Workshop Way of Learning

Workshops for educators have been an integral part of professional development and inservice education. The workshop format is loosely interpreted as an opportunity or a requirement for schoolteachers or leaders to develop new knowledge, skill, or disposition designed to enhance curriculum. The idea of workshop, as a way of learning, was refined by Earl C. Kelley in the 1940s and elaborated in his book, The Workshop Way of Learning.

Kelley's workshop ideas were influenced by the educational theory of John Dewey and by practices initiated by Ralph W. Tyler in the Eight Year Study of the 1930s and early 1940s. Origins also bear some resemblance to statewide curriculum reform efforts led by Hollis Caswell in Virginia and in Florida, spanning from the 1920s to the 1940s, ...