Alarum within: Dewey, Peirce, and James on confusion and its practical promise

John Dewey wrote throughout his life about the role of confusion in learning, which he argued was the motor for a learning event. Influenced by the work of his older contemporaries Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, Dewey expanded their foundational ideas into an architecture of cognition that honored confusion and its role in knowledge-formation. To trace the lineage of Dewey\u27s ideas, this dissertation explores the foundational ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce and his constructs of doubt, belief, and abduction. It also examines James\u27s notions of cognition and learning and his theories about truth. Dewey\u27s theories of cognition and inquiry in scientific, social, and educational realms then become the focus. The dissertation subsequently explores four curricular instantiations of Dewey\u27s philosophies and uncovers in them points of agreement between Dewey\u27s ideas as well as revealing points of disjunction. Finally, this dissertation briefly examines contemporary examples of classroom settings using confusion as a motivating tool before making recommendations for further research