Craig Shelswell’s educational footprints in Canadian public education span over half a century. Over the decade-long career, he assumed various roles such as principal, School Board Director and Ontario Ministry of Education Inspector. He knows better than anybody that the core of international education is to transform the educational setting into a console where diverse cultures merge and global perspectives emerge. Rooted in North America and looking beyond to the future, the Group aims to shape the global citizens and prepare them for the incoming changes.
Pragmatic Instruction, Multi-cultural Community
Foreseeing the Future via the Lookout of Dewey Institute
Dewey Institute leverages its forward-looking teaching philosophy and international intellectual resources to enrich the students’ outlook as a global citizen. Adopting John Dewey’s educational philosophy of pragmatism, Dewey Institute emphasizes the interactive relationship between individual development and social advancement, and explores the two-way dialogue between teaching and learning along its consistent endeavors.
Dewey meticulously calibrates a multi-cultural learning community to broaden the outlook of its teachers as well as staff. Dewey teachers are graduates from famous universities across the world, which translate into a multi-perspective approach into subject teaching and research. In addition, Dewey also attaches great importance to the cultivation of the students’ overall qualifications by inviting social elites from various circles of society to shape the students’ personality, which in turn, shapes the future world. Dewey students develop their teamwork spirit based on the enhancement of independent problem-solving skills, striking a perfect balance between independent work and collaboration.
At Dewey Institute, we uphold and pursue a pragmatic, balanced education to help students bring their knowledge acquisition on par with knowledge application, and to strengthen their overall ability to make well-informed decisions in the future.
John Dewey, America’s greatest educator in the 20th century.
Inspired by Dewey, two greatest modern Chinese educators ushered in the golden age of new Chinese cultural education: Xingzhi Tao’s educational philosophy “Learning by doing”, and Shi Hu’s philosophy of individual independence and broader social teaching. Likewise, Donna Zhang, CEO of Dewey Education Group, is inspired by her PhD supervisor Professor Clive Beck, who is a follower of Dewey philosophy himself.
This is the origin of Dewey College and Dewey Institute. Originate from North America, and serve the world.
International education is an educational revolution deeply rooted in the backdrop of internationalization. It asks the educator and the educational process for more in terms of educational philosophy, methods, contents, environment, etc. The dynamic pool of Dewey education incorporates multiple streams such as pragmatic education, multi-cultural integration, community integration, innovation, self-planning and team building, all of which eventually converge and fulfill our educational vision.
Learning by Doing
School is society, and education is life.
Dewey Institute Management Team
Chairman of Dewey Educational Group
Craig Shelswell
CEO of Dewey Educational Group
Dr. Donna Zhang
Dr. Zhang believes that all education is futurology: each class is a lookout for the future, and every campus is a trial-and-error base for the future society. An educator should be down-to-earth in his attitude, imaginative in his outlook, and composed in his temperament.
Consultant of Education
John Rennie
John Rennie has been involved in Public and Private School education over 40 years. He taught in both the elementary and secondary school panels and then spent eleven years as a School Principal with The Peel District School Board. Subsequent to that time, he was appointed to the position of Superintendent of Schools for both elementary and secondary levels in PDSB.
In 1998, John worked as a Private School Inspector for the Ontario Ministry of Education where he gained the respect of all his colleagues. Today John is excited as he looks forward to his new position as Consultant with Dewey Institute.
Vice-principal of Dewey Institute
Darrin Mayhew
Darrin Mayhew obtained his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Waterloo and followed with a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Alberta. He spent over a decade in the pharmaceutical research industry before completing his B.Ed. at the University of Toronto and moving to Dewey College as Head of Science. Currently, he is the Vice Principal of Dewey Institute.