Goodlad, John (1920–)

John I. Goodlad is among the most influential educational reformers and researchers of modern times. A major critic of the U.S. educational system, he has authored more than 30 books and contributed chapters and articles in hundreds of other edited collections and journals. His major premise has been that the fundamental focus of education should not be on the promotion of accountability and standards-based testing but instead on preparing young people for their roles as active and engaged citizens in a participatory democracy. As he wrote in his most recent book, Education and the Making of a Democratic People (2008), “public schooling is the essential starting point for addressing the well-being of democracy.”

Goodlad was born in British Columbia in 1920 and was educated in a small rural school. He began teaching in 1939 in a one-room elementary school and eventually served as both teacher and principal in that remote district. He earned both his bachelor's (1945) and master's (1946) degrees from the University of British Columbia before moving to the United States and earning his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1949. He held various teaching positions at Emory University, Agnes Scott College, and the University of Chicago before relocating to California, where in 1960 he became professor of education and director of a laboratory school at the University of California, Los Angeles. Goodlad was named dean of the Graduate School of Education at UCLA in 1967, a position he held until 1983.

In 1985, he moved to the University of Washington, which has remained his home base for his efforts to advance his views on American education. In collaboration with Ken Sirotnik and Roger Soder, Goodlad in 1985 created the research-focused Center for Educational Renewal in the University of Washington's College of Education, and in subsequent years added two other organizations as affiliates of the Center: the National Network for Educational Renewal (1986) to promote work with school–university partnerships, and the Institute for Educational Inquiry (1992) to provide PreK–12 educators with leadership training in promoting what he and his colleagues subsequently established as the Agenda for Education in a Democracy.

The Agenda for Education in a Democracy reflects Goodlad's assertion that the U.S. educational system needs to be completely redesigned and that the redesign must be based on moral principles. Goodlad and his colleagues at the University of Washington therefore identified four Moral Dimensions as the cornerstone of educational renewal: (1) that young people must be provided with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that would allow them to participate effectively in a social and political democracy; (2) that all students must be provided with access to knowledge that would allow them to participate effectively in the democratic process; (3) that educators must design their classrooms in ways that nurture students in their pursuit of knowledge; and (4) that all members of the local community must take on the role of stewards of the schools.

In redesigning the American educational system, Goodlad pays particular attention to the preparation of teachers for the nation's schools. His experience in small rural schools early in his career convinced him that a teacher's personality and approach to his or her students is the key to effective teaching and learning. His work at various universities also convinced him that teacher preparation programs needed significant change in the way they prepared teachers, because, “You can go into class after class and see teachers in teacher education demonstrating what that teacher would not want their own students to do, like lecturing 88% of the time.” This concern led Goodlad to recognize the importance of close collaborations between colleges and universities that prepare teachers and the PreK–12 schools that serve as real-world settings for those teacher candidates and the importance of developing “hybrid educators” who are comfortable in both PreK–12 and college/university environments.

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