That’ll Teach You: A Humanistic Reconstructionist Approach to the Project-Based Educations of the Companions of Doctor Who

Abstract

From the early 1900s through the 1950s, child-centered and humanistic theories of education were developed and disseminated from hubs of progressive educational theorization. Based on the resultant educational reforms of the 1960s, humanistic approaches to education became popular in schools throughout the United States. Concurrently, and perhaps not coincidentally, while these theories were being developed, Doctor Who was conceived and promoted as an educational television series for young learners throughout Britain. This essay posits that, consciously or inadvertently experimenting with progressive new pedagogical models, the Doctor and his series of companions present a complementary union of potentially opposing pedagogical approaches. While the Doctor’s lessons tend to be pedantic in nature and substance, the companions’ efforts to absorb the Doctor’s demonstrated teachings, relating that message to the audience, make episodes humanistic learning experiences for the viewer. By presenting dilemmas confronted and varyingly resolved by companions of the Doctors show-run by Russell Davies and Steven Moffat, this essay illustrates each companion’s personal struggles and attempts to understand and assimilate the Doctor’s lessons into an expanding worldview or moral truth that parallels and elicits the viewer’s—who occupies the silent, observant position of novice companion, or neophyte as acolyte—empathetically vicarious experiences.