this case, I will develop a theoretical framework originally advanced by French social critic Paul Virilio. In two key texts, Speed and Politics (1977) and “The Aesthetics of Disappearance” (19...

Science education is likely to respond to the post-truth era by focusing on how science education can help individuals use scientists’ epistemological tools to tell what is true. This strategy, by itself, is inadequate for three reasons. First, science does not actually offer foundational truth, and incautious assertions about scientific truth can...

The theme selected for the 2019 EuroCALL conference held in Louvain-la-Neuve was ‘CALL and complexity’. As languages are known to be intrinsically and linguistically complex, as are the many determinants of learning (additional) languages, complexity is viewed as a challenge to be embraced collectively. The 2019 conference allowed us to pay tribute...

Executive summary/Abstract Adaptive teaching and individualization for k-12 students improves academic achievement: A meta-analysis of classroom studies Background The question of how to best deliver instruction to k-12 students has dominated the educational conversation, both in terms of theory and practice, since before 1960. Two predominant mod...

Why do society and the courts so readily recognize university and college teachers’ academic freedom but just as readily deny primary and secondary school teachers the same right? To investigate this question, this article considers teachers’ work in light of the standard justifications for granting academic freedom in higher education: that academ...

Background. Simulations of complex systems have a long history of use for the study and promotion of systems thinking, yet more can be done in identifying games that promote development of systems thinking. Aim. This study is an exploration of the hypothesis that FATE OF THE WORLD, a challenging and complex climate change simulation, can promote sy...

Our analysis revealed four principles that set limits on teachers' right to classroom free speech: curriculum alignment, even-handedness, age appropriateness and avoidance of inflammatory material.�These four principles are a useful guide for teachers and teacher educators.�However, the protections afforded to teacher free speech remain limited, so...

After the death of my daughter Zoe in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), a colleague asked me whether my status as an academic philosopher changed my experience in the NICU. In this short narrative, I outline 5 ways in which philosophical perspective helped me understand and cope with our hospital experience.

John Dewey's Democracy and Education is the touchstone for a great deal of modern educational theory. It covers a wide range of themes and issues relating to education, including teaching, learning, educational environments, subject matter, values, and the nature of work and play. This Handbook is designed to help experts and non-experts to navigat...

This study examined whether the pedagogical use of Spaceteam ESL, a digital shouting game, could contribute to the development of oral reading fluency (ORF) among 71 English students in secondary schools in Mombasa, Kenya. Following a mixed-methods approach for data collection and analysis, we pre- and post-tested the participants on their ability...

Digital gaming in education is an area that has been rapidly expanding in popularity and is gradually being applied to second language (L2) contexts (Godwin-Jones, 2014). Mobile gaming in particular offers the benefits of digital gaming while also offering the portability and accessibility of mobile devices (Ogata & Yana, 2003; Stockwell, 2010). Th...

This poster presents an experimental study examining how playing Get Water! (Decode Global, 2013), a water-scarcity themed casual mobile game, affects attitudinal, behavioral and cognitive learning outcomes. Using a three-group design (n=251), we asked (1) how playing the socially-themed game influences players’ knowledge, attitudes and advocacy be...

In this presentation, we discuss the role of content/gameplay integration in shaping player interpretations of “civic games” —video games designed to increase awareness of social and political processes and problems. To do this, we draw on our study of adult players’ experiences of Get Water!, a water-scarcity themed casual mobile game designed to...

This paper brings to light the ideas of a pioneering but largely forgotten social critic, C. E. Ayres. In his first book, Science: The False Messiah (1927), which was written in consultation with John Dewey, Ayres advanced a forceful and original critique of science and technology. He argued that technological change was occurring at a pace that ha...

In this essay, Bruce Maxwell, David Waddington, Kevin McDonough, Andrée‐Anne Cormier, and Marina Schwimmer compare two competing approaches to social integration policy, Multiculturalism and Interculturalism, from the perspective of the issue of the state funding and regulation of conservative religious schools. After identifying the key difference...

This article provides a reconsideration of the intellectual altercation between John Dewey and Lewis Mumford in the 1920s, and a sketch of some educational implications that follow this reconsideration. Although past scholarship has tended to focus on ways in which the altercation obscured similarities in their thought, we consider whether importan...

Manifeste pour une école compétente est le résultat de la collaboration de professeurs et professeures en sciences de l’éducation de toutes les universités au Québec, tant francophones qu’anglophones. Ils y affirment à la fois la nécessité de faire de l’éducation une priorité et le souhait qu’elle continue d’être innovante et créatrice, qu’elle con...

Science, technology, society, and environment (STSE) themes occupy a prominent place in the reformed Québec junior high school science curriculum. However, studies have demonstrated that STSE curriculum reforms are often not translated into meaningful changes in classroom practice. Although there are multiple possible reasons for this gap between c...

In 1988, Richard Morin, a Grade 9 teacher in Prince Edward Island, Canada was removed from the classroom for showing his students a film that was critical of Christian fundamentalism. The ensuing court battle, which eventually resulted in Morin’s vindication in 2002, has received surprisingly little attention. I begin the analysis with a careful ex...

In this essay, David Waddington provides a basic outline of John Dewey's often-overlooked views on technology education and explores how these ideas could be updated productively for use in contemporary contexts. Some of the shortcomings of Dewey's ideas are also examined—his faith in the scientific method may have been excessive, and some critics...

One of the interesting aspects of Dewey’s early educational thought is his apparent hostility toward children’s imaginative pursuits, yet the question of why this antipathy exists remains unanswered. As will become clear, Dewey’s hostility towards imaginative activities stemmed from a broad variety of concerns. In some of his earliest work, Dewey a...

Developmental psychologist Damon's (Damon, Menon, & Cotton Bronk, 2003) ongoing research program on youth purpose may have important practical implications for education. However, in the course of the development of this research, two fundamental conceptual questions have not yet been resolved satisfactorily: (a) How should "sense of purpose" be de...

This paper is dedicated to the investigation of an important, but not particularly well known connection between the work of Hegel and Dewey's early educational ideas. A brief exposition of Hegel's position in the Philosophy of Right is offered, with a particular focus on Hegel's idea of absolute freedom. This exposition is followed by an analysis...

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The extremely high level of simulated violence in certain recent video games has made some people uneasy. There is a concern that something is wrong with these violent games, but, since the violence is virtual rather than real, it is difficult to specify the nature of the wrongness. Since there is no proven causal connection between video-game viol...

This essay serves as a guide for scholars, especially those in education, who want to gain a better understanding of Heidegger's essay, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. The paper has three sections: an interpretive summary, a critical commentary, and some remarks on Heidegger scholarship in education. Since Heidegger's writing style is rather...