The Goals and Beliefs of Progressivism in the Approaches and Methods of English Language Teaching: A Literature Review

Abstract

Progressivism is the educational ideology that opposes the traditional paradigm of teacher authority and promotes the students’ autonomy, experiential learning, and democratic collaboration. This research aims to present the main goals and beliefs of Progressivism in education from the pertinent literature and their accommodations in the approaches and methods of English Language Teaching (ELT). To achieve these aims, the researcher used a literature review by collecting the related finding that consists of collective e-books and journals. Then, categorizing the key terms that are related to basic concepts or main values. After that, synthesizing the values such as philosophical foundations, aims of education, and their influence in curriculum design, which focuses on the teacher and students’ role, curriculum focus, and teaching methods. Next, the researcher synthesizes and reveals these main values or principles of progressivism for accommodation in approaches and methods in existing English Language Teaching (ELT) programs. A review of six empirical studies and two foundational texts identified five core progressivist values, experiential learning, student-centeredness, democratic participation, critical thinking, and problem-solving, and traced their influence on curriculum components (teacher and learner roles, curriculum focus, and teaching methods). Analysis of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) showed how these values are operationalized through authentic, learner-driven tasks: CLT fosters democratic peer interaction and experiential use of language in real contexts, while TBLT embeds problem-solving and collaborative inquiry in purpose-built tasks. Together, these approaches exemplify how progressivism shapes ELT to promote autonomy, social awareness, and active knowledge construction.